Spiritual Powers

The Masons

I'm one of those people who grew up amidst Freemasonry (which is itself supposedly a misnomer, or mis-translation from an earlier French usage).  Both my grandfathers were Masons - Grandpa Nelson, with only a 6th grade education, was actually a Shriner - 32nd degree, which requires memorization and understanding a large body of comparative religion and history, which isn't really that bad.  

This was a way you  could get an advanced understanding of the world and your place in it without having gone to school.  You did have to be able to read and write, though - in other words, be literate.  I'm afraid that's an accomplishment that few young people have, today, except in the fashion of "computer-literate" or whatever.  140-character consciousness.  Even "scientific literacy" or "numeracy", as they say in Britain, is hard to come by except by the techies who are basically Borg from Day 1.  

You'd be amazed at how many upper-level professionals don't know the  slightest thing about social science, including economics.  And how many lawyers seem to know nothing about legal philosophy, let alone ethics and sociology.  Like  physicians, they now spend a lot of time learning about how to maximize their "practice" and incomes.  

But in the 19th Century, there wasn't really a "professional class". Outside the nobility, the best-educated and most productive people were either clergymen or skilled tradesmen and craftsmen - i.e., Masons.  The Medieval Guild system, and an economy based on humane and Christian teachings, and of course the schools that trained them .  The great European and British universities were founded in the 12-1300's.  And the Italian ones like Bologne were directly transplanted from the Hellenistic schools which go back to Athens or before with Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum, and the later Museum of Alexandria - the greatest center of learning in the world before it was destroyed in various waves of monotheistic fanaticism.  I've just been reading about Julian the Apostate, nephew of Constantine (the first Christian Emperor, who moved the Roman Empire to Byzantium), who actually re-established paganism (poly-theism) and all the cults and mysteries associated with it!   So there has always been this conflict between "established" churches and belief systems, and the rest of us who may want to think and believe something different.   

The Knights Templar, who were started during the Crusades in order to "Save Jerusalem", were supposedly the fore-runners of the Masons.  Jacques DeMolay, for whom the Masonic youth organization is named, was supposedly the last Templar.  Don't quote me on this - I read it many years ago.  Although we now think of Masons as "anti-Catholic," that was not always the case.  DeMolay was tortured by the Inquisition (or something like that - the one we know by that name, now, was part of the Counter-Reformation, I believe).   This was part of an event which must have been one of the most coordinated mass murders in history, taking place all over Europe by secret orders carried by itinerant monks (somewhere in the 1300's, I think).  All the Templars were killed, and their vast estates  confiscated by the Church.  It's fascinating stuff, and can still be seen in films (and contemporary politics, for that matter) in Europe and the U.S. 

Come to think of it, the resurgence of Masonic interest in the 18th and 19th centuries was probably closely connected with destroying the Church and reclaiming the lands which it had stolen.  In Mexico, I've heard, the Church is still not allowed to own property, and exists only under strict state control.  

==========

It's often remarked that the Ku Klux Klan was a Masonic-style group, probably started by people who had been trained in Masonry.  So was the Knights of Labor, the first successful labor union, which was made up of equal parts Lincoln Republicans and active Freemasons (the leader was named Stephens, and seems to fit our  family type, which was how I discovered this).  Most of the American Founding Fathers were Masons, as well - just to  show this  wasn't some recent fad.  Not to mention Mozart.  

I've got the basic 32nd Degree "Morals and Dogma" in a book right here, compiled by someone named Pike in the Southern Jurisdiction in the 1890's.  I haven't read the "Morals" carefully, but I flipped through it.  Basically, it's sort of like the Rosicrucians - they may  have common roots - where the wisdom and knowledge of every great religion and philosophy is combined and "syncretized" (if that's the right word) to make a workable everyday philosophy or belief system, and its wider community.  We might say, now, that it has a somewhat elitist bent.  It's the old "esoteric" vs. public understanding of things.  The  Enlightened Ones, the Illuminati, as they called themselves, know  best, so just trust them.  They are wiser than the rest of us.  

I've  been in Mensa and other groups  which purport to  represent some "higher thinking," including the Objectivist movement.  (Never quite got into Scientology, but I've known a few who did).  The whole academic  game is based on this, for that matter.  You have more "education" so  you get  more money.  That makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?   For the educators, anyway.  But it totally paralyzes and locks into classes everything that a free people would value or want to do!  Most importantly, control their own "cultural infrastructure" instead of having it "managed" by a bunch of professional racketeers...

Against State Socialism

That's the real argument against "state socialism".  There's simply no way to prevent it from being taken over and diverted to private gain.  Look at that wretched Obamacare!   And then imposing a further tax on young working people (whose real health-care costs are low) in order to pay off the rotten drug cartels and as well as doctors and hospitals which have apparently no concept of economics, except to maximize their own incomes from the public purse, and enslave or pillage everyone who is forced to use their services.

As bad as direct provision of public services often is (that's our present model for so-called "public education"), at least it can be changed on short notice and must be responsive to public outrage.  No such thing happens with "Obamacare" or the various "contractors" who now run most of our public services as well as the military.  

Then there's the insurance racket bailout.  In the guise of "fixing" such "problems" as "pre-existing conditions", and the added risk to the pool by having to insure such people, they simply made it compulsory, thus immediately raising premiums for everyone by about 15% (and there was a lot of tightening up on other benefits, too, in order to keep the premium increase that low).  

No problem!  We just subsidize low-income people so they can now "buy" this low-grade "health insurance" with higher deductibles and limited coverage for maybe twice what the same product would have cost them, before the ACA.  

Besides, it's FREE MONEY.  The Federal Government just prints it, or borrows it from the Chinese.  What could go wrong?   Essentially, that was main argument (often used by Gov. Bullock) in favor of approving Medicaid Expansion.  It was almost all "free money", and even if it was cut off later (as the Republicans claimed to fear, since they were trying to do the cutting).   But the real selling point was that this would allow us to establish real health care for some 80,000 low-income people who presently "fall through the cracks".  

We should never worry whether it's state or federal money - not, at least, until we have our own state money to replace it - as some have proposed.  It's all the same money, but we have to get ours (on the state and local level) from taxing the people and businesses who are actually here.  We can't borrow the difference from China, although we can make deals to give them our coal at rock-bottom (no pun intended) prices.  We are becoming an economic colony of China.  

It happened before, to a certain extent, with Japan, which has invested heavily in Montana to support and maintain its food supply.  Now, the Chinese want "equal treatment," and they're actually building a pork packing and distributing center in Shelby, MT.  From Jack Dempsey (who won a world Heavyweight Boxing title here in the 1920's) to the  Hog Farm in less than 100 years.  And I know a lot of people from Shelby - it was one of the authentic hippy towns in the '60's and '70's, too.  The fabled "Highline", or did they write it "Hi-Line," maybe.  In any case, as the crossroads between East and West and the main road to Alberta, it always had a special place in Jim Hill's Empire.  

Now, it's dominated by a CCA prison, along with the hogs.  What a fate for its beautiful people.  Yet, a recent poll showed wide local support for both projects (and employers).  When all the good jobs have already been exported to China (ahead of the hogs), they'll have to take whatever they can get and not  complain, I guess.  A whole new meaning to "Oriental Despotism."  

Which brings us back to the Masons.  When the Shriners have a parade, we now see the cities of their various "cauldrons" and other sinister-sounding collectives with names like Algeria, Baghdad, etc.  They're essentially black-face Muslims (as opposed to Black Muslims, whom they tend to fear and despise).  Then they get drunk, roll dice, hire a stripper, and otherwise have a jolly-good time.  Not much of an inspiration to our best and brightest youth, right?  But we don't want our country run by a bunch of sissies, either.  And they have their Women's groups  - Eastern Star, Rainbow Girls (not  to be confused with Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition), etc. to keep the men and boys in check, more or less.  

I've done my time as an atheist, as well.  And I was actually a DeMolay, for about a year.  I've compared my experience there with a number of other  local drop-outs, and we all left for good reasons.  I still live in the apartments which were once owned (and provided income for) the adult "supervisor" of the DeMolay's, which turned out to be merely a conduit for his orders and predjudices.  

I don't consider myself a Mason, nor a Lutheran, either - the other "church" in which I was made to participate as a child.  Mostly, it was the women who were for it (Lutherans and DeMolay), while my father, uncle, and even cousin and brother discouraged it entirely.   Ron, who is now a lay preacher of sorts, never went to church because Abraham Lincoln didn't.  And that was accepted - plus his father was pretty much a non-believer (in anything).  

Unitarianism was a nice compromise, after I had been immersed in Buddhism, Transcendental Meditation, and other spiritual movements in the 1970's.  And I can still call myself  a Unitarian, although their main church seems hopelessly "professional" and elitist in many ways, plus not providing a whole lot of spiritual sustenance.  It seems to flourish where there is already a diverse intellectual community.  Where there is none (like GF), it withers and dies, like our public library and local broadcast media.  

Seeing with the Third Eye

Seeing with the Third Eye
 It's time for a reset....

When you're not a member of either  "major party", it's easy to see how all their fun and games is in pursuit of an established duopoly.  They simply don't care what happens to the rest of us.  We're the "chips" they play with between themselves, for votes and campaign contributions (which amount to extortion, not bribes, as those providing the loot used to think). 

So, we're all being exploited, and it's a negative-sum game even between the D's and R's (ever wonder where that R2-D2 came from?).    EVERYONE would benefit by a reset.  We must redesign the game for Pareto Optimality (everyone is better-off, instead of some being sacrificed to others - with added incentives to "help the poor", promote culture, etc), instead of this mindless gang warfare, which doesn't even compute on a level of 7th graders, let alone "responsible adults."

And we need a different legal system, obviously.  The one we have panders only to political demagogues, and has almost nothing to do with justice, fairness, sympathy, morality, or any of those good things usually attributed to courts of law (but not by those who run them).  Without an ethical society with ethical values shared by nearly everyone in some form, there's no point in having a legal system like we have, now, which is little more than organized gang enforcement of its edicts and territories.  No one here has any real "rights" or "protection under the law."  You only get what you pay for, or can extort from others. 

Ayn Rand and socialized medicine

If you're wondering why we don't have anything resembling "socialized medicine" in the US, it's the same reason behind the current obsession with "the failure of the public schools"  (which are, in fact, "socialized education").  The only people who opposed socialized medicine originally were some of the wealthier doctors, or more accurately, the "consultants" they hired to identify and promote their interests, which they took to be monopoly control of the supply (and even the definitions) of medicine, in order to maximize their own wealth and power. 

Enter Ayn Rand

Her essay, "The Forgotten Man of Socialized Medicine, the Doctor" (c. 1964) became almost a manifesto to "block" or "repeal" Medicare and other "paths to socialized medicine."  The fact that Ayn Rand squandered her vast personal fortune, and had to rely on Medicare in her old age is beside the point.  This occurred when she was dying of lung cancer - no doubt a karmic consequence of her advocacy of smoking, which was based on totally wrong arguments that cigarettes represented "power" or "man's control over nature,"  instead of the social rituals which some Native Americans still practice. 

The Crows (into which Barak Obama was adopted, probably because of the Unitarian Mission School which influenced their  subsequent development) held the Tobacco plant sacred.  There's even a Tobacco Root Mountain Range in Montana/Wyoming, and it was Montana mythology and real history which inspired a lot of Rand's work - mainly because of Jewish-Scandinavian Baltic culture which was also transplanted here. 

Anyway, I'll see if I can find a link to the "forgotten doctors" essay.  Of course, "Objectivists" claim absolute property rights over every word their prophetess has written, so you might have to buy or check out the book.  Can you find Rand's works in your local public library?  It's doubtful, which is why taxpayers no longer want to fund them (the libraries, I mean), and why they have been turned into corporate work-slave-stations, or free video-rental stores (a function which Netflix will soon have eliminated).  Now, it's the NSA which can examine anyone's library records without  a warrant, and the librarian can be prosecuted for telling her clients that they are on a "watch list" or otherwise "a person of interest"  to "the authorities."  Surely we must all want that - to be a "person of interest." 

Of course, everyone agreed to Medicare because caring for one's elderly relatives was a major burden, now assumed by the Federal Government.  Local communities which had county rest-homes and other successful local program (usually discriminating by race or class) were soon bribed or coerced into selling them to private companies, who had "more leverage in Washington".  The Democrats ran on the "socialized medicine" gravy train for 50 years, until they were finally forced to promote the reductio ad absurdum of corporate medicine, "Obamacare", with all its racist and classist overtones.  And now, all the drugged, dumbed down, middle class "liberals" are out there selling it like snake-oil. 

Even people like myself, with a degree in Economics from a leading university, can make little if any sense of our overall "welfare system."  It is positively designed to fail, and those who end up taking it over (corporate "contractors" - often major banks, credit card, or even aerospace "defense" contractors like Grumman-Northrup) have no incentives other than to maximize their own "cut" of the loot - often about 20-25% of the "gross" as a "commission" or "service charge."  And  in the case of Medicine, the doctors are anything but "forgotten."  Instead, they are further empowered to loot and bankrupt  the patients whose fees were already supposed to be paid by Medicare or Medicaid. 

How is this possible?  It really does have a lot to do with Ayn Rand, who is believed by conservatives and liberals alike to have been fundamentally evil and malevolent, albeit for different reasons.  Now, that doesn't matter.  Rand (and the Greens) are the New Reds.  We're the bad guys, by definition.  So, anything we do or say will be tainted, with each side of the duopoly blaming the other for the bad parts, and taking credit for the good.  I formulated a principle maybe 25 years ago which says this: 

Each major party is half-right and half-wrong.  They run for office on the good half, and after winning, then proceed to implement (with the assistance of the losers) the bad half, so that each side has an even chance (to begin with, anyway) in winning the next election, since no "track record" of good leadership by one party will be allowed to exist. 

Enter Baucus and the other "bi-partisans" who "broker" these deals to maximize the errors and subsequent policy disasters so that there can always be a cry for "more money" and "more programs - more jobs" for those who serve the state so dutifully. 

Ultimately, it gets down to that - serving the state, and in the particular case, party loyalty.  The only party besides the Greens where I ever participated or held leadership positions was the Republicans, so even when I despise them, I respect the real Republican tradition.  And this was where Rand and the Libertarians in general were correct.  Their arguments go back to Thomas Jefferson, Adam Smith, and other Enlightenment thinkers, as well as Marx and the many Left critics who saw only misery and disasters in the "unbridled capitalism" which Jefferson and Smith supposedly endorsed (actually, they warned continuously about the power of business and trade elites, and their motives to enslave and impoverish the rest of us).  Abraham  Lincoln, who may be counted as a founding Republican Intellectual, actually read and corresponded with Marx, and always claimed that "Labor is Prior to Capital," and Labor's interests the more important in government decisions. 

Intellectuals, the workers, the taxpayers, the drafted or bribed soldiers, spies, and Homeland Security Gestapo all have the same interests.  To make sure that the owners of capital and war profiteers do not take over the  state, by impoverishing and demoralizing the rest of us to be their slaves and cannon-fodder.  For reasons listed above, that has not happened.  The Ruling Class, supposedly glorified in Rand's "superman" novels, has consolidated and concentrated its power and control in ways that more resemble Fascism or Stalinist totalitarianism than any sort of "freedom" or "free enterprise."  Our first Black president (we'd call him a Metis in Montana), instead of acting to reverse some of the murderous "foreign policy" as well as domestic Gulag of the biggest prison system the world has ever seen, has become its best (or worst) practitioner, until finally even a few of the hardened party operatives have  conceded that this might be a good time to reduce the prison population, and quit prosecuting the slaves of the drug cartels who are themselves a creature of bought and paid for legislators.  Unfortunately, no such sanity or remorse extends to the victims of US-Zionist foreign policy, which kills 100's of thousands each year. 

I was reading Jessica Mitford's "Cruel and Usual Punishment" from the early 1970's last night.  We think the Prison State is a recent consequence of the "war on drugs" or the worship of wealth and power in general, but it was all there in 1970, with the largest and most corporatized prison system in the world, at a time when the Chinese and Soviet Gulags were the main objects of American media attention.  Mitford is an institution in herself, and so the book was widely read and discussed, and she got access to people and places which even then was unprecedented.  Someone should suggest it to the First Family as a "must-read." 

Of Pearls and Pig Diarrhea

Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus

Have you heard of this?  It's spread throughout the mid-west "hog belt" - vast, factories for hog breeding, fattening, and slaughtering - they actually call it "hog confinement operations" or some such thing.  Apparently it affects piglets, and is said not to provide any "health hazard," but decimates herds and profits...  Yet, the price of live hogs is (and has always been, for decades) about 50 cents a pound.  And they are drugged to the gills with all sort of antibiotics, hormones, etc.  In many counties, their by-products are the single largest source of point pollution, even with lagoons, cesspools, etc. which often leak or overflow.  It isn't even fit to be spread on the land as fertilizer.  

If there's any issue I would want to follow, it's the negative consequences of swine confinement operations in Montana.  The Hutterites are some of the biggest producers (along with ducks, turkeys, chickens, etc.), but they probably do it a little more humanely and cleanly.  Unfortunately, they're part of that larger corporate food chain, and often swindled by the agri-biz con artists.  I've urged people to work with them on this, and I think AERO and some others have done so.  They do produce healthier food in most cases, and most importantly, it's local, thus avoiding wasting more energy in bulk transport over thousands of miles.

Anyway, when this story appeared on the Noon News today (not the infomercial Northern Ag Broadcasting segment, but in the main newscast), I was astonished.  Apparently, it's been happening since last April, and a law passed last year actually prevents the Montana Department of Agriculture from releasing the location of the outbreak!  [Go for it, public interest lawyers.]  I follow most of the Montana press and media fairly closely, and this was absolutely the first I'd heard of it.  

Barber, barber, shave a pig.
How many hairs
to make a wig?
Four and twenty
should be enough
 nd give the poor barber 
a pinch of snuff." 

- nursery rhyme  

Right after the pork story, there was a story on state crop insurance, and the massive losses last year because of climate change (although they certainly didn't mention climate change as the cause - that would probably be grounds for immediate firing at MTN news).  

Here is another case where the word "insurance" is totally corrupted to mean "corporate welfare".  Real insurance is risk-pooling.  It's a very good - even necessary - strategy for a farmer if being hailed out (flooded, wind erosion, or whatever) would put you out of business.  Since the chances of a major loss are only maybe 5% (one year out of 20 equivalent), then an insurance company can take the 5% each year, and in effect, capitalize it so that in the 10-year average before a claim is made, it can invest the money and make a handsome profit.  That is how insurance companies came to dominate the economy.  

When hail insurance was strictly private, I believe they charged about 10% of  the value insured , but many were "mutual" insurance companies, too - real co-ops where the profits stayed with the insured.  It's  hard  to tell, but from this report, the state hail insurance fund may be just that - and not relying on taxpayers to subsidize risk.  But that is not usually the case, or what I am objecting to, here.  

"Health insurance" has nothing to do with real insurance or risk-sharing.  Health care isn't a "risk" - it's a public service, and perhaps the most vital one.  By turning this into someone's "profit center," the whole idea of insurance (and medicine,  itself) is violated.  Insurance is what  people buy to protect themselves or their heirs  from loss.  The illness is a loss, which happens whether we are insured, or not. And the monetary compensation goes, not to you, who suffer the accident or illness, but to the "health insurance" racket, and the predatory, criminal "medical industry" riddled with every kind of graft and fraud - even from its most "respectable" elements - the senior doctors, hospitals and established clinics.  

You can almost depend on primary care to prescribe extra tests, X-rays, etc. to "protect themselves from law-suits," they might tell you (at your, the patient's, expense).  Or, in my case, recently, "because I  am a smoker" (which I will never admit to, again).  Often, they have a financial interest in the local lab or diagnostic center, for which "services" they often charge from 4-10 times an actual competitive, cost-based price.  The same is true for "patent medicines" - prescriptions, which are monopoly products.  They charge whatever they can get to maximize revenues and profits. 

Even when the generics come out, major pharmacies (like Target, in a recent "60 Minutes" segment) still continue to bill at whatever price they think they can get, and "rely" on customers to challenge their price with competing stores.   Target is happy to match a lower price shown to them, but you have to make a point of asking, and most people just assume they (or their "coverage") are being charged a fair price, which in fact hardly ever happens.  

Thus, our present health care system is often involved in "cultivating illness" just as agribiz corporations "farm" the government (or taxpayers-consumers) rather than the soil.  Just listen to the ag-promotion shows - even on public television, from most Land Grant colleges, anyway.  Monsanto is off the table (or rather, just assumed to be a normal, public-spirited business), along with factory farming in general. Our station ran Food Inc. all of once, I think, and it was a year or more delayed.   And yet, all the rest of the world is most concerned, and blocking US food imports at every turn - the main reason for the TPP and other "free trade" agreements, incidentally, and why Baucus and Tester support it.  GMO's and Monsanto, itself, have been completely banned in several countries, and the evidence is mounting that this is the only way to "fix" this world's worst corporation.

By making hail insurance or the ACA a mandatory federal program, and calling it "insurance," everyone is defrauded.  It isn't insurance; it's corporate welfare.  Instead of government looking out for the well-being of the people, it enables corporate criminals to exploit them -  even mandating and fining people for not participating (How did this ever stand?).  Instead (and in both case, above), the government provides nothing for the people - least of all, healthy food produced locally and sustainably to maximize health, wealth, and good government.  

Surely this is one of the most perfect extortion rackets ever imagined. Even though most people can easily be shown that we are paying at least twice as much for healthcare as any other country (with taxpayers already providing half the money) with a system that ranks 23rd in the world, or some such thing - behind many "developing" or "emerging market" countries - they seem to think that they are obligated by some sort of coercion of social expectations to partake of it.

This is Max Baucus's real legacy - subsidizing (and even making compulsory!  No shame!) private, profit-making insurance companies, and forcing every citizen to buy their fraudulent policies, whether or not we want or need one.   As Senate Finance Committee Chair, he was also criminally responsible for Medicare Part D  (some $50 billion/year more to the corporate drug cartels), most of the Bankster bailouts (in cahoots with his buddies at Goldman, Sachs and the FED) which many place at $20 trillion or more exposure of US taxpayers to these racketeers.   

Of course he was forced to do it, manipulated, bribed, threatened, blackmailed, and otherwise made to sell out Montana and the rest of the country - not to say the planet.  We can't hold him accountable because he is a "no-account" - he "counts no costs", as Atticus Finch says in "To Kill a Mockingbird."  He's like the bag-man.  He uses the power we have given him, with our votes and recognition, to enrich some gangsters.  It's a familiar story, and as long as we continue to vote for such people, that is what we will get.  

THAT is the real flaw in "democratic" government - the  more power that is concentrated in a few hands (or a "strong central government" with permanent wars and domestic police state), the more easily it can be corrupted and made to serve evil purposes.

Never forget - we spend more on weapons, prisons, and the police state apparatus than most other countries, combined.  (NSA, Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, etc.  Only the Secret Service (and regular military, as well as state militias) is constitutional, and their powers are strictly limited).   We must hold those "Representatives" and "Senators" responsible for the many calamities we face.  They were informed, warned, cajoled, and pleaded to all the way.  

And what have they advocated and supported with their (our) sacred votes?  More military spending, more wars, more attacks on civilians and allied countries.  More drugs, more corporate domination of the world.  More surveillance, more prisons, more torture and assassinations.  

Fewer independent farmers.  No independent thinking or media.  ("Stamp  it out, before it gets established.")  The reduction of education and health-care standards to the lowest in the world among "developed" countries, while paying far more than any other country.  Just look at us.  And thank the Bushes, Baucus's, and other "old money" and "noblesse oblige," as well as the professional crooks and liars who make it all possible.  The academics, the planners, the strategists, the media stars ("presstitutes, " as Paul Craig Roberts says - I'll stick with "mediawhores"), even the Holy Gurus who rarely say anything wrong, but whose lives and actions are the worst possible example for people wanting to be sane, free, and independent thinkers in an independent economy and culture.    
It's the Twilight of the Wine God!  Time to sober up. I don't think the Chinese will be fooled.

An Exaltation of Marx - poem

An  Exaltation of Marx 1-7-14

I was listening to public radio
this morning.  A quartet
by Jennifer Higdon.  

I was cooking in the kitchen, 
where I also have a small radio
and when the title was announced, 
I thought he said
"An exaltation of Marx"  
(actually, it was "Larks").

"Hey, that's pretty cool,"
I thought.  I was just thinking
about how today's right-wing
"business class" -
the Neo-cons, the war imperialists,
the monopoly-finance capitalists
were all brainwashed
by basic Marxist doctrine.  

How many generations of 
stupid academics
have been injected
with this stuff,
passing it on to their 
backward students, 
while their bad-boy clubs
seduced them into 
criminal celebrations
of wealth and power.

Isn't this the essence of our
"higher education?"
Capitalists are bad, 
the business cycle is inevitable -
the rich get richer
while the poor get 
progressively starved, 
or as Marx said, "immiserated."

I must admit, I had 
great teachers who explained 
all this stuff to me.
American Marxists 
weren't really Marxists.  
Marx was a philosopher,
not a politician,
or tenured professor  
at an Ivy League school.  

Denny Davis, 
my World History teacher, 
from St. Olaf's,
later to be the father 
of US Figure Skating Champion,
Scott Davis.
(Just last year, I learned
that Scott was the product
of an illicit student-teacher
relationship.  Funny no one
ever mentioned that
at an appropriate time!)

Denny was also 
the Offensive Coordinator
for the CMR Rustlers football team
the most successful in the state
in those years.
An amazing exercise
in suspending punishment
for the best  and brightest.
But  Denny paid a price,
becoming cynical and 
devoid of hope.

That's where I first learned about
Marx and Machiavelli.
It's all about status,
not truth.  
Power, not ethics 
or righteousness.
Not even benevolence,
or a desire to serve humanity.
These Marxists were Hegelians -
it's all about patterns and process.
The Phenomenology of the Market,
one might say.

Isn't that a different department?
We don't do that 
in Business Schools or 
"Agricultural Economics".

I remember a couple 
of lone environmental economists
in my last year at UCLA - by then,
a Philosophy grad-school drop-out
(this was 1970), just beginning
to smoke pot and dance
with Mescalito (although I'd 
wanted to since age 15, when 
I'd read about it in Playboy).  

It hardly seems conceivable, now,
in that crowded, chaotic place
called Los Angeles.
It seemed more like 
Victoria de los Angeles
than the Lakers, Kareem, 
or the Johnny Carson show.

Yes, this was where the movies
were made, and since I watched movies
(but not TV - not since Leave it to Beaver,
anyway), I knew LA.  
It was cool.
Even the Watts Riots didn't bother me,
although it freaked out my mother
and other former Midwest, Chicago
white people - even the "liberals." 

Kareem was in my class.
They only lost one game 
while I was there - to Houston. 
I never attended one, either.
And I attributed that loss
to HASP, the Houston 
Automatic Spooling Program
used in our mainframe computer-
the IBM 360-75, 
which later went to Santa Barbara, 
after being replaced
by the NASA-standard 
360-91 at UCLA.

I actually watched 
the first moon landing
from the computer-room at UCLA.
It almost seemed staged, 
that's for sure.
It was like celebrating 
a naval victory
from a sister-ship, far away.

I did that.  I must have died,
and went to heaven, 
to sing among the angels.  
And I didn't even believe 
in God, 
although I was forced to make
some adjustments in that,
after studying Medieval Philosophy.

I was told Prof Moody was famous,
and this was his final year and class.
One of my preppy friends
wrote a Latin farewell
appropriate for such occasions.

You can imagine my sense 
of deep inferiority
coming from rural Montana,
with hardly a cultural experience
or connection to my name. 
The one trump card I held,
I never used.
That was being Jean Arthur's 
cousin, 
and actually having met her, 
and hung out with her 
(at about age 10).

But I never understood
it's significance.  You couldn't simply
check out an old movie
and watch it.
It was Taboo.
I  don't think I mentioned it
to anyone, although a few
already knew, 
it seems in retrospect.

Nor was I a displaced Rebel
VP of the Confederacy
(Jean Arthur, Selznick's mistress
tried out for the Scarlett O'Hara
role.  She was then pushing  40.)

Somehow, all that information
was kept secret.  Yes, a Stephens
was the first head of UC 
Southern Branch, the original UCLA.  
Yes, this was Southern California.
Surely I fit in somewhere.
And so I did. 

Alonzo Church,
of Church's Theorem fame.
He was there,  at UCLA, 
in the Philosophy Dept.
as well as Mathematics.  
His office was near the computer center
where I worked, so I knew who he was.

It would be nearly 40 years later
that I learned that A H Stephens
had  been befriended by a math prof
with the same name, in Georgia - 
when?  The 1820's, or thereabouts.
That was the school at Athens,
that became The University of Georgia,
and a classmate, LeConte,
would be the father 
of a famous UC Berkeley Chancellor.

Meanwhile, the frat-boy future
MBA's of America, the CEO's,
the politicians, 
the "social networkers"
droned on or dropped out.
The successful ones
were also engineers or 
computer nerds - a species
just being born, 
with me attending 
(at the UCLA and Santa Barbara 
computer centers, birthplace
of the DARPA science network), 
laboring for 2 1/2 years
in ecstatic obscurity.

Operations, you understand.
Not the systems programmers,
who even then seemed
barely human.  
And there were drugs.  
Every kind, of highest quality.  
Psycho-cybernetics.
Ceremonial chemistry.
Call it what you will.

We didn't  think of ourselves
as criminals, 
for having "broken the law."  
We were creating law,
not breaking it.

Natural law.  People's law.
Cosmic law.  Spiritual law.
All  without a single judge
or lawyer.  We,  the Jury.
The Educated and Enlightened.
We thought of ourselves
as scientists, explorers, 
the Galileo's of this 
unfolding Cosmos.  

All the fundamental issues
were on the table. 
Nothing
need be left unsaid, 
and yet everything was.
I was not the person 
people thought I was - 
some Caligula, some war-lord
reincarnated from the Viking Age.

By that time, family networks
were shredded 
beyond recognition.
Nothing fit together 
in my mind.  
The women, of course,
had different perceptions
and ambitions.  I tried to stay
clear of them, but of course
they wanted to control me,
and  claim a share
of whatever booty
I accumulated, 
if not be rid of me 
completely.

I never really knew
what I wanted to do, except
I was always told I'd get the ranch,
and be the 4th generation 
on that homestead.
I gave it a shot, 
and missed, apparently.

Should I have killed myself?  
I came close 
a couple of times, anyway.  
The Buffalo spirits
always with me. 
A real Commons 
of the Mind.  
I just couldn't
seem to get it together.
Everyone was playing 
a different game.  
A stranger
in a strange land, indeed
but  that was  something I knew
how to do.

I remember saying,
"After moving to Southern California
to go to UCLA."
(and that, in large part,
in imitation of Nathaniel Branden)
"it took me two years to adjust  to it.
Then, everything was fine."

"But when I returned to Montana,
I simply couldn't cope with it.
Nothing seemed right.
Everyone was playing games
which somehow, I was a part of,
but never understood. 
And that  is still true, today."

I knew my relatives 
must hate me, or be jealous
of my greater "privileges".
The Ugly Duckling
might be the right metaphor.
So as not to disappoint them
I went to jail
and otherwise became 
an outcast.

Human nature, I suppose.
Why some men become gay,
or else brutal and tyrannical.
Boys cannot hit girls.  
All we can do 
is stay clear of them.

So, thank you Marx
and your daughter, Ayn Rand.
My sister was named Eleanor -
we thought, after Eleanor Roosevelt.
And we didn't like Roosevelt.
Both, perhaps, were named after
Eleanor Marx, who did kill herself
in despair at all the evil in the world.

- Paul Stephens (revised 1-14-14)

+++++++++++++

I've written several essays  on "The Tragedy of Economics" and other  basically "economics denial" subjects.  Here's  an excellent one from the current press:

The corruption of the economics profession
by Dean Baker @DeanBaker13 
Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author, most recently, of The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive.
December 30, 2013

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/12/economics-sciencecorruption.html

The public needs expert guidance on economic issues, but moneyed interests have gotten in the way

It is remarkable that the public has been convinced that the earth revolves around the sun. This is remarkable because we can all look up in the sky and see the sun revolving around the earth.

Most of us are willing to believe the direct opposite of what we can see with our own eyes because we accept the analysis of the solar system developed by astronomers through many centuries of careful observation. The overwhelming majority of people will never go through the measurements and reproduce the calculations. Rather, our belief that the earth revolves around the sun depends on our confidence in the competence and integrity of astronomers. If they all tell us that the earth in fact orbits the sun, we are prepared to accept this view.

Unfortunately the economics profession cannot claim to have a similar stature. This is both good and bad. It is good because it doesn’t deserve that stature. Economists too often work as hired guns for those with money and power. It is bad because the public needs expertise in economics, just as it needs expertise in medicine and other areas.

Theories for sale.....