When I was a kid, our greatest political concerns were thermonuclear war and population. The population issue is now spun as global climate change and the thermonuclear war issue is presented in media to the multitude as “terrorism”. The problems haven’t changed; they are still over-population and mass murders.

I was around at the time and watching when John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson pulled the plug on the thermonuclear issue by allowing the Kremlin to demonstrate it’s unwillingness to pull the trigger in Cuba. I also watched as the Pentagon, which held the strings on a movie actor, Ronald Reagan, began the march to the present situation by destabilizing the USSR, unleashing on the world, the Russian mafia and a host of petty murderous tyrants sponsored by our shadow government, the CIA, whom, along with victims of corporate greed and genocide came to share in common, a vitreous hatred of all things western and in particular, America, i.e., gave impetus to militant Islam.

It would be difficult to find an argument to population reduction as a solution to the impending collapse of ecosystems from climate change. But how shall we accomplish it? So far, we’ve tried using policies that promote poverty, selectively provide medical care, allowing development in places prone to natural catastrophe, implementation of technologies and engineering with high risks of widespread fatality and with corporate investment strategies that exploit tribal, ethnic, religious and national animosities and local pogroms, amplified into national conflicts by lack of education and suppression of economic advancement for entire national populations. These policies have failed.

Putting aside the ethical and moral considerations of de facto policies of western nations (now including, India, Russia, Saudi and China), we see CO² and population expanding at accelerating rates, so obviously, we’re not getting the job done. With the public engaged in virtual reality games that along with pornography, diverts attention from the gathering storm, people do whatever they can to support themselves and their families, regardless of the impact of their work, even when they can’t avoid being aware of the harm done to the environment and that they are devastating the lives of their own progeny.

De facto discrimination is a matter of unexamined economic priorities. Extremes are more apparent in places like Rio, San Juan, Juarez and Tijuana than in most of North America except regarding people who, by dint of age, categorically, have access to fewer opportunities for education, health care, employment mobility, housing, entertainment; everything related to quality of life. Yeah, so what? That’s just the way of the world. Yeah? Then why is it worse for older citizens living in North America than in the most economically challenged communities of the so-called, undeveloped world.

Yeah, ‘Che’ Guevara never noticed this. Abe Lincoln neither and Obamalamadama is no more hip to the profound affect this has for everyone in North America than is the fringiest naked feminist fringer escaping the box of vaginal perturbations. Age? Ignore it.

Age discrimination includes the greatest number of people that suffer the worst effects of more kinds of discriminatory practices and equally affects people of every ethnicity and a wide range of economic status, killing the rich as well as the poor, with nearly complete exclusion from employment and advancement, fewest housing opportunities and with the greater need, they receive the least competent and most neglectful medical attention.

As the economy tightens up, the line of exclusion falls, today affecting people over 55 and while the media whines and wails when minor bias is inflicted on ethnic and gender demographics, discrimination against older people is taken-for-granted, a “so what” fact of life in America in the same way as slavery was viewed in the 18^th century, child labor in the 19^th century and sweat shops in Pakistan today. And it is all economic priorities.

This kind of bias will directly affect you and every person in North America, including those who die younger. When you die, you will probably die as a consequence of an age-related decision. Every single member of every category of discrimination who survives their 50th birthday will face forms of age-related discrimination.

Like “happy” slaves on Thomas Jefferson’s plantation, as people age in America, they find dignity by pretending their fate was pre-ordained, as if sanctioned by a higher power. But it isn’t. That’s why you don’t see it in Scandinavia and Germany, nor do you see it in Portugal and other places where familial traditions shape cultural/political values.

The problem results from a combination of conditioning children by a secular state based on capitalism through media developed and owned by commercial enterprise that targets people with the least experience and education, thus promoting youth over maturity.

In promoting and selling youth, commercial media incidentally validates age bias by instilling negative views of maturity. It’s not intentional it’s simply thoughtless, similar to the mentality that dammed rivers for hydroelectric power regardless of the obviously predictable outcome. When it’s perceived as best to appear young and beautiful, it must be disheartening to appear to be older and wiser. “You make me fell so young…”

In promoting youth, you promote a correlative pejorative about age. This argument has been won about the negative effect of casting Anglo-Saxons as heroic protagonists, giving the impression that heroes are by definition, possessed of light skin tones.

While media is unwittingly complicit in this conditioning, the medical profession practices the bias to the detriment of patients in the face of science. Doctors are not typically well-educated in the humanities, history nor social sciences. Even the holistic, American doctor treats aging according to superstitions that contradict scientific knowledge. While we have observed that genetic information in our bodies’ cells mutates as a mathematic consequence of repeated iterations, which produces physical effects but exactly how this occurs and the areas affected varies widely in individuals. There are conditions that can mitigate, negate or enhance certain types mutation. The medical profession has begun to reshape its thinking about aging as profitable new drug therapies defeat increasing numbers of specific mutational effects but the mentality of practicing medical doctors is for the most part stuck in the 19th century and this ignorance plus an interesting legal decision limiting malpractice awards means murder by medicine.

If aging is genetically induced, i.e., established in our dna, then agism in medical practice is genocidal. The bias, however, occurs not in hospitals but in the justice system, in which precedence is cited to limit juries to base awards for medical malpractice in which a patient has died, not on the enormity of the loss of life to the victim and family but on the percentage of a span of life based on actuarial tables. The parents of a two-year old who dies on account of medical neglect or malpractice may be entitled to compensation that interests attorneys in pursuing a case against an insurance company, while the children and grand children of a person of 82 won’t find an attorney for this same reason. As a result, doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and medical product manufacturers  get away with murder. Ironically, even though lawyers, doctors and lawmakers must be aware, perhaps subconsciously of their own vulnerability, when they age, they have accepted the personal risk in return for financial support from insurers. Naturally.

Age discrimination produces a double bind since the result of not ensuring a healthy life for older people comes with a high cost for society because all human beings become depressed whenever they feel they have no future and treating the symptoms of depression is expensive and rapidly becoming the greatest cost of medical care.

During the later part of the 20th century, sociologists began to measure the effect mass media has on personality. They looked at how values had changed and how people had learned these values and they saw that predominantly, people now derive their values from media rather than from parents and traditional social institutions.

Examining the ways personality had been historically described and written about in books, plays and novels and the changing expectations of generations, they looked at the differences between personalities based on how personal values were formed and held: tradition-directed, inner-directed, other-directed.

The tradition-directed personality was typical of times before mass media, when the family was the most important social institution and people acquired values based literally on traditions of their community. Inner-directed describes a personality in which values of a parent or mentor were inculcated at an early age such that the individual’s values are independent of community or peer standards. Autonomous personalities show a measure of logical decision and invention of values independent of tradition, communal or parental values. Like the autonomous personality the other-directed personality chooses values based on information but the other-directed person pays most attention to peer approval and media acts in this regard as a kind of surrogate peer. Studies towards the end of the 20th century showed that personalities of mainstream western culture had become mostly other-directed and their values are predominantly determined by exposure to media: TV, video games, cinema and the Internet.

Although, Americans view their culture as strongly independent and self-willed, mass media has long replaced church as well as family and parents as sources of moral direction and at the same time, has made representative government in the United States into a secular state religion, one in which displayed wealth has the highest value. Since the values of other-directed people are dependent on approval of others, the pursuit of symbols of this approval became a paramount life objective and media is mostly committed to promoting these symbols in a process known as, branding, which establishes the value of all such symbols in a hierarchy of status based on the price paid to obtain it since all brands are associated with well-understood dollar values.

Just as in primitive cultures, in which the predominant personality type is tradition-directed, in the modern urban-industrial culture, in which the predominant personality is other-directed, for most people, economics determines relative social status. That which is valued in urban culture, obtains it’s value from media promotion. In primitive cultures, tradition determines value. In urban cultures, it is Gucci, Lexus, Yale and so on. The contemporary American urban-industrial culture’s predominant personality is affected by it’s middle/working class economic position and even the aristocratic class are guided by peer approval and other-directed as well. All seek approval of peers and media lets them know what they must have to feel that approval.

Economics mainly prevents the vast majority from having, doing and being that which wins approval by regulating opportunity. An individual’s success may be furthered or inhibited by psychological and physical enhancements or impediments resulting from environment and genetic disposition. Unfortunately, the combination of economic stratification and flexible values, with satisfaction and happiness dependent on consuming symbols, produces a surreal quality in experience, an underlying feeling of separation or alienation.

Serotonin Re-Uptake Inhibitors are prescribed to attenuate depression and mood swings arising from separation while businesses are increasingly predatory, localities and neighborhoods increasingly xenophobic and a general feeling that economic stability isn’t reliable and that political stability is waning. In the 21st century, with millions imprisoned, many for victimless infractions and tiers of militarized local, state and federal police, all subject to direction by presidential order, the social order of the community seems to be coming apart at the seams, adding to the atmosphere of fear, alienation and imminent risk.

The last half of the 20th century shows a steady decline in appreciation for artistic expression and the elevation of kitsch in media lore. This decline parallels diminution of quality of life, erosion of relationship and widening of the gap between middleclass and the wealthy. The wealthy, who are no less other-directed in their values, share the growing ignorance of artful expression and rather than patronizing artistic talent in the culture, have made the art of previous generations into high-priced artifacts and they fill their homes and lives with luxury versions of kitsch enjoyed by the middleclass and wished for by the poor. Every class in America sees quality of life diminishing and are as much affected by greenhouse gasses and murderous pseudocommandos.

Novelist, George Orwell, imagined the world we now inhabit but he missed the affect of technological improvements to mass media. He didn’t see the advent of massive multi-player videogames, nor that pornography on the internet, rather than theaters equipped with sexual stimulation would provide virtual relationship. He observed the rise of the police state in totalitarian regimes and didn’t see it would result under representative government simply because policing is ineffective in large populations of other-directed, generally artless personalities that get their values from porno and videogames. Nor could Franz Kafka have imagined the horror suffered by the Mayfield family nor the Waco massacre, nor the surreal litany of daily events described in mainstream media.

With a huge population of other-directed personalities getting their values from media, you’d think that somewhere, someone might be giving some thought to this but since the media is based on priorities of commercial enterprise, in fact, public access to information and to guiding the values of increasingly other-directed personalities is wholly dependent on the priorities of those who own mainstream media. Over the last five decades, ways in which control is exercised has grown more refined such that the political relevance of artistic expression has been emasculated in mass media.

Liberal Americans that mock evangelical creationists for their beliefs, view cinema, videogames, internet porno and TV programs as merely hedonistic distractions. Most people that would mount the barricades about content they feel is politically incorrect ignore the way politically correct content guides their values. The artist is a poet who works in nonverbal media. We grasp the significance of poetry and distinguish the banal from the poetic but have come to view media with a different standard. Banal poetry is considered to be without grace or redeeming value. Banal media, even though it inculcates questionable values is thought to be harmless, while it is dangerous.

At times I have questioned the moral, ethical and philosophic underpinnings of the work we do in the media industry and how it justifies terrible events in the world we live in and the human condition.

When I was younger, I regarded the consideration of such issues frivolous, idealistic and unrealistic. Now that I have traveled and lived among many different people in a variety of cultures, listened to their stories and their hearts, felt their pain and joy, I have come to realize that the cynicism of my youth was but a ploy to hide an ignorance I couldn’t admit for pride and knowledge that I couldn’t admit because it is in conflict with decisions to serve my ambition or simply, making money. When I look back I see I have always had an artistic credo but I misjudged its value and how it affects the way I see things.

I didn’t become a celebrated icon of the industry by choice. Now, however, I feel my work in media may be important. Re-engaging in formal education late in life breaks up the crust of beliefs and brittle walls of decisions, views, fears and ambitions that limit creative thinking and imagination at a time in life when I feel I have never been more free, accepting, interested and open-minded, with everything to gain. Below, I’ve written a brief description explaining it’s relevance and importance to us, followed by my artistic credo:

Observations from history:

Media defines cultural values and much that happens around us is influenced by media and probably wouldn’t have happened but for mass media.

Stresses in communities of alienated, disconnected individuals and groups have been blamed on a culture of constant random relocation, a feature of our lives not typical of the environment in which human dna defined qualities of our social nature that distinguish human from other species most, qualities that take advantage of bonding and relationship.

When a strategy of independent entrepreneurs, following economic opportunity was formalized into a federal constitution that codifies the rights of entrepreneurial ambition the result was genocide, slavery and following the civilizing charters of state and local fiefdoms and more laws and institutions managing procedures through which power is sanctified, protected and exercised, great engines of industry and commerce have led to huge urban populations along with technology to support mobility, all absent the sense of relationship over generations that is needed in human nature and the experience of alienation became increasingly stressful and the source of violence and criminality.

Promoting wealth over all other values and not atheism has uprooted families and destroyed communities. The effect can be seen in small towns all over America where temporary economic booms were followed by depression and decay as newer generations moved on to find work elsewhere. Moving the Smiths and Kowalski’s to the Dakotas to find work fracking for gas, not illegal immigration, has splintered our culture by throwing generations to the four corners of the earth, resulting in populations of people everywhere that are more related to fictional characters they watch on TV than they are to each other.

Alexis de Tocqueville commented on the effect of this on Americans in Democracy in America in 1840 and in 1956, David Reisman described the current situation in The Lonely Crowd. Arthur Miller’s Death of A Salesman dramatized it but though we could see and feel the alienating process of our way of life, it was not possible to observe the connection to a political structure because criticizing it had been made sacrosanct and in some ways, actually illegal. We say we live in a secular state but unwittingly our Constitution has become the bible of a state religion. To believe in our government is to worship democracy. To worship democracy is to invest it with spiritual, religious values.

Mass media promotes and proselytizes personal values and worship of the state, ranging from respect for measures of affluence associated with advertised products and activities to admiration of military symbols and service. Interactive mass media creates illusions of virtual bonds of affection and trust modeled on real relationships but they have less benefit for the psychology of personal happiness than traditional literature. We have increasingly relied on mood-altering drugs to attenuate the pain of alienation but the negative side effects of alcohol and drug addiction led to suppression, resulting in illegal markets addressed by policing and millions in prisons, producing further alienation.

Does an artist address the suffering of alienation or only the alienation that affects him?

On week days, I read news reports from the BBC, Guardian and Independent and often follow up reading stories of particular interest in other publications that present views of various biases: parochial, critical and technical. I stay current but I also read and study history, all the sciences and culture, including literature and music. Leaves little time for TV or web-surfing since I must write, compose and exercise.

Increasingly, our culture seems more like a battleground than a community. This piques my interest in how we educate people in the media industry since art defines our culture. Arguably, if we in media are only concerned with learning the craft of production, content is someone else’s job but in the language of any medium, content is form and form, content—why we are critical of portrayals of ethnic, racial and other stereotypes.

According to forensic psychologists who studied interviews with mass murderers that went to trial, they are a product of alienation. The psychologists call this response, the pseudocommando, a military reference. Pseudocommando incidents are reported at an alarming rate in America. In affect they look similar to acts of violence involving factions in the Middle East, Africa, Malaysia, India and South Asia in that they indiscriminately attack people associated with officials and their own mainstream culture. We characterize these acts differently in media.

Individuals here are called murderers. Groups who are guilty of the same crime elsewhere are called, terrorists, unless they are employees of our government or an ally, in which case, they are commandos. Media promulgates these distinctions, so we know media is effective. The distinctions haven’t transformed the culture of the community, nor do they address alienation that is the root of violence.

Yesterday, a young man was involved in an armed stand-off with police at a nearby town. He is described as a “video-game-playing-loner”. A week earlier, grievances of a police officer, who had been trained by police and military to respond violently, were described in news media as a “manifesto”, a term that describes political ideologies of “terrorists”. I am neither a social scientist nor a psychologist but I know such nuances of interpretation in media define and transform cultural values.

As a media artist, it is my duty to know about and be responsible for my promulgations.
I find that working in narrative, music and any other art form, I use an intuitive process as a palette and a linear process as the brush. I can’t shut off my intuitive experience of the world and so it comes at me through my senses at full volume, yet I create only from my imagination. Openness to the world is not a mistake, just an approach to observation, the result is an ability to reflect, define and transform cultural values, not by logic, nor rationalization but by illumination that nourishes, validates and empowers something:

CREDO:

A Cherokee chief counseled his grandson, “A terrible fight goes on inside me between two wolves. One is evil—he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, self-pity, arrogance, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self doubt and ego. The other is good—he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, love, hope, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith. This same fight goes on inside you and everyone.” “Which one will win?” the boy asked him. “The one you feed.”

(This essay is an application of David Reisman’s analyses in The Lonely Crowd and Faces in The Crowd.)

“We pretend no liability for future risks because we’re comfortable knowing we won’t have to pay for them and we allow development without regard for consequences. This view underlies the economics of industrial urban societies.”

The hero stands on the old high wall of the ancient city, speaking to the gathered multitude, who have come there with their hopes and dreams. More about them later, you know who you are.

“It is supported, not only by the rewards of distributed profits for those engaged in damaging enterprises, but also by propaganda that instills values at an early age that equate peer approval with material symbols of economic power. Some choose between starving or taking the only employment available, while others have the temporary illusion of success by choosing employment that allows them to acquire trappings of success: things and relationships based on values they’ve internalized from advertising, video games, narratives. Yet, besides these middle classes, there are countless others without even these choices: those who can’t spare a thought to virtue; little more to life.”

The mainstream personality is today a product of ubiquitous public education in the United States. Social scientists have produced studies that show not only that people today are driven to feel they must survive economically, but also, they must be able to afford to consume things as promoted in media narratives and ads. To feel successful, the industrial urban man or woman anywhere on the globe must be able to display material symbols of power but to act or speak powerfully requires discretion. The mainstream personality type is discrete and though not defined by traditional values as they were in the 19th century, they may only be characteristically revolutionary: Don Quixote, not Ché Guevara.

We mainstream people are Buddhists, Confucian, Christian, Islamic or Humanistic or even engaged in fringe cultures, S&M or evangelical creationism. We are interchangeable in terms of lifestyle and economic choices, equally led by material ambition, whether sex-workers, communication consultants, bankers, engineers, priests or rabbis. We may espouse progressive or liberal, authoritarian or democratic political views, but our lifestyle reflects subordination of inconvenient ideas about environmental stewardship whenever in conflict with material needs, ambitions and fears of loss.

Consuming permeates mainstream culture everywhere. The more self-willed and autonomous are more likely to develop antipathy toward environmentally negligent activities but they are also less likely to carry placards or be activists within a system they may see as absurd. On the other hand, a self-willed, anti-establishment sex-positive person could be just as compelled to material ambition and just as likely to ignore negative impacts of their lifestyle choices, while seeing themselves as anti-establishment. Whether on the fringe or in the center, self-willing or more externally influenced people must equally come to terms with the fact that they are surrounded by people who are self-destructive in their environmental views, guided by desire for peer approval while seeing themselves as conscious and responsible.

Mainstream personality types, who must depend on media to determine their values, are confused when values are inconsistent with their own logic, more so as they age and learn that they are “in the way”. Some, who are frustrated early on by the dichotomy of choosing while not choosing, consult doctors who prescribe medication that attenuates emotional responses, and many others drink alcohol or use marijuana and street opiates and as time goes on, they attribute their predicament to those choices, having forgotten entirely the stress that initially induced them to become users.

Externally directed people, who are comfortable in authoritarian societies and uncomfortable with autonomous freedom, frequently join small social groups–like street gangs and service clubs, and many of them are also drawn to join larger sub-cultural groups that share common values, such as, the law enforcement officers’ professional associations, Scientology and other demi-religious sects. In a more general way, they may identify with sport franchises and their counterparts in the worlds of popular music and video games. In each case, they seek to limit their personal exposure to external direction to specific adopted views and values.

Whether the individual is more self-willing and autonomous or more influenced in their choices by peers, ads and trends, the cost of escaping from the responsibilities of freedom for individuals is a diminution of the capacity for experience with a correlated insulation from nature and reduced quality of intimate connection with others, including members of their own families. While they are certainly not zombies in the classic, physical sense, at the end of the day, based on their actions, their experience of life is somewhat like that of a zombie.

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Definitions:

1) Environmentalism is the oldest and maybe the only unorganized religion.
2) A “pope” is a function of an organized religion, assigned by a plutocracy to one of their members.
3) The primary papal function is to personify patriarchal authority. (Institutionalized authoritarian sexism.)

The Republican Party, for instance, is an organized religion, as is Catholicism, Islam and Judaism, etc. This article is not about differences between such sects, nor any other sects or cults, nor is it about any of their belief systems, myths and administrative organizations past and future. A few are mentioned only to help define how and why environmentalism is the only unorganized religion that has been shared over millennia by millions in a multitude of unconnected cultures–and why this should concern us now.

(Nor is this article neither a paean to environmentalism nor argument for unorganized vs. organized religions, nor is it arguing against our giving religious organizations economic advantages of tax exemption that governmental organizations enjoy even though they compete with other types of organizations for the vital resources, markets, material and intellectual property of the culture. This article is about personality in American (and potentially, global) culture and how and why our culture has become increasingly prone to massacres by a type of personality, which psychologists are calling, “pseudocommando”.

The difference between organized and unorganized religion is primarily, economic and secondarily, political. Examining this issue is important because, through it, we can reduce the violence and unless we come to terms with it, mass murders by both pseudocommandos and members of police forces are likely grow more common. The NRA slogan, “guns don’t kill, people do”, while correct, is irrelevant to the issue of gun control, however, the inability of mainstream media and leadership of religious organizations to comment on the “why” of the NRA’s statement, “people do”, is astonishing, even though killers on trial and in their writing, which police like to label, “manifestos,” explain it well enough, as have the experts that are assigned by courts of law to report on the thinking of mass murderers that were recently brought to trial. What is the connection between belief systems and mass murder?)

Background:

Proponents of democracy accept the fact that corruption makes democracy into mob rule and at the local level, plutocracies are led by undemocratic relationships. We gloss over the fact that the leadership as well as rank and file of powerful police and other important organizations are by and large unable to read a text like this one, much less make sense of it. They may be awed by intelligence, erudition and intellectual ability but they really do not understand it’s value. Even though sending their children to university, they have no knowledge of nor do they respect education. They are likely to feel uncomfortable about seeing something familiar about themselves in the personality of the pseudocommando and don’t understand it. “There but for the grace of god, go [they].” In this state of confusion, they are prey to proselytizers of religious belief systems; such as, Catholicism, Creationism, Scientology, and so on.

Above all, they can’t connect the dots between environmental stewardship, emotional health and spiritual commitment. They would consider each of these ideas separate and irrelevant. Nor are they amenable to rational explanations of why they are relevant, which is why attempts by documentarians like Gore, Moore and Burns consistently fail to reach them. They are not vulnerable to persuasion and the rigidity of the belief systems of organized religions solidifies their immunity to rationality.

Caliphs of 8th century Iberia were inclusive of all religious organizations that had a written text. The Christian conquerors, from whom modern Americans of wasp and Euro-Latin ancestry are descended, were pickier about religious texts and absolutely intolerant of those whose religions differed from the Christian text they favored. Above all, Christians didn’t comprehend nor could they abide environmentalists. Pogroms were conducted to rid the world of believers of other faiths in general but those who worshiped nature were/are regarded as sub-human, animal species that have no soul, a view that justified enslaving people in cultures with tribal social organization with relatively small populations using less sophisticated technology and rhetoric.

The first Supreme Court of the State of California (1850), which was constituted of and by white men raised in Protestant families, ruled that native people had no rights to life or property since such things were accorded to human beings by the United States Constitution and natives were by definition, not human beings. Needless to say, “frontiersmen”, who were encouraged to populate the West, continued to view natives and their descendants in this way long after the courts and legislatures amended legal decisions in response to civil rights movements after the right to vote was extended to “ordinary” citizens, women and “emancipated” slaves, etc. Currently, there are an estimated 10 to 30 million permanent residents of the United States, most of them descendants of pre-Colombian residents, who are not permitted to vote or hold office.

(Note: Since democracy in the United States was originally hypocritical and is now dysfunctional, voting isn’t of pressing interest to many in America but especially not of great importance to those who are denied the opportunity because they are not bonafide citizens. To the contrary the denial of suffrage has a psychological benefit, since the “undocumented” immigrants needn’t feel concerned nor responsible for decisions made by local, state or federal government ostensibly on their behalf or in their name and since the government is de facto owned by special interests that fund campaigns, they have less to gain from documentation and may have much to lose.)

History books and media used in public education, colleges and universities in America, although they blush about massacres and forced-march displacement of entire native communities and decimation of most of the aboriginal population due to exposure to diseases imported from Europe, to this day continue to repeat the rhetoric justifying European occupation of stolen lands, theft of water and other resources and economic exploitation of natives for slave labor, describing this as the “founding of democracy”. Thus, the prejudice is still with us–in practice. In practice, the person of native or African descent must prove their humanity even when they have declared a Christian faith. More devastating, however, is the way in which the descendants of the conquered people developed a bias against and fear of their own language, styles, genetic forms and culture.

It is salient that victims of European aggression everywhere in the world during the last five centuries were not destroyed and enslaved explicitly on account of their beliefs, however, this difference between the Euro-conqueror and the conquered was always an important and critical political justification because it allows perpetrators the comfort of empathic distance, they can kill a child as comfortably as a fish or lamb.

The prevalent spiritual beliefs of American native nations is a form of nature worship akin to environmentalism. Naturally, these people didn’t consider themselves to be environmentalists. How could they since they couldn’t conceive of any kind of belief system that didn’t recognize the supremacy of nature, which would be the polar opposite. Now, as it turns out, environmentalism is the only spiritual glue that has the potential to unite humanity in common cause simply because it is indiscriminately inclusive. We are what we eat. Human DNA is identical throughout global populations. Variations that distinguish populations from each other are not unlike variations between individuals within any coherent population group. Moreover, human DNA includes components of all other carbon life forms on the planet. Not long ago, all human cultures were parts of balanced ecosystems.

Religions that place rhetorical values higher than environmental values developed in contexts that needed to justify destruction and exploitation of forms of life, including human beings, who were defined by political sects as “others” and rhetorically, sub-human. In DNA there’s no way to distinguish a Mormon from a Toltec yet all sects: Mormon, Islam, Judaic, Christian and so on, are based on imagined differences that can be politically exploited. It is ironic that the catastrophe European civilization must now face stems from the difficulty of addressing critical environmental problems because of conflicts between perceived yet imaginary differences of cultures–we are divided, confused and stopped by inherently irrational contradictions.

As a result, we can’t trust anyone’s commitment to principles we share, we can’t even trust our own under all circumstances. Obviously, we capitulate to survive, under torture, or the torturous feeling when the mortgage payment is three month’s late or when you can’t make the rent or want a woman or man to look up to you. Mostly, the torture is in the form of anxiety because it is a constant, nagging source of discomfort. It is relieved for periods associated with receiving or using money or things that money can buy and by having what you believe money can attract, such as a symbol of “approval by peers”, like a car of the right mark or even more commonly, “avoiding disapproval by peers”. However, in America (unlike people in European nations, who enjoy an economic safety net), we are always at risk of poverty, which is an implicit denouncement for failure. To say someone is poor or without means carries the weight of disapproval of their value and importance and as it turns out, just aging connotes a similar failure. Does this capitulation define an American personality type?

So, I wondered about the heron in terms of the definitions of personality types offered by sociologists reflecting cultural approaches to the relationship of self and environment. The heron’s activities are partly directed by tradition, it appears to recognize differences between similar things based on its experience with them as we do though I’ve seen no reason to think it is self-reflective. My values, and the choices to which they lead, are also partly traditional—in music for instance. In addition, these choices are also led by needs for resolution of anxiety about money—I feel I don’t quite have enough right now.

Sociologists in the 1950s included among descriptions of common American personality types, one whose values are primarily directed by others. This was called the other-directed person, whose values would flexibly adapt to those of peers, often in response to media. They defined two other common types, which they found less typical of American subjects they studied using surveys, interviews and various personality typing questionnaires. One they call “inner-directed” or sometimes, “self-directed” or autonomous, by which they meant a person who was less flexible, self-determined values, less likely to be persuaded by media and peers and the third they called, the “tradition-directed” person valued that which was traditional in the culture in which they were raised as children.

Americans, throughout the world, are known for cupidity, which isn’t to say that cupidity is not a trait of many in England, France, Scandinavia, Russia and Mali, etc. nor that there aren’t examples of stupidity and ignorance in such places as well, but just that Americans are known for believing that they are inner-directed and for believing that they are the authors of their own desires, when they are the puppets of aspirations they learn from popular media. Moreover, despite their obvious addiction to desire-shaping media they are so used to thinking their desires are authentically their own that, even while watching a video that they rationally admit is influencing their views, they will state and feel that their choices were freely made. This is a style of cupidity that astonishes people elsewhere in the world.

So, unlike the heron, I see myself both like the heron and not. Some of my desires are shaped in genetic code, not inner directed but given by my physical nature, not unlike the heron. Some of my desires are traditional in my culture—I wear clothing in public and feel good about being seen in a good light, for instance, I have a taste for well-made equipment and feel important when driving an expensive car. Some of my desires stem from my need for approval, a Pulitzer, even in the form of a check; I am other-directed but since I am an artist first, I am compelled by inner, autonomous values as well and perhaps, less like most Americans, I am inner-directed.

Chinese people I’ve met and seen in the media appear to be generally Tradition/Other-Directed souls to an extreme I don’t find typical among Americans, not even rabid fundamentalists. Confucius understood that the big problem is sorting out the self. You can only say what a self was or what it may become because self is a dynamic experienced in the moment, it does not exist over time. Buddha noticed this. You can’t simultaneously measure mass and velocity. You may only predict a future location or describe where you were. For centuries, the Chinese system of personalities directed by tradition and others allowed the growth of a substantial population. A similar concept supported this growth in India. In both cases, environmentalists have been anathema, and still are.

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Great heron on the edge of a floating dock that’s been slowly breaking away from it’s mooring piers along Rose Creek where it enters Mission Bay. The dock broke loose early on during the storm that began Thursday. It’s now like an inaccessible bridge, which seems an accurate thing to say about most development (despite the hype and occasionally, nice views) in California but in this case, the renegade dock that is part of a potential bridge inspires a connection between me and the heron and myself and you.

Less costly removable infrastructure makes sense when success is measured in terms of useful product output rather than dollar value of real estate.

Why not develop communities as temporary accommodation of human activities instead of building things that must stand up to extreme natural forces? Mortgages and inheritance anchored by real estate value has been skewing the priorities of development where title to property is insured.

In the Netherlands, architects are building islands of styrene upon which, infrastructure and buildings of an entire city can be constructed, undisturbed by fluctuations in the height of the sea and obtaining energy from effects of temperature differentials between atmosphere and the water. In such an arrangement, the individual owns only the right to use a volume of habitable or usable space. This way of thinking is traditional in the Netherlands, where language, parents and schools internalize values of interdependence and lifestyles reflect them. This tradition notably hasn’t prevented the excesses elsewhere in the world of Dutch Shell, the East India Company and South African colonization. There are environmentalists in Holland but it isn’t the national religion as it was for the nations conquered by Dutch entrepreneurs that came to the American continent prior to the 16th century.

Why not see development as only to accommodate and reflect seasonal rather than permanent changes, including medical facilities, parks, roads, and all kinds of structures? The difference between living in the Netherlands and living in California is that the question, “do you care about the environment?” comes up here when you have to choose between staying alive in an economic sense and acting responsibly towards the ecosystem. People in Holland are economically secure. People here that are now flocking to frack the headwaters of the Ohio, Missouri and Mississippi rivers, from Montana to the Great Lakes are leaving sunnier, warmer places to go to North Dakota because there is no other work that will support their families with medical benefits and lifestyles that have been promoted in homes, schools and media for three generations. They identify their selves with those styles and choices, sociologists would say they are directed by them.

At a time, when the ancestors of most people now living were groping in the soil for wild tuber and communicating with each other in syllables as complicated as the grunts of the boars, which in many cases, they most resembled in their behavior towards each other, and five centuries before the first known writing about the Hebraic messiah that is today called, Christ, Grecian intellectuals were writing and performing plays in which they wisely ascribed traits to deities that rationalized the otherwise insane chaos of the world at large and the behavior of human beings in particular.

You know the old saw, “there are no atheists in foxholes”? Well, I’ve been “in a foxhole” since I began this incarnation and I’ve thought about this and concluded that any deity worth the name must be given credit for not needing or heeding assistance from human kind. Even if you’re a died-in-the-wool, dedicated humanist or for that matter a Stalinist, raised in the godless Stazi-infected state of Eastern Germany, you must grant that if there is/was/were such a one, any ostensible deity must use some reasonable discernment in choosing whom to listen to among the millennia parade of human idiots, swine, bigots, morons, lawyers, thoughtless ignoramuses, schizophrenics, television producers and government clerks and so on. In respect of this and fairness, we shouldn’t want our god to have to stomach listening to much of what people have had to say.

The ancient Greeks were on to something that our era now lacks sight of, as a consequence of the political agendi of those who have historically made capital on political power of myths, be they Christian, Moslem, Hindu or whatever. As a species, we seem to have lost the wisdom unconcealed to those in ancient Greece and instead, we learn as children to try to make sense of something that is by nature, without sense, and in the presence of such a paradox, we make up the strangest things which to begin with is nonsense, as if, by saying the nonsensical over and over again, it becomes true, irrespective of the logic that nonsense plus nonsense is just more nonsense, ad infinitum and now, with advent of the internet, there is no end to it.

Living in a fox hole all my life, as I said, and with no reasonable expectation that this condition will change, since it certainly could have if it was going to, and therefore, without even the luxury of an atheist’s dogma in which to believe, I’ve decided that the best way to deal with god is to offer to the deity that which I would want for myself: something beautiful to hear and lovely to see and therefore, I am an artist. While, I do not demean the attempts of others to make art in their own way, no matter how different from my own, just in respect of god, I make a distinction between kitsch, or what some call, crap, and art. I do this simply out of respect for my audience.

I grew up in Camden (405 Kaign Avenue), my grandmother’s house and Philadelphia (3228 N. 15th Street) and I, too, love the Jersey shore.

As an older person, having witnessed over time many natural events, I am constantly amazed at development that seems to ignore or forget these things, building in flood plains and along the shorelines, where in my own memory weather, earthquakes and other events of predictable magnitude have demonstrated the risks.

Recently, I read in a compendium of articles written by Malcolm Gladwell for the New Yorker magazine about a principle called, Homeostasis of Risk. It appears that we learn to live with a degree of risk such that, for instance, when ABS brakes were deployed, the result was that people drove faster and the frequency of road accidents and fatalities remained constant, and in fact, only when perceived risk was higher do frequencies of “accidents” decrease. This definitely applies to development. The population increases, engineering technology for infrastructure advances and following a bell curve more or less, people take greater risks–regarding the probabilities of storm effects, etc. No way in hell do we have the infrastructure in Southern California, where I live, that could support critical needs of the border population in the event of a major storm, flood, earthquake or epidemic.

While my hands, heart and assets are available to assist those in need, I find it strange when actors pretending to be journalists expect us to take the media circus known as a presidential election seriously while the government spends billions on military efforts that are historically losers and a space program attempting to find signs of intelligent life elsewhere while unable to unambiguously define intelligent life, while in the meantime, pretending that accommodating economic growth in itself will deal with a burgeoning human population at risk of predictable natural and manmade disasters that must eventually be economically unsupportable. We see these things like Katrina, Sandy and Fukushima happening with increasing numbers and never establish economic reserves to deal with them while allowing those who profit from financing risk prone development based on risk analysis that places a dollar value on our lives. Dollar value of your life. Can you actually hear that? Dollar value of your life.

In a recent Scientific American, an engineer, who had predicted Sandy and all of its effects, described in terms of things people and communities are now suffering, concluded with the advice that the problem is that development in America is overseen locally by “home rule”, in which local politics and thus local developers determine how land is used. In California, this approach to land use planning is codified in the General Plan Law, which is typical of all states and is the only way development can occur. State and federal regulation attempts to set standards, however, when the taxpayer picks up the cost of disasters, local developers and the financial institutions that funded them are insured against the damages resulting from their ventures.

After I wrote about this in a book called, Architectronics, I attempted to see what could be done locally and I became a developer and learned that the problem is not solvable at the federal or state level since ALL politics is local and thus, there is no alternative to home rule. Regulations serve the purpose of setting the terms for taxpayer funded bailouts but do not prevent stupid development. At the moment, this kind of development is rampant in North Dakota, associated with fracking around the headwaters of primary water systems for the continent. Parts of Europe and Scandinavia present a better model for development where populations have learned that the only way to deal with the combination of homeostasis of risk and greed is to arbitrarily limit new opportunity since the title to open land is in the crown rather than a democratic state. Unfortunately, energy development is not so controlled and the amount of nuclear waste collecting around Europe surpasses all expectations and discussing this threatens the economy. China’s brown cloud is also now obscuring the European sun, the sea is rising to swamp the Netherlands and Venice and the issue of energy sources presents catastrophic risk.

Given that you will probably see more nuclear power plants developed in high risk areas and we are ignoring the issue of nuclear waste products and given Fukushima, Sandy and Katrina are the tip of the iceberg.

It is noble when unrelated people help each other when there are meltdowns but to continue to allow our governments and media to ignore the problem is to guaranty that future disasters will have greater impact–they simply must, as development driven by economic ambition puts even more people at greater risk.

Yes! Of course! Any person your age, who doesn’t pity and despise the human species just hasn’t been paying attention. Alternatively, I suppose they could be dimwitted or have dementia?

I wonder what it’s like when the Pope is suffering dementia? Reagan had Nancy at least. George W. was dumb as a stack of nines to begin with and Cheney did all his brain work anyway. Clinton liked to think with his dick. We lack good role models these days.

11:AM, merged my yellow convertible Tracker onto 405 South at Long Beach, gliding between southbound vehicles at 70-75mph through 4 lanes to center lane 100 yards behind a gold Toyota, adjusting the brim of a leather cowboy hat shading my eyes from hot, glaring, summer sun, check the rearview for CHP. Sounds of traffic and wind noise roar with occasional subsonic gusts, penetrated by low bass and treble sounds, when passing trucks.

Without audible change, a flash of fire engine red, inset, a hot yellow-orange flame sweeps from behind me into peripheral vision, sliding into the lane in front of me, while my circuits cycle about the sex of the driver. Shoulder length curls twisting in the breeze.

Undifferentiated tumbling sounds of wind and tires make me feel like the visual scene’s in slow motion as we hurtle down the highway at 80mph. Narcissistic man or sexy assertive female blowing me off in the convertible red Mustang GT500? Easing the accelerator down to 85, drifting through a gap to a lane opening up two ticks later downstream and, as if soundless, floating by, I see the woman, maybe 40, hotter than the Cobra she drives as cool as Kurt Busch at Richmond.

Having negotiated these freeways since forever, even with 25% of the power of her Cobra, my ’92 Geo passes, leaving her just behind every time she tries to take the lead—or is she flirting? Into Lake Forest, she puts her foot down, seconds later, she’s a mile ahead. I decide to let her know whose really boss, let Tracker have 85, then 90, taking advantage of every opportunity. Reaching the turn at Dana Point, her lead is ¼ mile, into San Clemente, 200 yards. Suddenly, a silent explosion of brown dust kicks up at the road side, just past Christianos. A patrol car fish-tails into traffic wildly as the CHP dives into traffic like an Osprey after it’s prey. The quarry wouldn’t be mine, not today.

There had to be a moment in the life of Howard Jarvis, when he said, probably first to himself, then to his family and friends, “I’m fed up [with the predatory actions of the public sector] and so began Prop 13, which put an end to endless property tax increases. No doubt such a moment occurred again when Gray Davis put forward a plan (no doubt a bright idea from the department of transportation), to triple automobile registration fees, leading to an I’m-Fed-Up inspired recall and election of the Terminator.

Not only do I’m-Fed-Up measures meet public acceptance at the ballot box, but also, they have a nudging effect on the population, inspiring them with hope by giving them an illusion of power stirred up by raging against the machine, raised fist salutes etc. However, when the result is money taken from the grasp of the bureaucracy, initiatives can do long term good.

On the ballot in San Diego now is another I’m-Fed-Up initiative, directed at the way public employee’s unions, public safety officers associations and the League of Cities (a name mis-used by the association of city management employees and elected officials—the lobby a Brown Act violation by definition) “encouraged” elected officials (who depend on public employees both for their endorsements in elections and to not screw things up and make them look bad), to hypothecate the general fund forever, to pay for extraordinary retirement benefits, while their constituents see no social security payment increases and the city ignores repairs to infrastructure. (This too shall pass.)

The root of the problem is that public sector employees hold trump cards in their ability to influence policy at a very low as well as higher levels of government, which shows up in every problem that ends up as an I’m-Fed-Up issue. This underlying issue could be addressed in a ballot measure to prevent endorsements by their associations but it would be difficult to police the internecine relationships between office holders and paid staff. The very need for this illustrates the moral/ethical conflicts. However, the voting public might at least obtain a seat at the negotiation table with other initiative ballot measures that could direct a laser beam on public sector parasitism: Ban the parking meters.

Ban them because the idea of municipalities renting space on public streets, a practice covered under the rubric, “parking meters” is a double tax since the public already pays for construction and maintenance of streets and highways. Charging to use them for the intended purposes: driving and parking ignores the fact that this wasn’t understood at the outset when the funds were approved for their development. Yet, while people would be outraged if they asked to pay for using freeways, they are not consulted about parking meters. The idea is someone other than you is paying but that is really nonsense since there isn’t an infinite total amount of money available to the economy. Take this money out of the reach of public predation by banning the practice. Let people spend their money on other things. Not only are meters double taxation, but also, they harm small businesses that can’t afford to provide parking lots as can chains and big box stores. Metered parking is not about parking limitation, it is a strategy for collecting money. (I wonder if Mr. DeMaio, who boasts of his support of the pension regulating measure, would dare stand up for voters against this far more predatory form of public larceny.)

Charges for parking violations could also be addressed by initiative as should the whole money making machine that traffic “infractions” has become, a poignant issue in view of global warming and fodder for yet another I’m-Fed-Up measure. There’s a reason when a metropolitan area the size of San Diego/Tijuana (total population now exceeding 6? million) between Rosarito and Camp Pendleton can’t muster the political will to organize a mobility system that frees those who wish it from their need for automobiles. (Putting aside the sociological and economic effects of severely constraining mobility in a large, spread out area.) The reason there has been no political will for a network of reliable, convenient public transit is not the influence of car dealers, oil companies, repair garages and insurance companies that benefit from automotive traffic, but much more important, the greater and more direct political influence of public sector employees—the traffic cops, courts, the private collection agency that partners with the courts with the sinister name, “Alliance”, red-light camera and parking meter companies and all the municipal employees who in various ways have their faces in this trough. Endorsement of candidates by peace officer’s associations, firemen and the like carries disproportionate weight with media and press and a gullible public is unwilling to admit that cops are just neighbors licensed to carry guns and are far from being saints. That’s another issue.

The world is now divided into two camps: those who have no jobs and can afford very little, who travel rarely, if ever, and are seldom seen on airliners or cruise ships or in taxi cabs, legitimate theaters and four star restaurants, have recently lost their homes or have never owned one, buy everything they need at Walmart, Food For Less and garage sales, and those who are receiving money each month from gainful employment, annuities or trust funds inheritance, who populate crowds at airline terminals, hotels and concerts, who shop at department stores, buy iPads, iPhones, hybrid cars and private vintage wines, pay mortgages or live in moderately priced apartments in the better neighborhoods, dine with fashionably-coifed friends on patios outside trendy restaurants and complain about toxicity of genetically modified food, cell phone radiation and municipal water supplies.

I lost it at Lindbergh field last night. The irony of that name reflects everything about the denouement of San Diego from a desirable place to live to Las Vegas by the sea. Every opportunity of graceful living in San Diego has been usurped for exploitation by tourism and in the process, transformed into something unlovely and false yet pricey. Meanwhile, middle class consumers in the thronging crowd attending departures and arrivals at the international airport mill around, like nervous cattle in chutes leading to the slaughter house, uttering an occasional moan of complaint but don’t really get it. Unlike their counterparts in rural places, those who live in places like southern California are oblivious to material conditions in which they live, nor that they would be far better off back in Tennessee, Milwaukee, Lincoln or the places in Viet Nam, the Philippines, Korea or Guatemala that they or their parents or grandparents left to come to the land of opportunity. Finally, as that opportunity is revealed as illusory, a trick to lure them into coming here to add to the volume of consumers, in places in the middle east, people are realizing that it is a better plan to overthrow regimes that suppress opportunity there rather than trying to find it elsewhere. Meanwhile, unawakened multitudes stand in queues to be hustled by other wage-earners into aluminum tubes, like cattle.

We gobble the idea of six degrees of separation like private label scotch whisky and ignore the malt upon which the theory rests, in this case that everything (every little thing) is in some way, intimately related.

Someone writes or tell us, “context is everything” and we nod like stoned sophomores but, when some idiot sprays bullets in packed movie theater, the focus of attention is all about the idiot’s face or his hair, how he dresses, his choice of weapon, affiliations, mental state, etc., and we ignore the context in which his act makes horrifying sense.

In this way, we assure it will happen again in a different place with a different murderer because the act was the product of the context and the individual that acts it out is merely coincidental.

It’s a far cry, as my mother and her mother before her would say, from a campsite in a forest on the northwestern edge of the new world to an overlook at the edge of the upper lake behind Padre Dam, an oasis in an otherwise arid locale known as Santee, the result of the refusal by citizens of the county of San Diego to drink the processed product of their liquid waste. With prideful words, if not heart, Mr. Skinner, the current director of Santee Lakes Recreational Campground, a private enterprise owned by the Padre Dam Municipal Wastewater Treatment facility, waxes eloquent about the potential clarity of water in the five manmade lakes, were it not, he tells me, for the presence of a lot of algae, a result of not quite sufficient aeration and the accumulation of chemicals that are not required to be removed in the treatment process for non-potable water.

Were it not for the presence of a thin belt of stucco, ranch style homes that the developers of the sewage treatment company were permitted to build on the periphery around the five small lakes, if you ignore the source of the water and the unnatural rectangular shape of the lakes, the panorama of brown hills, studded with scrub oak, habitat for snakes and rodents, substantial numbers of noisy coyotes, occasionally visible mountain lions, hawks and ravens, will fool you into thinking you are somewhere far distant from the thronging multitudes and traffic of the San Diego/Tijuana megalopolis. Were it not for cries of egrets and blue heron, you might think you’re in a terraformed habitat on Mars or Phoenix, Arizona.