The Compulsive Explainer

The Revolt Against the Modern World

The modern world was formed by a series of events in Northern Europe: the Reformation, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution - and it wouldn't be hard to add a few more. These can all be seen as developments in one long process: the building of the modern world - the most amazing development since the Greeks and the Romans.

We now live in a time when we are destroying this marvelous accomplishment - where we are returning to normal times: a highly stratified society with no interest in objective reality - only in our illusions. Where the individual is no longer important - only the organization. This last item is all-important, because everything was based on the development of the person - the human capital on which everything depended. It would be no exaggeration to say that people no longer exist, in any basic sense - only their social roles are recognized by themselves and others.

Just as in primitive societies, people who stand out are quickly knocked down - and the rich and powerful control everything. Ethics has been replaced by opportunism.

Amazing Grace in the Life of William Wilberforce

You Christians should go for this one - a Christian that really walked his talk.

William Wilberforce (1759 - 1833) was a British politician and philanthropist, and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. John Piper's biography of Wilberforce takes readers beyond his battle against slavery and explores the beliefs and motivations of this influential evangelical politician.

Put $4.40 in the offering plate!

The Long Decline of America

As I see it, America has been in decline for over a century. The evidence for this has been looking at me for some time, but I could not see it. Finally, it burst into my conscientious as a kind of revelation - but a revelation others are not likely to see.

I have been hearing about the multiverse for some time, and the two concepts seem to have jelled. The multiverse theory is from physics, and posits that there are many universes, more-or-less unknown to each other, but with some limited interaction between them. Each universe is structured differently, and the one we happen to live in is hospitable to life - not surprisingly. We seem to have chosen this one as our own, unaware of the rest. Or perhaps it is the other way around: our universe chose us.

It doesn't really matter, everything seems to be happening at the same time - the universe seems to be some kind of hologram, where everything affects everything else. Here again, before we discovered lasers and holograms, this kind of talk would have made no sense. We thought the universe was some kind of machine, as Newton did. Now we are not sure what it is, because 95% percent of it is composed of strange stuff: black matter and black energy, which is a mystery to us. I take this to be analogous to our human world, where we understand almost nothing about ourselves, and our global society - but are completely unaware of this ignorance.

In the same way, we are completely unaware of the long decline of America - and expend a huge amount of energy ignoring it. The parallel to the decline of the Roman Empire is instructive. The Empire wasted huge amounts of energy and material fighting wars all over the place - which, in retrospect, made no sense. What was going on in the minds of the Romans? We do not know, we can only guess - but it is clear they were not thinking very well, and did have well-thought-out overall goals. What was the Empire supposed to be for, what was it supposed to be doing? They never stopped to consider questions like these - but just rushed on to their doom. And the whole world suffered.

America is busy doing the same in one part of its multiverse: living out fantasies, while in another part the logic of decline is inexorably working. The two universes are unaware of each other.

Howard Hughes' Management Style

I got this story from a friend some time ago, I can't remember when, but it was probably one of the many Jewish friends I had when I was still working on the East Coast.

According to him, and I had no reason to doubt him, a young female relative of his functioned as a go-between between Howard Hughes and one of his companies. She would meet him late at night at a remote beach, with questions from the company. He would answer these, and come up with some questions of his own. Meanwhile, they were having sex - as often as he liked.

She had to leave her job, he said with some embarrassment, when she got married.

Based on what else I have heard about Howard Hughes, this story is probably true.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson made good living selling his mind and his personality. In this he was only equaled by Thoreau and Walt Whitman, all of the same century - when America was in many ways at its best. Our ability to listen has now been reduced to about three seconds. How many people would now pay to hear a lecture on Nature (1836):

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.

Can you imagine Emerson, who had a face that was too honest (like Abe Lincoln), saying this on television? Can you imagine anyone understanding him? Can you imagine any company sponsoring him? He would not sell many potato chips.

The Horrors of Trench Warfare

WWI is a long way behind us, and we have forgotten about it. But it pays to remember the horrors of war once in awhile, and there is no better way than to read, or listen to, Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves. The sheer idiocy and brutality of that conflict, which began the destruction of Western Civilization, a process which still continues, is beyond belief.

America is now stuck in a pattern of permanent war. The horror of war has turned into a fascination with it: a new form of entertainment.

Why there is so much homosexuality in England

I am now listening to Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves. Wikipedia has an entry about it.

Good-bye to All That is the autobiography of Robert Graves.^[1] First published in 1929, the work is a landmark anti-war memoir of life in the trenches during World War I. The title expresses Graves' disillusionment in the existence of traditional, stable values in European and English society. Graves first wrote the work in his thirties, when he had a long and eventful life ahead of him, and the book deals mainly with his childhood, youth and military service.

He devotes a large part of the book to his experiences of the First World War, where he gives a detailed description of trench warfare, including the tragic incompetence of the Battle of Loos. Many readers will be interested in his secondhand description of the killing of German prisoners of war by British, Canadian and Australian troops. Although he had not witnessed any incidents himself and knew of no large-scale massacres, he knew of a number of incidents where prisoners had been killed individually or in small groups, and he believed that a large proportion of Germans who surrendered never made it to prisoner-of-war camps.

Although this is an abridged version, it still spends ample time describing the horrible experiences of upper-class British schoolboys, who were taken from their families at a young age and sent to public schools, where conditions were brutal and the only escape was romantic relationships with other boys. This was encouraged by the headmasters, as long as it did not become too physical. As a glimpse into upper-class British life, it makes it clear how brittle it was: relationships with women, especially sexual relationships, were mostly formal. 

As a visitor to England in the Seventies, I was amazed at the amount of homosexuality. According to Graves, most of this homosexuality was learned, not innate.

I am a Successful Failure

I successfully evaded the collapse of America. I certainly did not plan this, I had no idea a collapse was going on. At one point, it looked like I would have to kill myself, because I was not employable, but that make me wake up and consider other possibilities.

This morning, it occurred to me that my history resembled that of a friend of mine in Silicon Valley. His family were German Jews. They did not take their Jewish identity or their German identity too seriously - and this enabled them to survive. When the Nazis came into power they simply moved to South America. When the war was over, and the German economy had recovered, they went back to Germany. As a result, my friend was tri-lingual: German, Spanish, and English. I knew a number of young people in Silicon Valley who were fluent in this combination. Their families had also gone with the flow: going where it was safest and where skilled people were needed. If their lives were weren't working in one country, they moved somewhere else.

I have urged some of my Silicon Valley friends to do something similar: to move to India and set up a software development business there - or in China. But they are horrified by the idea: they are too comfortable in America, and they are determined to stay on - as Obama says: stay the course, even if the course does not seem promising. That have not realized that America is collapsing - and they will not until it is too late. I have been fortunate: I was kicked unceremoniously out of the nest, and I had to fend for myself. They will struggle along, doing the best they can in a failing country, ignoring the obvious - and will end up nowhere.

How come I was so lucky? Because I have a strong sense of ethics. I couldn't put up with the unethical behavior in the high-tech world - and with its self-destructive behavior. And it couldn't put up with me either. If I could not conform, I could get out - which I did.

Fortunately, I had a safety net: my Social Security retirement benefits. These are not adequate for the States, but a handsome income down here - once you learn how to live as a local. This has also given me a new perspective on life in America: I can realize how lucky I am - and how unlucky America is. The Dollar is failing, but unless if fails completely, I will survive.

California was the Future of America

It shocks me to realize that this is no longer so. California is now a national disaster, hardly an example the rest of the country wants to follow.

I am reading Golden Dreams: California in an age of abundance 1950-1963, by Kevin Starr, and it has put me in a sober mood. I can remember when Beth and I, idealistic young people, followed our star and moved from New Jersey to California to find our fortune. What we found instead was insanity, a divorce, and then Beth's suicide.

This was dramatic, even for California, but not that unusual. I spent much of the day going over my life in California - and found to my surprise that it only consisted of thirty years - and, as of yesterday, I am 73 years old. Most of my life was spent elsewhere, but that part of my life does not seem as real as the California part, which stands out in stark relief.

The rest of the world should study what happened in California, so they won't Californicate their own countries - as Costa Rica is now doing.

But Ticos still think California is beautiful, and the best thing they can do is ally themselves as closely as they can with America and its fabulous wealth. But even here, it is beginning to dawn on them that America is in trouble, and they should develop other allies - such as China - which they are aggressively doing.

The Whole Process of Government Growing Remoter and Remoter

This is from They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer, pages 166, 167; a book about how the Germans experienced Nazism. I find the similarities to the present situation in America to be disturbing.
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What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security.

And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen the gap and reassured those who otherwise would have worried about it.

This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government getting remoter and remoter.
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The speaker was a philologist (one who studies languages), and he went on to explain how everyone was so busy, doing all the things they had to do, that they had no time to think about basic issues: such as whether the government was becoming totalitarian.

One had no time. Does that sound familiar? And, in addition, if you became alarmed, you are accused of becoming alarmist. 

Replace Hitler with Bush or Obama, and you have the same situation.

See Also:

Why the Germans Supported Nazism