False Facts

Very Dry

    Dewey will be rolling in his grave as he watches democracy attempt to raise banners against minds that relish the prospect of autocratic rule by a chosen few none of whom are anywhere near men of gold, they are closer to what Dewey, in one of his lighter moods might have called der geistig behinderte.  

   How can one old, old, weird looking yellow person cause so much damage. The answer is encapsulated thusly : "The ultimate gourmet treat is finally here......Freshly, handcrafted, fig and walnut bites." If you can't see the flaws you're what Dewey in one of his darker moods might have called Teil des Problems.

  Don't know about you, but I read the words and don't believe any of them. Why did anyone think anyone would believe them? Was it the illustration of a back to the 1950's man wearing dungarees, a straw hat on his head, sly eyes and pedophile facial hair who's pictured handling food and not wearing gloves.

   As a species we have always communicated through uncertainties., which is why Dewey called for an education system devoted to promoting reflexives Denken. More recently in our attempts to manipulate each other we have returned to communicating through Falsche Fakten.

Averages : Congress 59, General Public 39.

Sunrise and No Rain

   For those in our number who may be reading from an Alternative or Fake Sacred Text, the hard truth is that God  while welcoming the saintly, well behaved and obedient to the host did not allow Moses to lead his people into the promised land. They had to wait until Moses died at 120 years of age before Joshua, Sweeter than Lemon Squash-you-are, said "OK Chaps, let's stop all this aimless and mostly pointless wandering around carrying the old man's commandments and find somewhere to park the Arc of the Covenant." 

    To find out more let's talk The Iron Law of Oligarchy, with particular reference to this quote from Michels : "whoever says organization says oligarchy."

  Briefly stated, Robert Michels book Political Parties (published 1911), says this: "All complex organizations, even those founded by democratic beliefs, will eventually become oligarchies dominated by a small group of elites."

   Michels who was 60 in 1936 when he died in Rome, he was a German Italian, he cultivated less facial hair than Max Weber. Weber died when he was 56. Michels thinking, is classified as belonging to the Italian School of Elitism, he was a sociologist who specialized in criticizing, poking at and upsetting Intellectual Elites, kind of like Bishop Berkeley's contributions to the Enlightenment. 

  For your interest an Intellectual Elite is a collection of individuals who read the right books, went through the same training, acquired and continue to develop a group knowledge and more often they connect through specific academic circles, drinking clubs, second home ownership, journals, Aspen etc, and urban hubs.

   Michels insisted that just like schools of knowledge - such as the Dullards of Harvard, the fraternities of Cornell, the keys of Yale, the rowing club of Oxford and the spires of Cambridge - all organizations as well as Political Parties become Oligarchies. As in dominated by a small group of elites.

   Max Weber challenged Michels use of the words iron and law.  Weber argued that many organizations did indeed have a responsive relationship with leadership. You couldn't just say that all organizations become oligarchies, some were better than others. 

   Weber was about understanding society in terms of rational behaviors. Everyone had a similar rational response to work, to home, to play, to holidays and in Weberian circles there was a hope that if you could determine the patterns of these rationals then Bob was your Uncle.

   Michels saw organizations as Power structures. His thinking was very much in line with Disraeli who said "I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole" when, in February of 1868, the Queen confirmed him Prime Minster of Greater Britain. In the UK an unelected, disgustingly wealthy and scandal prone Monarch is the Head of State

    Disraeli, a One Nation Conservative was 75 when his party, the Tory Party, was defeated by the Liberal Party allowing William Ewart Gladstone to get his second chance to visit the Queen, where once again he'd get an opportunity to piss off her majesty by treating her as though she were a "public meeting." The Her Majesty in question was the German Queen Victoria who died when she was 81 of cerebral hemorrhage.)

    In short, here in the USA, if you're over seventy and are still clinging to power there's 98% chance you have outstayed your welcome -  Schumer (D) is 75. Grassley (R) is 93. Rogers (R) 88. There are 24 members of Congress who are over 80 and there are 120 members of Congress who are over 70. 

Supply and Demand

Aster Time

   With Economics it's almost as though wishfulness moves graphs. In economics the variables are endless, data is never absolute. It's the most fascinating of disciplines

  For example, you want prestigious, well paid work with something like the Hungarian Institute for International Affairs. It is or was a  government funded think tank, and is sometimes mistaken for the Danube Institute which has its headquarters on the site of an SS Casino in Budapest.

   One view of the Danube Institute runs this way : a post-liberal organization exploring and promoting the arguments against democratic elites by promoting the arguments for autocratic elites. 

  If we call them Post-Liberals our definition remains : Uneasy or fearful of Democracy. If we introduce autocrat to the mix of our thinking it's easy enough to think Neo Fascist Intellectuals.

   Not much further to go and we have the tragedy of an unquestioning Billionaire Worship. With that sort of autocracy coming down from the mountain starts happening demand stagnates and we're back to Castle Building, the Guild System and the Statute of Laborers of 1351.

  

Town Planning

Pirámides en Caral, Valle de Supe, Region Lima, Peru

   It's possible the Mayans referred to previous civilizations as previous humanities. And they might indeed have thought in terms of Humanities as representing a step above Savage and as such Humanities were to be represented by superior symbols.

   It would certainly make sense to see the influence of Sea People on the decline of the Bronze Age and the rise of the Iron Age as a movement from one Humanity to another Humanity. Here you'd have to think of a Humanity as a description of how we people arranged ourselves so that together we might be in the world as a Humanity, a collection of people, rather than a civilization.

  But no! Civilization is defined this way : a descriptive term for a specific type of large-scale, complex social and economic organization. The specifics are thus : urbanization, food surplus, division of labor, social stratification, record keeping, central government.

  The first recorded civilizations begin to appears 4 to 6,000 years ago. They include remains of towns and cities along Mesopotamian rivers, again along the Indus Valley, in South America, can't forget the Ancient Egyptians 5000 years ago, there's the sacred city of Caral on the coast of Peru and the Mayans of Central America who flourished and floundered from 2000 BC into 250 AD 

  As far as we know Humanities began to appear around 300,000 years ago.