Some Perceived Realites of Modern Social Living

Everything I'm wearing is from somewhere else.

My shirt is from Hong Kong. My shoes were also made in China, as well as my undershirt and pants. My watch, in a slightly different vain, is from Switzerland and my belt is from Italy. I cannot see where my socks are from, but my boxers, surprisingly, hail from Israel.

Why was I ever okay with this?

It's like I've been waking up out of this very odd dream. Over the past few months, I've come to see our world in a new way. It's not an unfamiliar feeling. We usually see what we're looking for in life; perspectives are something of a collectible for me.

Yet, honestly, I don't want to wear my clothes anymore. I don't want to eat tomatoes picked by overworked illegal immigrants, or use furniture produced by robots that caused the downfall of a mid-western town, or wear clothes sewn by people who are essentially slaves in their own underdeveloped countries.

One of the facts that gnaws at me is this: we have enough resources now. We have, on this planet, a surplus of food, more than enough to feed everyone. I'm not saying that everyone should have an equal amount of food, I'm no longer advocating communism as I did in my heyday of idealism. I'm simply stating it as a fact. Now, in this era of humanity, we have enough food for the entire planet.

And let's just put to rest for a few seconds the conservative knee-jerk reaction to implore "Social/Economic Darwinism" to explain who gets resources. If we really, honestly, believed in that as a species (I'm not saying certain people don't, but just on the whole), we would not have a civilization complete with doctors, musicians, Christians, pro bono lawyers, etc. etc. They would all be dead, starved, or homeless. Oh. Hmm...

What am I getting at? A lot of amorphous things that are obviously easier to attack vaguely than sit down and try to solve. Hey, I'll be honest with you. But, more specificially, I'm attacking the corporate system, the multi-national, free trade (oh no...he's sounding like an ultra hipster socialist left-wing democratic baby eater) system that is endorsed by (and perhaps in control of ) our current form of "democratic" government.

So, what's so wrong with corporations, you ask? Don't corporations and the free market work hand in hand with democracy, like peanut butter and jelly? It was actually my first question, and my own assumption since I was old enough to understand anything about our economic-political system in the US today.

Nevertheless, I'll take the Lorenzo Valla approach (go ahead, take my snooty academic reference and look him up. He's an interesting guy) and mock my interrogators' silly questions.

No! Ha, you knave! How could you ever believe that a democractic/republic government-- which is based on principles of organizing an egalitarian society, where everyone's opinion gets a fair hearing in the forum and the most popular decision is chosen--could functionally operate with an economy based on the corporate model--a hierarchical (some would say, monarchic) system which is given many of the legal rights of a person, but due to its nature of masking the individuals involved, inherently lacks any civic-minded center!

Let's put it another way. Democracy/Republic: focus on society, how to function together in a society. Corporation: How to acquire resources with only a regard to other entities as financial assets or liabilities. The two systems have completely different ends! Democracy aims for community, corporations aim for financial gain. And although a citizen of a democracy may be greedy, the democracy is loathe to condone greed. One person's greed is not something everyone else will be happy about. Yet, that's exactly what a corporation represents to our democracy: a greedy person with only as much ethics and morals as are dictated by our government.

And, you know, if our government was not caught up in the tendrils of modern corporations, and honestly legislated some ethics for corporations (like Teddy Roosevelt did with his anti-trust crusades at the turn of the 20th century), then things might be okay. I mean, we legislate ethics for normal people (murder, theft, and rape are wrong ), so I have no problem with telling companies what not to do. But, right now, it's just not working.

I might say it yet another way. For those who may cling to Adam Smith, I steal this quote from a parphrase of the book When Corporations Rule the World, http://www.pcdf.org/corprule/betrayal.htm

"Corporate libertarians maintain that the market turns unrestrained greed into socially optimal outcomes. Smith would be outraged by those who attribute this idea to him. He was talking about small farmers and artisans trying to get the best price for their products to provide for themselves and their families. That is self-interest, not greed. Greed is a high-paid corporate executive firing 10,000 employees and then rewarding himself with a multimillion-dollar bonus for having saved the company so much money. Greed is what the economic system being constructed by the corporate libertarians encourages and rewards."

Sorry. Adam Smith does not support corporations in their current form. And that reminds me of another assumption worth challenging: a free market does necessarily have to evolve into the mega-corporate climate that exists now. Or, if it does, then THAT'S PRECISELY THE POINT OF HAVING A GOVERNMENT! Besides, corporations are, after all, a legal entity, endorsed by our government. Their rules are not set in stone. So, why can't we change the fundmental goals of corporations that isn't soley based on making profits for shareholders.

Let our government remind the market that a productive marketplace does not have McDonalds and Burger King straddling the corner of every intersection in America. It does not drive down prices of goods to such an extent that companies (which, remember, are inherently amoral, not immoral or evil, but simply without any moral compass) have to employ indiginous people who have no rights to bargain for wage standards or benefits and certainly no democratic system to appeal to!

Unless you're okay with all that. I'm not personally. And, although I'm not just ready to throw away all my clothes and start weaving my own...I honestly want to. I will probably not buy anything first-hand anymore, though. It feels wrong.

I'll just say it: If you, in you're heart, feel like nothing is going wrong right now, that's tantamount to endorsing slavery. Punto.

My next goal will be to find some ethically-made pants and how to brainstorm how this system will fall or evolve into something ethical.

The punchline: Right now, I'm working for a company that aspires to the heights of the Fortune 500 bigshots. E una battesimo del fuoco, certamente.

E, adesso, e possibile che io stia andando per i circoli dell'Inferno. Maybe purgatory is on the other side.

Big Wigs

This weekend was odd.

I wasn't planning on it being so odd, but then it just happened. I was invited to go "The Independent Florida Alligator Second Century Celebration," ringing in the first year of the next century of the Florida Alligator. Happy 101st, baby.

The scary thought, to me, is what The Alligator would look like should it be around in 100 years. If newspapers are around in 100 years, in any form recognizable to a current human, I would be shocked. But that's just me.

So, what, then, was this celebration? Fireworks? A ticker-tape Parade? Funfetti cake? To my dismay (especially regarding the Funfetti), no.

It was part-lecture, part-family reunion, part-lifetime achievement award ceremony, and part-networking party; a mesh that often felt awkward, but always good-intentioned. Some alumni spoke about The Alligator's historic and epic past, when it freed itself from the shackles of administrative slavery and gained independence. And that was pretty cool. Others spoke on their own work in their various professional fields, from online multimedia journalism to media law to their own accomplishments.

And what accomplished people they were! I had little idea that people who once worked in that cramped and wood-paneled office, went on to win Pulitzers, create global communications companies, and work for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes Magazine. It was pretty crazy to hear from big-name writers about their times smoking out on the roof of the newspaper building. But, of course, it was the 70s.

The event was long and monotonous at times. During the periods when I just couldn't concentrate, I thought about a lot: my potential future in journalism, if I fit the personality of these people who fight deadlines and passionately give 60+ hours a week to publish the news, if I even shared their values....

And I'm not really sure. But I did feel strangely more connected to The Alligator by the end of the day. It was clearly something worth respecting, worth working for and with, at least for a time.

I do worry though about the role of the journalist in the 21st century. Thirty years ago people wrote to affect change in their world--and they did. Reporters at The Alligator had Florida laws overtuned, butted heads with the administration, and went through a painful seperation from the university, all on principle.

Could anything like that happen now? Are any of us Generation-Yers not jaded and overstimulated by the continuous overflow of information to fight for one or two causes? (Aside from the Plaza of the Americas hipsters, who protested against Andrew Meyers tazering in the hundreds two days after it happened and then failed to show up for the policy forum this last week.)

I don't know. I'm not even sure I could.

So, if journalists and the news comes to us, the readers, and tells us of a horrible injustice, or a terrible corruption in the government, and we only think about it for five minutes...what good is the news? And how can we ever break away from the information superhighway to change anything at all?

This is thought that's bothering me now. But I cannot dwell on it for too long. I'm just too busy to care right now.

Long time, no blog

So, here we are...the week of my birthday. A little disappointing, really. 22...the beginning of the "old birthdays." Kind of a downer, in a way, but I usually don't look upon my birthday as this ultra special thing. Every day that I'm alive, unenslaved, can see something beautiful when I wake up, and learn or do something interesting is a complete and total miracle of the universe.

That my mother birthed me is a remarkable thing. But that the universe created a conscious entity purely based on the fundamental physical laws is something wholly more than remarkable--it's unspeakably unimaginable. But, alas, here we are.

I've got nothing to say, really. Nothing worth saying, so all this ultra-intellectual stuff is just philosophical philler (ha-ha, I'm a stinker). My life has been packed and compartamentalized, just like I told an old friend not to be. How tables have changed. But it's the only way I can operate: A third of my time is devoted to school--attendence in class, which I've been rather good about this semester, and avoidance of working ahead; a third to science writing for the alligator--which, with mixed happiness, seems to be almost working out; and an (unequal and smaller) third to my corporate sales job--which is so mind-bendingly opposite from what I think I should be doing, that it's only that odd sort of faith that I have in the universe that is keeping me going to that office. That and they're going to start paying me a small sum.

So, that all being said...I really think life is good. The busyness is good for me, it's how I always want it. The days are packed--for hopefully good things.

It's odd being a senior again. Feels nothing like it did the first time around. Well, not too much like it. There's that distinct, murky sensation when I think about the future, just like the way I felt before leaving high school. Yet, this time has attached to it a kind of fear about a precipice lurking in the murk, a sheer cliff that I'm being moved towards by the accelerating push of Time.

I am, of course, concerned that I'm not concerned like so many of my friends, about GREs and graduate schools. I'm thinking about all of this, of course, but in a different way. To be precise, I feel like I'm thinking about it, as opposed to the many people who are doing it reflexively as if the only option now is...whatever, grad school, med school, etc etc.

I will probably not be attending any such establishment immediately after my undergrad career. Not unless I'm given very good reason. And I'm sure I don't see any just yet.

Until next time.