Ishmael muses:
And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:
Another occasion for attachment. Alex and Adam won a Silver Baton at the DuPont-Columbia Journalism Awards Thursday evening. It’s a big deal, and they were in exceptional company. The award was for the prescient radio show they produced last May, “The Giant Pool of Money“, which did so much to de-mystify what was then being called “the sub-prime mortgage crisis” and has since morphed into the worst global economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. Adam and Alex were on the story early; they got it right, and they made it clear. The show has been downloaded more than half a million times and has generated more comment than any other show ever produced by This American Life. It led to the Planet Money project (podcast, blog, and regular radio segments produced for NPR and/or This American Life), and several other collaborations between Alex and Adam, each of which has received favorable reviews. Alex says this is a great time to be an economics journalist; we’re sure it’s going to get more and more interesting, and we hope the news that Alex and Adam will be covering gets better and better as Obama and his team take control. Alex, Adam, wonderful work! We are proud of you.
(Thanks to Adam’s dad for the photo.)
Ace was a handsome rabbit. He was large, as rabbits go, with erect ears and a lovely tri-tone coat: dark brown, lighter brown, and tan. Alex found him in the street outside his apartment, in Wicker Park, in Chicago, in the summer or fall of 2000. After trying in vain to find his owner, Alex kept him. Ace had free run of Alex’s apartment; he used his litter box faithfully, mostly, and once the electric and telephone cords were safely taped to the walls so that Ace couldn’t chew through them, he was not much trouble. When Alex moved to New York just after Thanksgiving in 2002, we kept Ace until Alex found a larger place. So we kept Ace, as we’ve kept so much – people, pets, opinions, stuff, the house we’ve lived in for the past 35 years – that we accepted without really thinking much, or took on just for a while, and then became attached to.
Ace was an unlikely object of attachment. Aside from his handsomeness, he had nothing much to commend him as a pet; not much in the way of curiosity, or friendliness, or personality. Rabbits are prey animals; as Alex observed, they behave as if anything that moves intends to eat them. Their bodies bend in just one plane, to move very fast in a straight line, and they are not at all sinuous, like a cat. Ace was cute, after his fashion; he lost his fearfulness enough to come to us when we came into his room, sit up on his haunches, and beg for a favorite treat: a styrofoam-like corn log. He’d take it gently in his teeth, drop to all fours, and promptly lose complete interest in us.
Still, we were attached to Ace, at least enough to get choked up and shed some tears when we had him euthanized this morning. Over just a couple of days, he stopped using his litter box, became drastically constipated, stopped eating and urinating, and lost control of one hind leg and one front leg. But his ears were erect to the end, and, as he sat trembling in the banana box in which we carried him to the vet, he appeared to relax as Joan scratched his forehead – the only physical attention he ever seemed to respond to. The vet assured us that the euthanasia was carried out painlessly, and asked us if we wanted Ace cremated and his ashes saved in a ceramic urn. We said, “No, we’ll just take the body home”, which seemed to surprise the vet, and which saved us $230. We received the carcass in a cardboard box, neatly taped up, and just a few hours ago, I gave Ace a proper burial in the dumpster behind the Brew House. I would be happy with a similar disposal of my carcass, but, alas, that won’t be an option for those left to handle the matter.
Ace’s passing has left me pondering. I’m leading a study group in the teachings of the Buddha, and one issue that’s caused a lot of discussion is the matter of karma and rebirth. If the Buddha was speaking literally and with true knowledge, as I think is likely, then Ace’s birth as a rabbit is likely the result of unwholesome karma by some divine or human being back in time – perhaps a person whose bullying behavior as a schoolboy resulted in rebirth as a fearful timid being in the animal realm. But as rabbit lives go, Ace’s was a fortunate one. He was never caged, never tormented, kept warm in the winter and moved to an air-conditioned room through the hot days of summer. And he lived a long life. He was probably nine years old when he died, and the vet told us that most domestic rabbits don’t live much past five or six. He was lively and, as far as we could tell, happy until just a few days ago. So there must have been some mitigating karma in the chain.
And the question then becomes, how does a fortunately born rabbit act with wholesome intention, so that, next time around, he might achieve an even more fortunate birth – move one or two steps up in the chain of beings? Was Ace, perhaps, less destructive than his animal instincts would lead him to be; did he intentionally not destroy the more valuable books on the lowest shelves of his room, or did he make a special effort to keep his stool in the litter box? Did the very slight affection he seemed to display for us demonstrate something like generosity and respect for beings closer to enlightenment than he was? I hope so; if there is some karmic principle that determines the luck of the draw, I hope that Ace has achieved a yet more fortunate birth, one that brings him closer to release from the dukkha that characterizes all samsaric existence.
There are all sorts of other thoughts that Ace’s death has set shimmering in my mind. One concerns that lingering attachment. It was clear, from the vet’s response to us, that we were demonstrating considerably more equanimity in the face of Ace’s imminent demise than most of the people she dealt with. She might even have found us a bit callous. But we shed tears. It’s clear that I am far from ready to abandon completely and without reserve my clinging to the things in this world in which I have found pleasure.
I had another thought, entirely political and non-buddhistic. In assenting to Ace’s euthanasia, I am convinced that we acted rightly and in the old rabbit’s best interests. Both law and the opinion of the multitude support us in that (although I am sure that there are those who would dissent). Now, why is it proper to help an animal, a pet, to evade the worst pangs of the dying process, but it is not proper to so so for a human being? Why may we not help a loved one to an easeful death, even with their conscious assent, even in response to their heartfelt pleading? Why are we are forced by law to prolong a painful and terminal process beyond all natural limits? Why must we maintain the pain of those who are dying and of those who love them? Why can’t we imagine a way to allow responsible euthanasia for those who have requested it, either in conscious pain or with foresight in advance of their inevitable decline?
Those are important questions, more important and more momentous than the question of why those who inherit my carcass can’t deposit it in the nearest dumpster or leave it in the woods for scavengers to transmute to fertilizing shit.
Now, returning one last time to those tears. Is it, in fact, Ace that I remain attached to, or did his passing stimulate tears in response to a much deeper and more karmically disastrous attachment? Let me close by quoting Gerard Manley Hopkin’s magical poem:
John Ennis knows Ken Blackwell; he’s made a feature-length documentary of our former Secretary of State’s devious (and successful) schemes to deliver Ohio to Dubya in 2004.
J. Kenneth Blackwell, the former Secretary of State of Ohio whose administration of the 2004 election made Katherine Harris look like Mary Tyler Moore, is aggressively pushing to become the next chair of the Republican National Committee when its 168 members convene in 2009 to figure out how to pull their party out of the deep, dank hole they have dug themselves into. And I for one support his selection wholeheartedly.
Ennis’s article details the many ways in which Ken exemplifies those qualities that sunk the GOP in November. He wishes Blackwell success in his drive to skipper that derelict vessel, and he concludes, “I think that most readers of Huffington Post will join me in supporting Ken Blackwell to lead the Republican Party to a dismal future. Indeed, his penchant for election fraud may be their only chance left.”
In a brilliant article in Vanity Fair, Nobel Prize Winning Economist Joseph E. Stiglitz gives us a remarkably clear and clear-headed review of the multiple bad decisions that have led us to our present mess, starting with Reagan’s decision to fire Paul Volcker from his position as Chairman of the Fed and replace him with the radically anti-regulation Ayn Rand worshipper Alan Greenspan.
Stiglitz lists five key mistakes, decisions that were made in the administrations of Reagan, Clinton and Dubya. Mistakes cascade – each bad decision makes it more difficult to undo the negative results of the last bad decision. So, Greenspan was the first mistake; Stiglitz points out that Greenspan presided over not one but two bubbles: the high-tech bubble of 2000-2001 and the subsequent housing bubble.
He [Greenspan] had many of the tools he needed to cope with the situation. To deal with the high-tech bubble, he could have increased margin requirements (the amount of cash people need to put down to buy stock). To deflate the housing bubble, he could have curbed predatory lending to low-income households and prohibited other insidious practices (the no-documentation—or “liar”—loans, the interest-only loans, and so on). This would have gone a long way toward protecting us. If he didn’t have the tools, he could have gone to Congress and asked for them.
Of course, the current problems with our financial system are not solely the result of bad lending. The banks have made mega-bets with one another through complicated instruments such as derivatives, credit-default swaps, and so forth. With these, one party pays another if certain events happen—for instance, if Bear Stearns goes bankrupt, or if the dollar soars. These instruments were originally created to help manage risk—but they can also be used to gamble. Thus, if you felt confident that the dollar was going to fall, you could make a big bet accordingly, and if the dollar indeed fell, your profits would soar. The problem is that, with this complicated intertwining of bets of great magnitude, no one could be sure of the financial position of anyone else—or even of one’s own position. Not surprisingly, the credit markets froze.
Greenspan ran the Fed through the course of the next three mistakes that Stiglitz identifies: the tearing down of the walls that separated commercial banks from investment banks and the consequent pressure on the commercial banks to take on riskier investments; the Bush Administration’s many actions that, in Stiglitz’s words, seemed to be based on the belief “that tax cuts, especially for upper-income Americans and corporations, were a cure-all for any economic disease—the modern-day equivalent of leeches”; and the breakdown, throughout the first decade of this century, of ratings agencies as adequate arbiters of the financial soundness of the companies they rated (and from whose ranks they came).
The final mistake was the bailout of the banks:
The original proposal by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a three-page document that would have provided $700 billion for the secretary to spend at his sole discretion, without oversight or judicial review, was an act of extraordinary arrogance. He sold the program as necessary to restore confidence. But it didn’t address the underlying reasons for the loss of confidence. The banks had made too many bad loans. There were big holes in their balance sheets. No one knew what was truth and what was fiction. The bailout package was like a massive transfusion to a patient suffering from internal bleeding—and nothing was being done about the source of the problem
The conclusion Stiglitz comes to is radical and, to my mind, right on:
The truth is most of the individual mistakes boil down to just one: a belief that markets are self-adjusting and that the role of government should be minimal. Looking back at that belief during hearings this fall on Capitol Hill, Alan Greenspan said out loud, “I have found a flaw.” Congressman Henry Waxman pushed him, responding, “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right; it was not working.” “Absolutely, precisely,” Greenspan said. The embrace by America—and much of the rest of the world—of this flawed economic philosophy made it inevitable that we would eventually arrive at the place we are today.
The article is not all that long, and Stiglitz’s majestic command of the facts and their implications make his story most convincing. Let’s hope that the Democratic majority has the good sense and that President-Elect Obama has the leadership skills to restore a role for government in the creation and maintenance of an economic system that will be equitable, transparent, and productive of widely shared prosperity and well-being.
Winter Solstice, that is. When it’s cold, and the days are short and grey, and any light presents itself as promise. Generosity enlightens, and for those of us who are puzzled and saddened by the dominance of exclusionist religious organizations in the press of charities soliciting our gifts, the list compiled by Techskeptic will be helpful. It’s titled “Atheist Charities”, but Techskeptic explains, “I am considering charities that do not promote a specific religion to be an atheist charity.” 
So The American Red Cross is on the list, as well as Doctors Without Borders, The Southern Poverty Law Center, Oxfam International, and a lot of other organizations whose work we read about in news accounts through the year but are liable to forget in this giving time. There are a few on the list that I’d known about but forgotten, like the Seva Foundation, and still others, like Population Connection and Mercy Corps, of which I’d never heard but which look to be doing really good work.
If you’re inclined to be generous at this time in the year when things are dark and this time in our history when troubles abound, this is a list that can stimulate that inclination and give it something worthwhile to incline toward.
Thanks to Pharyngula for the link.
“The color yellow exemplifies the warmth and nurturing quality of the sun, properties we as humans are naturally drawn to for reassurance,” explains Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute®. “Mimosa also speaks to enlightenment, as it is a hue that sparks imagination and innovation.”
Pantone has a lot of clout. The color in the box above is as close as I can come to Pantone’s “Mimosa”, and it’s is likely to be what you’ll be wearing next year. Assuming, that is, that you still have a job and there are still a few stores open.
A favorite technique of climate change deniers, free market fanatics, and generally cynical grumps is to trot out some factoid, learned long ago when things were different, or improperly understood all along, to refute the possibility of clean (or cleaner) energy: too expensive, impractical, won’t work. In this article from the Guardian, Chris Goodall has taken points from his new book “Ten Technologies to Save the Planet“, and provided simply understood and authoritative refutations of ten of the commonest “that’ll never work” arguments. Here’s something I’d not heard of, presented in the course of refuting the myth that “all proposed solutions to climate change need to be hi-tech”:
Biochar is an astonishing idea. Burning agricultural wastes in the absence of air leaves a charcoal composed of almost pure carbon, which can then be crushed and dug into the soil. Biochar is extremely stable and the carbon will stay in the soil unchanged for hundreds of years. The original agricultural wastes had captured CO2 from the air through the photosynthesis process; biochar is a low-tech way of sequestering carbon, effectively for ever. As importantly, biochar improves fertility in a wide variety of tropical soils. Beneficial micro-organisms seem to crowd into the pores of the small pieces of crushed charcoal.
Chris points out that low-cost stoves to produce biochar exist; a few million dollars marshalled in support of the groups making and distributing those stoves could increase the productivity of hundreds of millions of small farmers in desperately needy parts of the world, while extracting statistically significant quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere.
Harry’s blog is the Ragged Trousered Philosopher, and I’d not seen it until today. “A Division by Zero“, one of the blogs comprising Planet Atheism, pointed me to Harry’s tale:
I met god the other day.
I know what you’re thinking. How the hell did you know it was god?
Well, I’ll explain as we go along, but basically he convinced me by having all, and I do mean ALL, the answers. Every question I flung at him he batted back with a plausible and satisfactory answer. In the end, it was easier to accept that he was god than otherwise.
Which is odd, because I’m still an atheist and we even agree on that!
It all started on the 8.20 back from Paddington…
The conversation between Harry and God, who enters the car in the form of a 30-year-old white guy in jeans and a tee shirt, takes a number of totally unexpected turns. It’s moving, and funny, and wise, and enormously thought-provoking. I encourage you to read it.
Jim Kunstler, over at Clusterfuck Nation, takes a broad look today at the euphoria afflicting our national media, its alarming willingness to ignore “the reality of the threats we face, which are 1.) the loss of primary energy resources, 2.) the loss of technological potency, and 3.) the loss of a comfortable standard of living.” Kunstler credits the team behind the Financial Sense Newshour podcast with defining our current paradigm shift, and shows how we are desperately trying to find ways to get back to how it used to be: “even the greenest captains of environmentalism strive to find groovy new ways to run all our cars, while their counterparts on Wall Street strive desperately to salvage a set of ‘innovative’ financial rackets based on getting something for nothing.”
Kunstler makes a persuasive case that it’s not going to happen. Our future does not lie in recreating a failed past, but in a society based on the new reality:
Read Kunstler’s post for a cogent analysis of the realpolitik behind the current Georgia/Russia kerfuffle, and a wonderfully cynical (and realistic) look at the much heralded opening of the billion-customer Chinese marketplace to American manufacturing (GM) and retailing (Big Macs).
Every time I read one of Jim’s posts, I know that I should sell everything and put it into Euros in a Paypal account; if I’d done that the first time I thought I should, I’d be a lot wealthier now. And I probably won’t do it today either.