A topic close to my heart, that human cooperation is key to survival, crops up again through the inestimable Russ Roberts, within the context of our use of narrative, our ancient history (including the use of cooperation to destroy other species, humanoid or otherwise) and other large sweeping topics of humanity, including money (although I think I would use the term currency) being a kind of collective myth, based on trust, currently a trust built on the narratives of the Treasury and Federal Reserve. Rich concepts intelligently discussed, ah … brain food.
But they serve up their narrative better than I ever could, and they don’t quite agree which always make the conversation more interesting:
Yuval Harari of Hebrew University and author of Sapiens talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the history of humanity. Topics discussed include the move from hunting and gathering to agriculture, the role of fiction in sustaining imagination, the nature of money, the impact of empires and the synergies between empires and science.
Yuval Harari on Sapiens
Enjoy, and I hope you have a lovely day, unless you have made other plans.
actually found some press coverage of the elections up there. there has been virtually no coverage in the USA “MSM” at all. i remembered though that you discussed it last week. so we are on a new topic, and i am going to post off topic again! but my promised rant is petering out anyway. i think i have reached the “acceptance” phase. yet better by far than denial.
topic looks interesting. i hope i can read the complete text though. the last one only went to the 29 minute mark. i won’t spend an hour listening. it is just not my preferred mode. i can read an hours worth of spoken word converted to text in 15 minutes or less. all of a sudden my time is worth something. 10 bucks an hour.
here is the article i found. it was to my surprise linked at the MSN homepage – which features almost exclusively corporate junk food for consumption by the brain dead.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/oct/19/canada-election-justin-trudeau-stephen-harper
good news. the frost Friday and Saturday night here didn’t kill everything. i still have some surviving garden plants, and most of my flowers. because of the El Niño weather pattern i probably will be making Pico de Gallo all the way into November. it isn’t supposed to drop below freezing again for maybe 3 weeks.
i checked the pod cast text and it is all there to the end. so i will get to reading that when the weather isn’t cooperating so nicely. it hit 77 (25 C) here today.
Good Morning. We just elected an expensive government. Darn, and our nice local guy lost to the red tide. I just hope it isn’t arrogant, inept, corrupt and expensive. But it will be. Ugh. I hoped for a minority, to keep the fake “I have a mandate” idea from polluting the new leader. I don’t like visionaries. ‘Nuff said.
Speaking of frost, and I am glad most of your plants survived, our two Gingko trees lost all their leaves yesterday, in one day. The world’s most convenient tree.
may Canada get even better mileage out of your “hope and change” populism. 7 years of Obama and still waiting here.
i thought yesterday about the saying “let them eat cake”. what we have in the USA today is similar, but more subtle. the strategy now is still to serve them up a shit sandwich, but keep insisting it’s actually cake. in every way, and every day.
i took some pictures yesterday of fall colors here, but now can’t load the pictures from my phone. Microsoft is trying to force me to buy a new computer and my resolve is waning.
well, maybe i will have some uplifting pictures of nature to post later.
And good morning again.
I wouldn’t trade our lackadaisical politics … our bench is sorry, but from Trump to Sanders it is a bleak American landscape. When Hillary Clinton [I think her last name should really be used more often … how many male politicians are known by their first name? None … which is why the Justin thing here was so galling as well as pointing to the misogyny of so many. Even Thatcher they tried to turn into Maggie. But short of Tricky Dicky I am pulling a blank on male political leaders known as “Doug” so to speak.] is possibly the best option you are in serious trouble.
and Paul Ryan will accept the Speakership. was that ever a big surprise! as if he’s not conservative enough for the teanuts.
an easy way to discredit him would be to showcase Ayn Rand’s real life dystopia, Paul Ryan’s hometown, Janesville. well excepting that the situation here, and across the mid-western USA was not caused by any sort of socialism.
but no one will touch it. no one in Washington represents their constituents anymore. why do i even bother commenting on it? a saying used to be “all politics are local”. if that were true today, Paul Ryan would be afraid to come home, because he would be met by an angry mob. but the fact that he isn’t reflects just as badly on the citizens as it does on the government. oh, and a gerrymandered district that makes Tennessee look like a cube.
by the way, speaking of local flavor… there are 5 old money Irish families here, including Paul Ryan’s clan. these families are referred to by the locals as the “Irish mafia”. now that GM has left town, the old power has returned in a big way. there are some new players, but the same old game. (ex. Diane Hendricks) money talks, “bullshit” walks. it’s free speech after all.
so good morning. i am going to go enjoy the weather. it’s still somewhat free.
rant off.
Oh we are in for a return to good old fashioned Liberal corruption … the party of the paper bags full of bills. Trudeau will fall right into the old-school Liberal machine, and owe favours everywhere. One of the problems with winning so many seats is you have a lot of ridings to favour and few to punish. But basically we vote the bums out every eight years or so, and now it is red, and then we will get sick of seeing them wallowing in the trough and vote the Conservatives back in. But isn’t he nauseating? He can get together with Obama and they can try to out hip each other. And his dad was a Jesuit with a great deal of scorn for the average Joe … it just won’t be pretty. But it won’t be as bad as people fear, of that I am pretty sure.
I think the tragedy of Janesville was made much worse by the nonsensical mothballing of the GM plant rather than closing it. The whole car industry rescue tossed on the back of the so-called financial crisis was a brutal scam. Government Motors … what could go wrong?
I got out and walked the dog and improved my mood … my pace has improved but I still feel I am stumping along … sort of one two three, one two three, instead of one two, one two. But definitely walking more and further. Hope you enjoy the great outdoors.
i don’t think any political party is more corrupt than the other, at least not in the USA. the democrats generally prevail in the cities, due to social issues, and also immigrants, and get the union votes, at least back when there were some, and these also were mostly urban votes. so the democrats have been tainted by a certain big city flavor of graft, as well as the union racket. the republicans have always been the party of big business, so they have tended to be motivated more by simple greed, by selling out to big corporate interests. neither party in modern times has represented the average Joe, and the USA has steadily gone to the right politically since 1980 as well. so surprisingly we now find ourselves with an eviscerated middle class.
the GM plant and grounds are in limbo to this very day. it is in a state of decay like the entire original riverfront/downtown of Janesville. there is no political will to save this city. the voters here have little money, therefore no political power. GM the corporation is gone, and so are all the union jobs. so neither political party really gives a rats ass what happens to this town. in Wisconsin, Janesville’s plight is now simply ignored. i suspect much the same situation prevails across the “heartland” of the USA.
people are more aware of what is happening than we think though. as my wife and i get out and talk to real people, we are surprised. everything you see on TV, read in the paper, hear on the radio, or find on the internet is spun. the lady at the grocery store today, not so much. and we are finding that to be the case more as we are trying to get more involved locally here. so it isn’t hopeless yet. but i am telling you one thing. that m.f. Obama really set this country back. there is nothing worse than getting peoples hopes up, and then crushing them. but the pity is that the republicans won’t even be able to capitalize on it since their party has been hijacked by a bunch of right wing assclowns. and that explains Sanders and Trump. Sanders is by far the better candidate than Hillary or Trump. you may not agree with his ideas, but he practices what he preaches. read that again, and let it sink in. and if you really listen to him, he actually is more true libertarian than any of the wing-nuts! but IMHO and all that.
yes, the weather here has been amazing. tomorrow i am making another batch of something – depends on what and how much i have left in the garden.
i can no longer upload pictures directly from my phone, so it is a pain in the ass now, since i have to e-mail them to myself. i have not changed a thing – same phone, same computer. it is Microsoft no longer supporting certain applications, since i still have Vista. i will not give in yet though. i just will try to take better, and only save the best photographs from now on.
not so much of a rant, but definitely pecking at those keys trying to keep up with my brain. but my unedited first draft style keeps me honest, even if crudely so. so forgive me for the ramble, if not the rant.
and i still intend to get around to reading this podcast.
Wish me luck. Off to see the new sports medicine doctor at Carleton University here about my original difficulties. Hope the new MRI was informative but hopes not very high, although I really liked the doctor who found this doctor for me, so some hope is springing.
And yes, I think the mothballed plant is like a living metaphor for the town, and that Pinter could write quite the play about Janesville. Sort of an Ice Man Cometh (I know, I think I switched authors) but where the pipe dreams aren’t those of the characters but have been imposed upon them by some cruel masters. And yes, one’s neighbours always belie the news don’t they? The one way boob tube has really emboldened the governing class, but I think to some extent social media will help bring them back down … much harder to get away with things for a long time these days. And I am very proud of you and unable to begin to speak of the wage you are accepting and had to beat out hundreds for the opportunity. Man oh man. Is second shift four to midnight? That sounds kind of doable. Certainly if third shift was midnight to eight …. I hope the robots behave. I saw a sign here on a new convenience store (they tore down the old and replaced it) and it said to email your resume … and I was really struck by how the world had changed that you would need a resume to work the counter at a gas station store, and need a computer to email it. I have a cousin who’s son became a manager at a gas station and they were really happy for him …. What a world.
i used to believe as you do that social media would level the playing field but am not so confidant anymore. for one thing, it is a poor substitute for face to face interaction. in my admittedly limited experience with FB for example, i have found that people are not very open and honest. i have heard the term “facebook perfect” used. people tend to portray a sanitized or even aggrandized version of their life online. this tends to happen even with out the help of ubiquitous “PR”… though we have been conditioned to attribute any financial hardship to our own failings.
the local paper in Janesville doesn’t even cover the economic situation honestly. one article i read recently described Janesville as a wonderful bedroom community. but to where? the closest city larger than Janesville is Madison, an hour commute from here, and not much bigger. they must mean Milwaukee, and Chicago, 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours. good grief. (but people are doing these commutes) there are no alternate local news sources available either on-line. so all one has are blogs like the one we used to post on, face plant, twitter, etc. and those conversations often are steered, to put it nicely. at the more popular sites, anyone that is open and honest, or should i say “real” is purposefully attacked. the goal is to discourage authentic first person accounts of life on “main street”. what happens, and what the goal is – to have everyone believe that their situation is unique, or due to bad luck, well if not their own fault. for everyone but you, everything is awesome. (a compartmentalization strategy) nothing new here, control the information, control the masses. always has been always will be. (or maybe not)
so i think that people need to get out and meet their neighbors. that is what i am trying to do more. grass roots just doesn’t work on the internet. it is completely fake, or at the very least managed.
so how many people in Janesville are going to read this? i’d be lucky if three local people ever see it. average Joes just don’t have much of a voice anymore on the internet.
but this is getting long, and i want to get outside.
so i will have an easy 2nd shift i suppose, 2-10, but a lot of Saturdays. a person needs the overtime just to make enough to pay the bills these days. it’s just reality. i am a morning person, so they won’t be getting the best of me, but that choice was not mine. the worst thing for me is that i will miss cooking dinners, and especially using the grill.
i said the same thing to my wife last week about computers – if you are not computer literate, and wired at home, you can’t get work now. most companies, including the one that just hired me, only accept on-line applications.
this is a mess, but i’d rather post my thoughts as is than come back later and clean this up. i never was much for “putting on airs” anyway. what a weird idiom.
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/put+on+airs
sorry for the ramble. see ya later.
hope you find something out today.
read some of the podcast so far and interpret that cooperation only works up to a certain group size, and then needs a little assistance. but these days, instead of deploying overt coercion, i’d say that further cooperation is encouraged more covertly using “public relations” methodology, and that Bernays would be very proud. but i only read a little, so maybe they will get to that topic themselves.
edit: the authors use of the descriptor “story telling” is not conceptually much different from what is meant by “PR”.
read the rest. nothing too profound or controversial. agree with author that we are better off as a society admitting that we will never know everything. also that people constantly make assumptions, but don’t realize that is what we’re doing (paraphrasing). and that capitalism works better than other systems, but has its warts. yup – the world is very grey. or is it gray? you’re up Xty.
I prefer grey.
back to grey.
i know that you know that i know you love it.