Jeremy Weiland

As a footnote to my last post, here's the choice Jeffrey Tucker leaves us with in his ringing defense of fast food:

Murray Rothbard used the phrase "do you hate the state?" to ferret out real from mild libertarians. As a correlative question, we might ask "do you love commerce?" to ferret out real defenders of real markets as versus those who just enjoy standing in moral judgement over the whole world as it really exists. Yes, I too am against corn subsides, and against all subsidies, as well as taxes, regulations, inflation, zoning, public roads and everything else. In a free market, everything would thrive even more than it does today, and that goes for fast food too.

I have some responses.

1. I do not love commerce. I think it's one way free people interact. There are others, some that I prefer. There are none that I think are so fundamental that I disconnect them from the particularist details of the situation, elevating the abstraction to some sort of platonic ideal of supreme perfection. Commerce is not, in other words, my religion. I've known people who worship it, and they generally do not impress me.
2. I agree that merely standing in moral judgment of the whole world is stupid, and I've written so before. We need positive ideas and creative actions, not simply rejection of error. But I think that's a false characterization of what left libertarians offer. Critiquing modern business is not about condemning it, but about recognizing maladaptation so that we can conceive of freer possibilities as we lay the groundwork for them. Which leads me to...
3. The lack of imagination and passion inherent in the prediction that, in an authentically free market, human relations, production, economics, everything about our lives would basically look exactly the same - except more successful - escapes my capacity for ridicule.

People who basically want the status quo with less taxes and regulation (or less armies and corporations) might be allies in the fight against the state. But they're hardly the kind of radicals that matter - the creative, exploratory radicals who stretch the limits of human potential, inspiration and self-actualization. That's not a strictly political or economic category, but for God's sake: there's more to life than politics or economics. If markets and commerce - or any subset of the human condition - are more important to you than genuine freedom, then you're missing an entire spectrum of the glorious mystery of life on this planet.

Taco Hell

The Mises Institute's Jeffrey Tucker recently wrote a post entitled Fast Food Is Beautiful. I know. Here's Tucker's definition of beauty as excerpted from the Bloomberg article he was writing about:

Every Taco Bell, McDonald's (MCD), Wendy's (WEN), and Burger King is a little factory, with a manager who oversees three dozen workers, devises schedules and shifts, keeps track of inventory and the supply chain, supervises an assembly line churning out a quality-controlled, high-volume product, and takes in revenue of $1 million to $3 million a year, all with customers who show up at the front end of the factory at all hours of the day to buy the product.

Yup, right up there with truth, symmetry, sublimity, and sunsets, for sure.

Read the whole Bloomberg article; it certainly is a nice primer on the experience of the Taylorist fast food industry. It's author is not quite as worshipful as Mr. Tucker, alluding to the problems he has learning the machine-like, precise routines at first. In many ways, it's hard to read his descriptions of such an intense shop floor in a positive light. The whole environment seems so mindless and soul-crushing. Clearly, these businesses really squeeze the $8.50 an hour out of the staff, no matter what else you want to say in favor of the business model. I'll note that the only hints of the inhumanity inherent in fast food were his personal experiences of actually working there.

In fact, it is only the desirability of working at these establishments that escapes Mr. Tucker's breathless list of fast food's heroic virtues (not an atypical Misesian oversight). It's difficult to imagine a more stark rejection of aesthetics than my feelings about Mr. Tucker's post. Just about everything that he values and sees as a miracle on Earth, I regard as a maladaptation to a ueber-corporatized, homogenized market. I find "customer service", "efficiency" and "convenience" to be rather shallow measures of human happiness, no matter how many superlatives Misesians want to assign them.

To put it bluntly: I object to the factorization of food. I find everything about the culture of fast food distasteful: the insipid, childish, pandering marketing with which it assaults my eyes and ears; the gleamingly clean logos juxtaposed with grimy floors, bored staff, and greasy smells; the way every one looks the same, even if they're different franchises; the sense of being in a plastic bubble eating fake food. I absolutely loathe the politics inherent in these "factories": the scientific managerialist dictation of the precisely engineered ways to scoop meat or greet customers; the vapid euphemisms employed to dress up direct terms like "employee" (which becomes "champion") and "scoop" (which becomes the "Beef Portioning Tool"); the behavioral conditioning and deskilling inherent in assembly lines; the disadvantaged workers used as replaceable parts by similarly replaceable but slightly less disadvantaged managers; the exploitation of artificially cheap infrastructure to grow to cancerous scales; all the influence and privilege attained from regulatory capture, political maneuvering, and other non-market goodies. When I reflect on the degree of dysfunction in fast food, I tend to identify Taco Bell's key features as responses to a world gone horribly wrong in at least a few important ways.

What bugs me more than anything else about these factory food outlets is the mirror they hold up to our society. The factorization of food production only makes sense in a regimented, less-than-spontaneously organized society where the population is so effectively mobilized according to industry's needs that free time is minimized, going so far as to cut into core activities of life. Eating, traditionally a time of rest and respite (if not enjoyment and fellowship), is turned into something more akin to a dose of product, to be minimized as a cost, not maximized as a virtue. The rational delivery of dirt cheap product scientifically designed to be consumed as quickly and unthinkingly as possible has more to do with the corporate establishment's tastes and priorities than our own. For the industry, food is a uniform processed platform for flavors, fat, salt, and sugar according to brand guidelines, and nothing more. The banality reflected in this dystopia stretches far beyond fast food, defining the progressive project of efficient resource utilization, not human happiness. Whatever progress means in other industries, in fast food it signifies a drive to improve the experience and the brand, not the food; to excel at entertaining customers, not feeding them.

The Primacy of Values

Now, with all of that off my chest, I'll gladly admit that much of what I'm saying is at least a little snobby. I can afford to cook meals and shop at places with high quality fresh produce. I was raised to appreciate good nutrition. I've educated myself about the problems of fast food. Not everybody is as lucky as I am. And, personally, I just am grossed out by the whole concept (I can hear the cries of "then don't eat there!" already).

If Mr. Tucker's over the top praise of fast food factories reflected concerns and values peculiar to his approach and personal tastes, then my withering attack was just as particular and subjective. I can readily see why people would find my sense of taste, my high standards for eating, my disgust at the relationships inherent in the factory food setting to be unconvincing. That would lead them to read the above rant about fast food in an unfavorable and dismissive light, just as surely as Mr. Tucker's views strike me as absurd and deeply distorted.

Broadly speaking, Mr. Tucker and I probably hold more values in common than not. If pressed for a quick explanation of the kind of society we're working towards, the political prerequisites Mr. Tucker would list as crucial to a libertarian society would be roughly analogous to those I'd recite. However, I imagine few libertarians are working towards some vague, unspecified future society where the only thing that matters is the abstract recognition of the non-aggression principle. No, we have hopes and dreams we want to fulfill. We're working towards a society in which we can fully express ourselves and live according to the values we hold dear and with which we identify. The liberty we seek is not just intrinsically rewarding; it is functional, a means towards our own goals and self-actualization that have nothing to do with politics.

What bothers me about commerce-ueber-alles libertarians like Mr. Tucker is that they really believe it. Many seem to genuinely look forward to the sort of sterile, superficial, rationalized corporate world satirized in the film "Idiocracy". To apply the adjective "beautiful" (or "ugly") to fast food is to betray a basic, irrational attachment that precedes any counterarguments about corporatism and consumerism. It means that they would promote this corporate aesthetic even if it didn't come with a hefty side of statist intervention and privilege. So from their point of view it makes no sense to belabor the link between fast food and corporatism; the world they're working towards freely organizes into franchise chains and little factories for everything. People just fall into boss and employee roles (perhaps they would prefer to call those roles "Command Facilitator" and "Obedience Hero").

This taste for the culture of large scale commerce is likely involved in their promotion of corporations as extra- or anti-statist institutions. These are the people who argue that even without statist incorporation and other privileges, people would voluntarily and spontaneously give a crap that I'm calling myself a corporation. I don't find the argument convincing, but it's clear that their embrace of the values of corporate organization are a motivating force, above and beyond the Austro-libertarian economic and political principles involved.

Indeed, as I've argued before, political beliefs and philosophical principles ultimately rest on the innate personalities, particular lives, and subjective opinions that people bring to the table. People adopt values for reasons that are not entirely clear, and then reason to positions, actions, and words they articulate in society as a reflection of the values. Given that ideologies like libertarianism function as incomplete models of the world, their adoption is almost certainly motivated by irrational values that are assumed prior to any rational inquiry. We all have these arbitrary blind spots that any incomplete, particularist experience will create.

It all reminds me of the arguments people made to me about working with national anarchists. These national anarchists, the arguments go, might be willing to work with leftists and libertarians to overthrow the state and abolish capitalism. But they hold values that impel them to replace the status quo with exclusionary, discriminatory, unenlightened institutions that run counter to values I want to see thrive. Our visions of what we're working towards are opposed, so in what sense are we really on the same team? Because we share an enemy at present?

Better Self-Understanding Through Politics

It seems we all bring a mix of ideations, principles, and opinions to the table whenever we set out to influence our world and neighbors. We all have our idiosyncrasies, our unexamined habits of thought, those painful memories or singular realizations that forever color our thinking. All these matters influence our politics, and they influence the manner of our belief as well as the content. These preferences are innately bound up in our sense of identity, and to that extent, they represent to some degree our wish to impose that identity on the world and on each other. Butler Shaffer talks about this in "Calculated Chaos" (which I reviewed here) as the expansion of "ego boundaries", and from the conflagrations I've witnessed between disagreeing libertarians, it seems as apt a characterization as any.

So when allies happen upon differences in taste that are constitutive of their ideological motivations, it's vital that they tread lightly - at least, if accomplishing change is more important than being right. This is what Ayn Rand got horribly wrong: her elevation of tastes into moral absolutes obscured the scope of diversity inherent in the liberationist project. We are in a very human endeavor here: we will offend each other, we will make mistakes of all sorts, we will let ourselves down. But in the end, if we're not in this game to learn about ourselves and others, if we're not open to that transcendental truth that has been hidden by millennia of convention and oppression, we're in this for what I'd argue are the wrong reasons.

Above all, we must recognize the blind spots our own subjective experiences generate. Is it acceptable for Mr. Tucker to dismiss the reality of corporatist privilege inherent in fast food, just because fast food happens to exemplify some features he admires? Of course not - no more than it is acceptable for statists to dismiss the reality of government failure just because they prefer schooling to be uniform, disciplined, and universally accessible to all Americans. The challenge should not be to defend the grey area, but to articulate the white and black that much more vividly to better understand what's going on and hopefully improve on it. The alternative is for our struggle to descend into a form of shallow identity politics where we use arguments to advance our personal egos and preferences. Too much of that is going on already.

Rigid adherence to one's tastes and opinions does not simply make apologists out of us; it stunts our imagination and the scope of possibilities we'll accept as we become freer. This is dangerous because one of the reasons to advocate for liberty is to open up those new vistas and creative approaches that we can't possibly anticipate in our current context. The more we can remain open to revolutionary ideas that can transcend our problems, the more we understand our values for what they are: decisions, not boundaries. Conversely, the more we believe that freedom looks like Taco Bell per se, or looks like the Wobblies per se, the more we arrest the very impulse we seek to unleash. It is in liberty that the inspiration to discover our true selves underneath our personalities becomes more probable. To take responsibility for your values and opinions is a radical step, but we must take it if we are not to be unwittingly ruled by affectations and reflexes.

On the Left, we understand that privilege is not an individual moral failing or episodic crime but rather a systemic feature of our society. To point out an instance of privilege is not necessarily a condemnation of the beneficiary, let alone "scrupulosity". But when your motivating value is the lionization of commerce qua commerce, then reminders about its collusion with the state are probably a bit of a buzzkill.

However, libertarianism is not about getting high on self-righteousness. And the personal umbrage Mr. Tucker takes to the facts of fast food clearly indicates that this is about more than political principles. That's ok: it has always been about more than political principles for all of us. The more we recognize our subjective preferences and take responsibility for them, the more clearly we can articulate principles and realize our visions while not denying their weaknesses. More importantly, we'll start to understand ourselves and the human condition more clearly. Elevating personal taste to political absolute is ignorant and superficial, but it's an ignorance and superficiality we're all working on.

One of the great things about embedded documents in MongoDB is that you can design your "schema" according to how you're going to use the data. Ordered lists of objects is a great use for embedded documents, as you can just shove objects in an array and read them out in order. This allows one to dispense with the unpleasantness of "acts_as_list"-style approaches where you have to juggle a "position" field and do an explicit sort.

But what if you want to reorder the embedded documents? Should be simple to sort an array. Our ODM - Mongoid in this case - would never represent the embedded collection as an array and not let us work with it as an array, right?

class Container
    include Mongoid::Document
    embeds_many :items
end

class Item
    include Mongoid::Document
    embedded_in :container
    
    field :title, :as => String
end

c = Container.create
c.items.create :title => "first"
c.items.create :title => "second"

>> c.items
=> [#<Item _id: 4dd2d971322bcdab7c000003, title: "first", _id: BSON::ObjectId('4dd2d971322bcdab7c000003'), _type: nil>, #<Item _id: 4dd2d981322bcdab7c000004, title: "second", _id: BSON::ObjectId('4dd2d981322bcdab7c000004'), _type: nil>]
>> c.items.reverse!
=> [#<Item _id: 4dd2d981322bcdab7c000004, title: "second", _id: BSON::ObjectId('4dd2d981322bcdab7c000004'), _type: nil>, #<Item _id: 4dd2d971322bcdab7c000003, title: "first", _id: BSON::ObjectId('4dd2d971322bcdab7c000003'), _type: nil>]
>> c.save
=> true
>> c.reload.items
=> [#<Item _id: 4dd2d971322bcdab7c000003, title: "first", _id: BSON::ObjectId('4dd2d971322bcdab7c000003'), _type: nil>, #<Item _id: 4dd2d981322bcdab7c000004, title: "second", _id: BSON::ObjectId('4dd2d981322bcdab7c000004'), _type: nil>]

OK, so not that easy, but maybe this means we just need to set the new array explicitly.

>> c.items = c.items.reverse
=> []

Yikes. So we can treat it as an array as much as we want - as long as we don't need to persist it. Keep in mind this is a MongoDB trait, not a failing of the ODM per se (though one would expect the ODM to help us out here!).

So what do we do? Well, I worked around it by explicitly rebuilding the array of embedded documents:

>> reordered_items = c.items.reverse
=> [#<Item _id: 4dd2e0b7322bcdae0d000002, title: "second", _id: BSON::ObjectId('4dd2e0b7322bcdae0d000002'), _type: nil>, #<Item _id: 4dd2e0b6322bcdae0d000001, title: "first", _id: BSON::ObjectId('4dd2e0b6322bcdae0d000001'), _type: nil>]
>> c.items.clear
=> []
>> reordered_items.each { |i| c.items.create i.attributes }
=> [#<Item _id: 4dd2e0b7322bcdae0d000002, title: "second", _id: BSON::ObjectId('4dd2e0b7322bcdae0d000002'), _type: nil>, #<Item _id: 4dd2e0b6322bcdae0d000001, title: "first", _id: BSON::ObjectId('4dd2e0b6322bcdae0d000001'), _type: nil>]
>> c.reload.items
=> [#<Item _id: 4dd2e0b7322bcdae0d000002, title: "second", _id: BSON::ObjectId('4dd2e0b7322bcdae0d000002'), _type: nil>, #<Item _id: 4dd2e0b6322bcdae0d000001, title: "first", _id: BSON::ObjectId('4dd2e0b6322bcdae0d000001'), _type: nil>]

This works for me, but it's not very elegant. Any problems with this approach? Feel free to let me know.

I've been searching for this article and its author for years. What great timing that I finally found it in the Wayback Machine! It's one of the most important articles I think I've ever read, because it crystalizes perfectly what I consider the proper attitude to the domain of conspiracy. Here's an excerpt:

Almost all that is dismissed as conspiracy theory today is really only good or poor attempts at writing history in our own time. But why is it that when we are talking of the histories of whole different places in whole different times, we easily accept that this or that group of powerful people made this or that important event happen, yet when it comes to histories of our own time and place, we automatically reject any suggestion of any group of people making any important event happen? Throughout history, every important event always has some group of people behind it, and these events always offer revealing meanings about the kind of societies in which they occur. It is the same today.

I give this article the highest possible recommendation.

I think this is probably one of my favorite exchanges ever:

I guess you see your role as speaking truth to power, whoever happens to be in power. Which I can appreciate. The world definitely needs people like that.

What's the alternative? Flattering and cheering for power when it's on your side, no matter what it does?

The article Greenwald wrote is good, too.

Gary Chartier talks about the need to free oneself psychologically and emotionally before one can even free others. This dovetails with my thoughts on an inwardly-looking anarchism, one that sees society at large as only one half of the project. We need to become balanced people before we can effectively advocate for the balanced society that is amenable to voluntarism. Gary even goes so far as to identify love as the ideal basis for anarchist activism.

It is so gratifying to see this maturity of thought from the anarchist sector I consider my closest allies. Let this powerful presentation start the conversation on how we prosecute this next era of the struggle against privilege. If this presentation is representative of the topics discussed at the recently concluded AgoraI/O conference, then I really missed out, and will be there with bells on next year!

I support the public sector unions opposing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's agenda. While I'm neither a fan of government nor the civil service, it's clear that the so-called lavish benefits and salaries public sector unions defend against Republican encroachment represent not entrenched privilege but merely the last vestiges of a minimally fair employment deal. The last forty years have seen this deal eviscerated in the private sector, and it is only in comparison to the current paltry influence of contemporary labor that public sector unions seem pampered. One need not single out individual teachers to critique public schooling, for instance - in any case, the idea that a school teacher is grifting me provokes involuntary laughter.

As a Wobbly, however, the ideology of class struggle informs my activism on labor. Solidarity is never unconditional, as my friend Chris Lempa pointed out to me in a letter. True common purpose in the struggle against bosses must be framed in terms of legitimate class theory in order not to degenerate into the business-as-usual, reformist, junior-partner-in-the-ruling-class unionism that has prevailed since the Wagner Act. And so while I support public sector unions in this conflict, I find it difficult to place them in the traditional model of class struggle.

In the private sector the class dynamics are clear: workers and bosses can be easily seen as in zero-sum competition. One gains at the expense of the other, the prize is effective control over the means of production, and the players line up along the party whose control they favor. Customers and suppliers represent the third parties who, while not powerless in the equation, tend to deal with the organization as a whole on a voluntary basis. The adversarial relationship is more centered inside the organization, and market pressures from the third parties are accepted as a given. Much of the decline in labor power has arisen from capital's superior marketing of the narrative that union gains come at consumer losses.

This analysis falls apart when applied to the public sector. The government has no equivalent market pressures to which it is compelled to respond. As a monopoly producer, government has every incentive to pacify its workforce by delivering higher wages and benefits. The taxpaying consumer of these services is without recourse. Politicians cannot be seen as perfect analogs of the boss class, nor can civil service management be viewed in the same sense as private sector management. Indeed, to invoke the oft-cited preamble to the IWW constitution, does the public sector working class and the public sector employing class really have nothing in common?

As a former public school teacher, my wife offered me an example of organizational dynamics in the public sector that might better explain the class disposition of the various players. Who is the favored class within the public schooling institution? Surely not teachers - they are serially overworked and underpaid, but even more importantly from a radical labor perspective, they enjoy little control over the workplace. In fact, the history indicates that teachers have been viewed by the establishment as nearly as much in need of control and discipline as the students they teach. Curricula are designed not merely to guide student learning but, to the greatest extent possible, make classrooms teacher-proof. The fear has always been that a genuine relationship between teachers and students would be harmful to the institution as a whole, and so a factory model guided the development of modern pedagogy.

So, who is exploiting teachers? Who is denying them control of work conditions? Who is playing them off against the end consumers (students and parents) to limit their power and influence?

It would easy to say: the public, through their designated politicians, from the Governor down to the School Board. However, the public has very coarse control over the schools (or any government function) through political means. The public is not the "boss class" in any meaningful way, least of all because they desire maximum effort from teachers at a minimum wage. They are imprisoned customers given a modicum of choice but no exit, and as they work for a living just like teachers they are more likely to see their interests aligned than opposed.

What about the politicians? Surely they have outsized control, at least as the managers. They seek to maximize their own control over the institution and position themselves for personal political advantage in the larger establishment. While market pressures may not factor in directly, they still have to deal with budget pressures, balancing interests among the entire government. The relative competition may not originate in the market so much as among the interest groups of the state: those seeking to grow one department's budget at another's expense, or those who favor capital over government power and fight taxes.

But even if politicians are the boss class, that is still insufficient to explain organizational dynamics within the school. Where is the class managing affairs on a daily basis on the boss's behalf? Who implements the control over workers? Who sees their interests as more aligned with the bosses than with the workers? The answer is obvious when you think about it.

The school administration is the management class of public schooling. They are the class with fat salaries, minimal work to do, and an interest in running the school as a factory. They prefer stability to true empowerment and education. They hold both teachers and students in check. Their class actually grows pretty steadily, soaking up funds from those who actually teach, while implementing stupid policies like zero tolerance to subsume more and more of the classroom under their direct management.

I've focused on public schooling, but I imagine this model could apply to just about any civil service field. You have the people who do the work - in a zoning office, for instance, it's the clerks and surveyors and those who actually effect the end product. Then you have the city administration and the Mayor / Board of Supervisors / etc., who use the institution as a means to a political career focused on directing others and taking credit for it. They don't care about zoning per-se; their interest is in stabilizing the organization so they can grow the parasite administrative class and pursue their agenda of personal aggrandizement and its ideological trappings (set aside your feelings about zoning laws in general for a moment).

As a Wobbly and a mutualist, then, I'd like to see radical labor take a stand that does not simply provide unconditional solidarity to public workers, but pushes them to take increasingly radical stances on issues of workplace control. What do we want: state-recognized and -enforced collective bargaining rights, or a movement so powerful it can operate without the state's permission? Are we fighting for a bit higher wage and benefits for public workers, or an end to the wage system? Do we want civil servants to be treated with slightly more respect by their overlords, or do we instead demand worker control of these capital-serving institutions?

After all, we've established that public sector unions are the last vestiges of something approach a fair deal between labor and capital. Perhaps we should remind capital why they sought to give us that deal to begin with, thus securing a better position for labor in all sectors. To accomplish this, Wobblies and all radical unionists must reassert the primacy of the class struggle and creatively compose the narrative that frames the public and private sector worker grievances in class terms. Only a rebirth of class consciousness will push the center of the labor movement leftwards and secure our interests. It's not enough to defeat Governor Walker or even to respond to these periodic crises in labor relations with solidarity: we have to resurrect the class struggle.

I've often felt that my political principles are merely the application of beliefs and ideas that I hold on a deeper and more fundamental level. This quote does a better job of stating the relationship between the individual striving for spiritual understanding and the political striving for liberty than anything I've ever written:

Entities within your culture are fond of saying that humankind is made in the image and nature of the Creator. What image do we think of? What image comes to mind when one thinks of the Creator? That is a key question, and central to those who seek faith. For if a Creator is sought that is angry and punishing, righteous and full of justice, then we gaze at a part of ourselves, and if the Creator is gentle and nurturing and all embracing and unifying, then we gaze at a part of ourselves. Since there is a mystery, there is a choice to be made concerning one's attitude towards that mystery. Those who feel instinctively that the Creator is an unifying, loving and nurturing Creator are those which discover faith in one way, that is the positive path of polarization through service to the infinite One and to other selves, the images of the infinite One. Those who choose to see the creator of judgment, righteousness and law, are those who wish control, control over the life, control over the self, control over others, that there be no surprises, but that all be reckoned ahead of time, safe and tidy. This is the path of separation. We are aware that we speak to those upon the positive path of polarization, and so we will address faith in its positive sense, that is, that faith does not begin with faith in the self, but faith in the Creator. (Hatonn, February 3, 1991)

I saw this video on Chris George's blog and it is truly remarkable for its application of evolutionary psychology insights to our present society. Of course, Reason is going to favor arguments that make markets seem desirable and socialism undesirable. But the way in which evolutionary psychology and human scale play into this question can be extended in several directions. On the one hand, markets are good at producing material wealth efficiently, but they aren't good at making people feel secure and connected to their fellow man in the way our hunter/gatherer ancestors did.

You can either see this insecurity as a flaw in the human being or a flaw in the economic system that correlates highly to a right-leaning or left-leaning perspective on the human condition. But the core question remains: is an unfettered embrace of globalization sustainable from a psychological point of view? Markets are good at allocation and wealth creation, but if they hamper happiness and flourishing then they can only be said to be "working" in a very narrow sense.

Libertarians must not only educate people about market economics but also recognize the market's limits. A thick approach to libertarianism can, in fact, give us guidance on the kinds of extra-market values we must work towards - values which markets are utterly incapable of providing but which nevertheless determine the health of a society.

Tonight I advanced another step in my ethiopian cooking odyssey by finally pulling off one of my favorites: shiro wat. The big problem has always been the key ingredient: mit'in shiro, a staple powder made from roasted chickpeas, fava beans, peas, and other legumes, mixed with berbere. I ordered some from this place, but I didn't want to wait, so I modified a recipe I'd found and just used chickpea flour. It turned out so well that I wanted to share it with anybody else who'd find it interesting.

Easy Mit'in Shiro

Believe me, this is easier than how you really make it.

Mix together the following:

• 1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp ground allspice
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground tumeric
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
• 3/4 tsp dried basil or cilantro
• 1 tbsp salt
• 1 1/4 tsp ground coriander
• 1 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
• 1 3/4 tsp ground fenugreek seed (important)
• 2 1/2 tsp ginger
• 2 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 2 tbsp red pepper flakes
• 2 tbsp ground red pepper
• 2 tbsp paprika
• 6 tbsp onion flakes
• 1 cup garbanzo bean flour (check your local health food store)

Use that to make this:

Shiro Wat

• 1 1/2 cups mit'in shiro (the above should be enough)
• 2 cups water
• 1 cup chopped red onion
• 1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
• 3 cloves of garlic, chopped

Directions:

1. Fry the onion and garlic in the oil until brown
2. Add the water and boil
3. Sprinkle in the mit'in shiro a little at a time, stirring to prevent lumps, until desired consistency is achieved. I like a firmer consistency, but I've seen it served very liquid, more like a stew.

Serve with injera (try this recipe, but be easy on yourself - it's tough to pull off). Also, gomen wat goes great with it!

Many on the right assert that elitism is an approach to social problems that recognizes inherent differences in individuals. Elites belong in leadership positions where their natural talents can be used to best benefit society. Most people are not cut out for responsible positions within the social apparatus, according to their argument.

Understood in this narrow sense, I do not find elitism dangerous as an abstract analysis. Indeed, there are a vast variety of competencies inherent in people, whether through their choosing to develop them or whether they come "naturally" (whatever you think that means). That some should gravitate to a place where their talents are best used is not a problem; it is a core purpose around which we associate.

The problems enter in when a mere measurement of talent distribution is expanded into an individual or group identity. Without elitist pretensions, there is no need for a purposeful elevation of the more competent over the less. There is no need for institutional structures that maintain elite predominance. Why go to great lengths to stress differentiation between non-elite and elite if those differences are obvious?

In other words, it appears that elites are elite due to their ability to render some sort of service to others. But over time, elites come to be served by others. This happens because, instead of the elite status being a matter of demonstration and service, it turns into a status existing in and of itself. If the elite status cannot be commonly seen, then it must be imposed. Hence, institutional structures like royal families, aristocratic classes, and executive professional networks maintaining exclusive access to power. The elite become an identity, not a competency.

The importance of coercive structure to elevate these elites cannot be underemphasized. Societies are narrower than the humans they comprise. They select for qualities, talents, and characteristics they value based on their imperfect understandings at a given time. For societies to develop, they cannot simply perpetuate the same patterns for which they select; they must broaden their appreciation for underutilized talents, unappreciated qualities. The elite, in order to maintain their position as a matter of identity, must arrest this progress as a matter of preserving their status. Service to society is once again hampered.

I can imagine elite apologists saying that certain individuals are more valuable to society than others. For whatever reason, their talents are rarer. The loss to society of an improperly elevated talent is worth the danger of codified supremacy. The values informing this distinction between individuals are arbitrary but inherent in the social body. But this views the danger of elitism only in terms of its social consequences. It does not speak to the consequences to the so-called elite individual.

Talent within the self is not alone sufficient. It must be developed and actionable in order to useful. After all, if elites are distinguished by their usefulness to society, then their talents must be realized or the elite status is illegitimate. In a very real sense, the only legitimate use for a concept of elite is the service by the elite to the net benefit of society.

If one's sense of identity comes from the opinion that one is elite as a matter of what one can do, and not what one does do, it can hamper this striving to develop the talent. It can invert the pattern of service and squander the talent through demanding that others serve the elite. This then becomes a mere power relationship and, as earlier mentioned, will require recognition by society through coercive means in the end.

I'd argue that egalitarianism is not the argument that everybody is equal in talents. Instead, egalitarianism is the argument that what constitutes virtue is service, not identity, and that human potential is the basis for moral equality. It is through the kinetic that the potential is demonstrated and work is performed, if accomplishing work is the point in the first place.

What counts as "talent" is after all a normative construct. It isn't important at all, in the end, whether everybody has the same capabilities; what is important is that we understand genuine service, and that we cultivate a society that sees value in service to others so that potential is realized wherever it lay and not be squandered by mere institutional momentum.

The egalitarian approach has perhaps one construct on top of this: that perhaps potentials of import are not so easily perceived by us mortals, and therefore the safe bet is to value all instead of directly ordering the social body to select for the obviously desirable talents. Rousseau may have been correct that institutions corrupt man, but it seems more important to me that they may promote the development of individual talents based solely on their value to institutions. Obviously, human potential is broader than the society can integrate at a given moment. We can have faith in people, or we can have faith in leaders - this is the insight of the anarchist.

Ever since I started this blog I've occasionally referenced something called "the Law of One", and I have received questions on what that actually is from time to time. Several concepts from this blog, including "social memory complex" and "6th density", are from a body of work available from L/L Research known alternately as "The Ra Material" or "The Law of One". These are transcriptions of conversations between a member of L/L Research and a claimed disincarnate entity calling itself "Ra" that occurred by means of trance channeling. Today is the thirtieth anniversary of that initial contact, and I've written a congratulatory letter to Carla Rueckert and Jim McCarty, the surviving members of L/L Research, which you can find here.

I have a history with channeled material. During my childhood my parents were very interested in so-called "new age" thought generally and the Edgar Cayce channellings from the early 20th century in particular, and when I was in middle school I began to develop an interest in reading them. I had had some personal experiences that inspired a curiosity in spirituality and had parents who encouraged it. Cayce gave tens of thousands of deep trance psychic readings that resulted in countless cures that cannot be explained by any modern science. However, interspersed throughout those healing readings were other pieces of information. There was all sorts of stuff about ancient civilizations and technologies, past lives and reincarnation, and attempts to explain the nature of the human condition beyond what we experience on a day to day basis. I became enthralled by this window into a larger reality, part science fiction, part metaphysics.

As fantastic as all that information was, its real utility as a platform for learning about deeper spiritual insights served me much better than believing in Atlantis ever did. Ultimately, the value of the work is determined by how much use you can make of it, and the introspective spiritual truths conveyed were more actionable in my daily life and adolescent struggles than stuff about crystals and sunken continents. This willingness to look beyond the transient surface of metaphysical information to the deeper significance would be a great tool in my future efforts.

Towards adulthood I started reading other metaphysical materials: various theosophical books, other channeled materials, and pop new age stuff like The Celestine Prophecy. I was never dogmatic about any of this information, and the more widely I cast my net, the more easily I could see the common threads in the varied approaches. That made it much easier to come to my own conclusions about these matters instead of blindly following one book or another, though it's probably fair to say that a certain amount of preoccupation with a given book is necessary to really absorb it.

A Course in Miracles was probably the work that made a deeper impression on me than any other I'd encountered up till then. It had been studied by my parents while I was growing up, but I didn't find it until I was 16. It approached spirituality from a comparatively intellectual point of view, challenging my thinking directly instead of through archetype and metaphor. Channelled by a thoroughgoing materialist psychology professor, its story is compelling all on its own. Suffice to say, while in the final equation spiritual exploration is not an intellectual exercise, there is much work to be done in examining one's thoughts.

I found the Law of One through David Wilcock, who did his own channeling and research. I moderated his Yahoo! group and became friends with him. He referenced the Ra material in his own work on alternative physics and spirituality, and most importantly he made available a study guide that broke down the Law of One material for better comprehension. Reading this first helped me tremendously, because the material is a transcription of conversations that build concepts gradually and it's easy to develop a disjointed and confused understanding on initial readings. Also corresponding on the Yahoo! group was a great help, and I owe David a substantial debt for all his guidance.

The core of the Law of One material is the spiritual principle that all that we experience as separate entities are in fact one infinite entity and identity: the Creator. In short, all is the Creator and all is the self, so a loving attitude towards others is an expression of the reality of unity, not some mere altruistic duty. The seeming separation we experience in our waking lives has utility because we can learn things about ourselves / the Creator that we cannot otherwise learn. We are here to develop the capacity for love in spite of all the suffering and confusion of this world, because only here can these capacities be "polarized" to sufficient intensity to allow us to progress to the next level. This polarization is governed by a choice of how to express our nature as the Creator, positively and loving or negatively and fearful, and the two poles are commonly referred to as "service to others" and "service to self". Both are valid paths back to unity, but they are different in quality, duration, and lessons.

The above is a tragically concise distillation of the Law of One material in its spiritual essence. I made sure I mentioned that first because the entity transmitting this information calls itself "Ra", claims to be a highly evolved extraterrestrial "social memory complex" or group mind, and claims to have visited Earth thousands of years ago to help us but in doing so unwittingly introduced distorted understandings of the Creator. This mistake in the past is responsible for much suffering and confusion today through various cultural, social, religious, and political constructs, and those of Ra feel a responsibility to correct these errors. There is more of this cosmic drama mentioned in the material, what I call "space opera" details, but to me they are not nearly as important as the spiritual heart of the message. In other words, even if all the space drama were completely false, the philosophical content could still be valid.

L/L Research, composed of Carla Rueckert, Jim McCarty, and Don Elkins, had been doing experiments in telepathically contacting extraterrestrials and channeling all throughout the 60s and 70s. Essentially, those of Ra say they chose to contact the group because they had honed the art of trance channeling through their previous work, and their attitude and orientation was congruent with the group's. One thing that sets the Law of One material apart from other channellings was that L/L Research attempted from the beginning to approach the contact as objectively and scientifically as possible, recording all contacts and making as much information and background available to others (with some exceptions for personal details) so they could reach their own conclusions. Because of this attitude of extreme transparency, the message could get through without the distortions that had been introduced in past contacts with humanity.

I don't expect people to take my word for any of this or that they should even care. I certainly don't consider this material the only source of truth, nor is any claim of exclusivity made on Ra's part. It's not important to me whether everything Ra says is 100% true; in fact, at one point those of Ra state that the more the conversation turns to so-called "transient" matters like UFO physics, paranormal phenomena, historical figures, and the like, the more likely the information is to be distorted. The more the requested information pertains to timeless, universal truths that transcend our culture and history and approach a more unified and infinite perspective, the more likely they are to be accurate. Indeed, Ra insisted as a condition of the communication that people judge the information for themselves and discard anything that did not resonate, lest they introduce distortion into our consciousness once more. Free will (what they call the "Law of Confusion") is a very important part of our journey. This makes sense to me because it describes exactly what I've done throughout my exploration of different metaphysical strains of thought.

All I'll say is that, as a friend once put it, discovering the Law of One material felt like slipping on an old pair of worn-in, comfortable shoes. It resonated with me at a very deep level. The backstory it gives for the spiritual utility of a seemingly mundane and definitely confusing life makes sense; that we're here not just to be happy (though that's part of it) but to be who we are, which is something more than we think we are. To me, the Ra material is a symbol of something more fundamental than a fantastic telepathic contact; it is a way of approaching spiritual evolution that can help one move towards a personal experience more authentic and instructive than any outwardly apprehended teaching.

It should be obvious that I've summarized quite a bit, even as this post has dragged on, but I want the reader to have some clue as to where I'm coming from. It's not easy to talk about because it flies in the face of our everyday experience, but it's part of who I am. Spirituality and seeking is at least as fundamental to me as the politics I write so much about, and indeed I see significant parallels between the two.

I also want to convey why these people to whom I wrote the letter are so dear to me; the quality of the information they've brought through is so high in my opinion that I'm very grateful for their sacrifices and celebrate this day. Finally, I want people to get a glimpse into a body of work that I've found helpful, because maybe they'd find it helpful. What's important is not channeling, or ETs, or particular models of a greater reality; rather, the most important thing is the desire to understand and develop the self. It is Ra's ability to inspire the latter that assures me of the usefulness of this material, though you have to make up your own mind about it.

A core problem with contemporary leftism as it is often pursued is that it has no sense of the boundaries of its project. Casting it in the most reasonable light, it tends to make the entire world and every person's soul its political mission. After correctly identifying thought systems that lead to undesirable consequences, leftists often try to frame their activism in terms of "abolishing patriarchy" or "ending racism". Because they believe these thought systems are at the root of the problem, it is natural to assume an attitude of attacking them.

Much like wars on victimless crimes, these attacks must be directed at people, since the ideas only exist in the mind. Individual human beings are often rejected in totality rather than merely rejecting their bad ideas. After all, individuals are sovereign within their own minds, and there is little power to force the adoption of values onto another (setting aside the countless problems with using force). The only real non-violent sanction one has against the beliefs of another is ridicule and withdrawal, which the left certainly employs often.

The question the alternative left poses to the mainstream and/or orthodox left is not whether these strategies are just - certainly, the defense of free association is a vital liberal tactic for non-violent social discipline. Sacrificing free association utterly endangers liberalism. Rather, its critique centers around the effectiveness of the tactic. Rather than a universal application of leftist ideology to every aspect of life, a lighter touch is suggested - not to let bad ideas and practices off the hook, but to better inculcate values conducive to sustainable social progress.

By its very nature, political activism orients itself towards formal institutions. Success in politics is measured by power - the power to realize visible and articulable policies, the power to direct the apparatus of an institution or organization, the power to compel individual behavior. Politics is practiced in spite of individual prerogative through capturing and dominating institutional vehicles for social influence. Certainly values can attempt to be promoted through these institutions, but ultimately they are the application of mechanistic policy or law to effect observable phenomena or measurable behavior.

Resisting or promoting particular institutions are valid forms of political activism because there's something to resist or promote. For example, racist institutions - institutions that realize ends deemed racist - can be reformed or abolished. Unjust laws can be stricken and undermined. Organizations with objectionable values and goals can be disbanded or delegitimatized. Activists can target institutions with precision because they are easily identified entities with tangible assets, finite memberships, and/or express governing rules.

But the values that impel individuals to organize in the first place are not so easily eradicated. You can prevent the Ku Klux Klan from meeting and its members from acting, but you cannot force each member to renounce racial supremacist ideas. The Nazi party, its tenets, and its insignia are positively banned by law in Germany, and yet that poisonous belief system still lingers in the minds of many Germans. In fact, the attempt to stamp out such individuals for their beliefs can often create blowback: by marginalizing individuals for their beliefs, they become that much more dedicated to seeing them realized. They can come to identify with their ideology much more completely if their own well being is threatened.

How do people shed old belief configurations that are tied to their sense of who they are and adopt new ones? After all, lasting social and cultural change occurs through changing the behavior of the society's or culture's constituent members. And behavior follows from a person's sense of their values and self-interest. So the key to long-term, lasting social progress of the kind we want is not political at all - it is changing minds and hearts.

People who are willing to be pariahs for their unpopular beliefs are unlikely to be cowed by ratcheting up hostilities. One can see this in military occupations where soldiers of one culture attempt to force those of another culture to change. One can also see this in movements here that embrace backwards approaches yet linger decade after decade, changing only in their application of beliefs and rarely in the bigotry motivating them.

Few people adopt their basic values on a rational basis. These values and beliefs are the basic "axioms" that inform their further reasoning, but the examination of these axioms usually reveals that some emotional or unconscious dynamic at play. Even the liberal belief in egalitarianism and justice is not one "supported" by any objective data; rather, we accept them as givens and use reason to find the best ways to achieve consonant goals.

In order to change one's values, one must face the emotions, experiences and psychological background that convinced one to adopt them. I'm suggesting this is a deeply personal experience that requires a facing of the self, a "dark night of the soul". It requires a vulnerability and honesty that is not well suited to the political project of influencing institutions and debating policy. We are asking people to dissolve basic parts of who they think they are and adopt new ones that are alien. This is a big step for anybody, and many go their whole lives without engaging in such a self-examination.

If our real desire is to convince people to substantively abandon bigoted and undesirable beliefs and values, and not simply eliminate the superficial vehicles informed by them, we must help people, not compel them. Decent societies are comprised of decent individuals, and if we rule out eliminating people for their beliefs then we have no choice but to work with them. This is a long, hard path that requires a dedicated ministering to deeply angry, hurt, or insecure people. It will also challenge our own beliefs and require honesty and transparency on our own part.

Building genuine trust among suspicious parties requires a light touch and a long view. But this is how a voluntary society and enlightened culture is created: individual by individual. The coarse means of political activism can stop large scale tragedies, but it cannot prevent them over the long run. To do that, we need to focus on being our better selves and bringing out the better selves of our neighbors. This scale of activity feels totally unequal to the task, and for precisely that reason it is too often ignored in favor of political activism. But while it feels unequal, it is the only viable route to sustainable, long-term social and cultural change.

Happy new year!

I just discovered the RAW Illumination blog that carries on and promotes the philosophy, attitude, and perspective of one of my very favorite authors and thinkers, Robert Anton Wilson. There's a great interview with Douglas Rushkoff on his book "Program or Be Programmed" which I reviewed here. However, this transcription of Robert Shea's speech upon accepting the Hall of Fame award from the Libertarian Futurist Society for the book he co-wrote with Wilson, The Illuminatus! Trilogy, is quite gratifying to me. It provides comfort for the long, hard slog of being intellectually free and curious, not so much as some demonstration of autonomy as a will to self-definition and self-discovery. The final paragraph is powerful:

We say in the novel that the original Illuminati were dedicated to religious and political freedom and that this secret organization somehow became perverted so that in recent centuries the Illuminati had become a vehicle for a monstrous authoritarianism. Thus the myth of the Illuminati is an archetype for every political movement, from Lenin's Bolshevism to Reagan's Republicanism, that has promised people greater freedom while loading them down with more government. People can be fooled in this way because they are not sure what freedom is. Freedom is a word whose meaning has been worn away by overuse, like a coin that has passed through too many hands. We need to be clear about what it means to us when we use it and maybe not use it quite so much, but use other, more precise words instead.

In ILLUMINATUS! we suggest that freedom begins in your right to define yourself and to insist on the validity of your own perceptions and your own thoughts. To change to a new point of view because you find it convincing is, of course, merely an exercise of that freedom. But freedom is lost when you are coerced or frightened into denying your own way of seeing reality and into accepting a point of view you cannot really believe in, be it that of a family, a teacher, a boss, a party, a church, a state. And an amazing thing is that when each of us insists on his or her own vision, it does not divide us. It unites us as no externally imposed unity ever could. It unites us in reverence for that inner light which we can only find by knowing ourselves, never by denying ourselves, that light by which each one of us can truly be said to be illuminated - the true Illuminati.

Read the whole thing. He also mentions that Wilson stopped calling himself an anarchist, but more out of a rejection of loaded labels than a rejection of the ideas. I feel myself pulled that way at times.

It is natural to look for meaning in tragedy. History, myth, literature all represent means by which humans attempt to come to terms with the dark sides of our experience and to find something valuable in it, so that the tragedy was not for naught. The motivation is not simply to avoid similar tragedies in the future, but to give ourselves a sense that we understand what's going on, that all this isn't just a huge chaotic mess from which we will never be able to protect ourselves and our loved ones. We seek comfort as much as insight.

It is not natural, however, to fit tragedy into an ideological narrative. Ideology doesn't originate within us but arises from our acceptance of a narrow system of thought to which we attempt to conform. So complex events and nuanced actions must be shoved like a square peg into a round hole in order to validate the black and white ideological approach in our gray shaded lives. But we adopt ideological approaches for similar reasons: to give ourselves a sense that we can explain it all, that if we can just achieve the world prescribed by the ideology, such tragedy will never occur again.

The attack on Representative Giffords is now being portrayed by many as an outgrowth of the "climate of hate" surrounding conservative politics in general and the Tea Party movement in particular. The assassin would never have attacked this congresswoman, many claim, if there wasn't a poisonous undercurrent of anti-government sentiment. While an individual is responsible for his or her actions, we have a responsibility also to preserve a civil discourse and ensure that loose cannons do not employ our rhetoric in the service of violence.

Insofar as this goes, I have no problem with the argument above. We should take responsibility for the climate our politics creates, because that climate is the reality behind the abstractions of politics, civil society, and other institutions we ostensibly critique and support. The less positive and constructive our participation in the network of society, the more we create the hell we claim to seek to avoid. We each have an unenforceable but important duty to be our best selves in all matters.

However, this duty is only part of the story. Yes, we the people are accountable for our participation in the body politic. And if people are angry, then that is a problem - but a problem for all of us. After all, people don't just get upset for no reason. It is usually the persistent denial of their interests, their values, the legitimacy of their point of view that creates the frustration and cynicism leading to such lashing out, rhetorically or physically.

Conservatives and liberals are jumping on the Giffords attack to push it into or out of their ideological narratives. They either blame those who stand against government overreach, or they deny that resistance to government overreach is to blame. What neither side does is question the premises of this argument: that only one side is responsible for this.

It seems to me that the growing conservative backlash to intrusive government has contributed to the climate of hate. But then, by the same token, so has the intrusive government acts that created the backlash. For that matter, the attitude with which certain statists have demonized and marginalized anti-statists also fed the feelings of hate and resentment. If there is a climate of hate, then all of us are responsible - not just the party that breaks first from these conditions.

Those who support the establishment - government functionaries, liberals sometimes, conservatives other times - act as if state actions are automatically legitimate, and that anybody who disagrees is a crank. Why isn't this dismissive attitude not just as responsible for the eventual violence as the resentful attitude? If civility is the order of the day, it cannot be defined merely as fitting within the narrow confines of "accepted thinking". And so extremism and hate are singled out as the problems, rather than the symptoms.

If we are to heal these divides and build a society based on some modicum of trust and appreciation, a society that can solve problems in the name of all its members and not to benefit some members over others, we have to take a step back from what we've been doing all this time and think freshly and honestly. It is incumbent on all of us - not just the side with which we disagree - to end the climate of hate. But ending that climate means addressing the causes, not the individual straw that breaks the camel's back. And that likely means a stiff challenge to the centrist, establishmentarian elites who benefit no matter which side of the debate is labelled "extremist".