A Breathe of Fresh Air

Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill justification for the release of convicted terrorist al Megrahi is a defining moment for personal morality.

His decision is clearly open to criticism but it is not flawed fundamentally. If one denies compassion one denies one's own humanity. In speaking for justice and compassion, he certainly spoke for me.

Thorough video coverage of the Justice Secretary's statement and questions from the Holyrood (Scottish Parliament) are available on YouTube: Kenny MacAskill's Statement

In a strange way, the Scottish Justice Secretary's defense on grounds of personal morality and humanity, not on some abstract community standard, was refreshing to say the least, and a reminder of what I miss and long for in a "community of faith".

First Scarcities

The first scarcity is not economic, but sensory. We cannot possibly know, which is to say, we cannot possibly "be conscious" of everything that comes our way.

Because we lack understanding we clothe ourselves in limitations. Our limitations become the reality of our lives, the circumscriptions of our thought.

A second scarcity, is a scarcity of direction, of knowing what to do with what we have. Essential to the growth process, our needs become fuller, more complex, until one day we find that less is more.

Some people believe we are fallen, that our limitations reflect upon a separation from an earlier, purer condition, that somehow the cause of this condition was an error committed in the infancy of the human race and for which we must continually atone.

I think not. I think rather, that we fail to rise to our full potential as sensory humans. Too often it seems that humanity prefers a shared story of failure to the solitary struggle in the present.

Life as Mystery

TAO Walker, a native American visionary who speaks and writes eloquently of the Tiyoshpaye Way and the Living Arrangement of our Mother Earth (www.sacredconversations.fr), in speaking about "jumping off a moving train with the doors welded shut" writes

...“speed” is relative, as Einstein “proved”, and [as we] free wild natural human beings have known all along.

Einstein may have proven mathematically what was already known to universal consciousness. And this knowledge may advance Man's understanding of his condition, his environment and the universe. That however, does not and should not in any way diminish the poetic fact of universal consciousness.

As my father might have said, that and a nickle would get you on the Staten Island ferry. What could it possibly mean that "speed is relative"?

That this should be known to "universal consciousness" reminds me that "science" and "knowledge" are not things in themselves, but building blocks in a world view that embraces progress and perfectibility.

Another "MUST" read, this one harking back to the Savings & Loan bailout

See : A Nation of Village Idiots

What will it take for America's middle classes to finally understand their own interests? or even, to speak with one voice?

There is nothing wrong with the creation of wealth.

What is wrong, is that in the name of "free market capitalism" we lie down and pretend to be rugs for the selfish men and women who not only understand their self-interests but define these in terms of personal wealth, pleasure and aggrandisement.

Our own interests would be better served helping our neighbors, educating our children and sweeping before our own front doors.

Must reading...

A Debate Worthy of a Great Nation in Trouble

Public goods and laissez-faire capitalism

"Laissez-faire capitalism" our father would say, "is about economic freedom".

My only problem with this is that it is "simplistic" and like all things simple, there is a hitch. "Freedom" has a cost even if that cost is not economic.

How does one count the cost of freedom if it is not economic? Could it be a matter of personal sacrifice, a curtailment of personal freedoms in exchange for a public good? What is a public good?

A public good is a shared space produced through negociated concensus. A public good, should not, in theory, be available for purchase. It often is however, and herein lies the problem.

A public good can either be preserved (a typically "conservative" idea) or it can be enhanced (typically a liberal, "progressive" idea).

The first cost of the public good is the "social cost" of maintaining a commons: personal freedoms are exchanged for "access" rights to the commons, and "access" has no price. The "cost" of freedom then, is the "value of public access".

If there is a value inherent in man, it is the value created through freedom and choice. What are my choices if a neighbor or family member suffers from a want that I might somehow mitigate? What could possibly be the value of my freedom then?

While Americans, and before them, Europeans were out pursuing manifest destiny and "national exception", amassing wealth through capitalistic enterprise, ensuring our survival as a species of humanity, the rest of the world could only watch and concede superior force.

Today the momentum is shifting.

Trust, mistrust, worldview, teleos... so many words of justification.

The American Commons In One Morning's Readings

In one morning's readings I read about how Carly Fiorina disparaged the candidates' ability to run a large multinational like Hewlett Packard saying that running a large multinational is not like being President. She's one to talk: she was ousted by Hewlett Packard in 2005 and she has never served as President. What is she doing giving advice?

I also read about U.S. bail-outs for under regulated corporate behemoths like AIG, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, about the acquisition of the banking and real estate assets of the failed Lehman Brothers or the acquisition of Merrill Lynch by BankAmerica.

Such a whirlwind of destruction... Here truly is the collapse of a house of cards, a fantasy of unfettered exuberance and unregulated greed. And here also lies the problem.

I do not subscribe to the idea that greed is a "mortal sin" visiting the wrath of God upon humans, but a selfishness that is endemic to liberal, unregulated capitalism and a selfishness that has cheapened the American commons. It is in fact, the same selfishness that creates inequality at home and in the world.

As far as my personal freedoms are concerned, I wholly subscribe to the idea that that government is best that governs least. But there is a cost to such freedom, and that cost lies in regulating the commons; The role of government lies in, must lie in regulating the commons for the greater good.

The dangers of democracy. Are we ready for the Internet?

See Warning Sounded on Web's Future

We live in frightening times, in times when decisions affecting the lives of millions are made based on circus contests in which rhetorical artifice trumps the art of rhetoric, in which form trumps content in an endless volley of statement and repartee.

Literacy in the internet world means so much more than multisyllabic intonation, it means filtering and verification, ideas which of themselves, imply focus and values.