You Sort Of Built That

Once upon a time I considered myself a conservative republican. Political views are like religious views in that you are more or less born into them.  Geography and environment determine both.  Ideas are imprinted onto our minds before we’ve had a chance to develop strong critical thinking skills. We hear things over and over again and believe them.  We want to belong to our tribe, etc.  It’s only natural. I was raised in East Texas and my political views up until my mid-twenties reflected that. 

My political change of heart happened for a combination of reasons but I think the biggest factor was just spending enough time out in the real world making a living and paying bills.  To be perfectly honest I just didn’t pay a lot of attention to this stuff until my late twenties. Around that time I started getting a better understanding of how the world actually works and started looking deeper into politics and power and I shifted from right to left on the political spectrum.  There were beliefs I held that just didn’t square with the reality I saw day to day and eventually I had to admit it to myself and adjust accordingly.

There were a number of issues that I realized were just plain wrong and maybe addressing each one individually is an idea for future blog entries but the main one could be summarized like this:

 “If you are rich, poor, or somewhere in between, it’s your own fault.”

That’s really the big myth.  The rich deserve to be rich and the poor deserve to be poor because “the market” and their own personal talent and hard work (or lack of) is what got them there.

Lest this post be misconstrued as a product of disappointment or jealousy resulting from personal failure, allow me to dispel that now.  I have exceeded my own expectations of success – and my expectations were high.  It was not a lack of personal achievement that caused my change of heart. It’s been the opposite.  My personal journey through the stages of achieving reasonable economic success has been a large part of why I started questioning the truth of the statement above.

To be sure, there is some truth to the claim that one’s fortunes or lack of are their own doing.  I’d estimate that the claim is about 50% valid.  When looking at the sum total of factors involved with determining an individual’s socio-economic status, I would argue that personal talent and determination account for maybe half of the total.  The other half can be summarized in a single word:  luck.

If you are uncomfortable with the word luck we can also call refer to it as circumstances that are out of one’s control.

If you happen to be born into a stable, loving, financially secure family, your odds of success are immediately much higher than someone who was not.  If your parents happen to be bright people and intelligence is in your genetic makeup even better.  If your parents happen to be not just financially secure but wealthy, even better. If your parents happen to be not just wealthy but also well connected and powerful in the community, even better.  And so on.  Warren Buffett refers to this as the “Ovarian Lottery” and the role it plays cannot be overstated.  As the second wealthiest person on Earth he acknowledges that being born in the right place at the right time with the right kind of mind was a tremendous factor in his success.  He realizes that not being born to a crack head mother or alcoholic, gambling-addicted father was not the result of good decision making skills on his part.  Being raised in a comfortable suburban neighborhood in Omaha, Nebraska as opposed to a housing project in Compton, CA was not based on any tenacity or talent that he possessed. It was chance, pure and simple.  The idea that we all get an equal start is ludicrous but it’s a comfortable delusion for people born with every possible advantage.

And luck goes far beyond the accident of birth.  There are countless examples of people who have followed all of the rules, worked hard, done everything you are supposed to do and still struggle to get by.  The fact is that there are innumerable factors outside of one’s personal control that shape their economic outcome.  The big recent example would be the millions of people in the United States and all over the world who have had their financial lives shattered because a handful of greedy con-men from Wall Street wrecked the whole system. 

Thinking about my own case, yes there are certain things I’ve done right but there are also situations that just happened to work out for me that could have easily gone the other way and made a big difference.  I’ve been fortunate in ways that went beyond anything accomplished by own individual efforts.  Nobody is truly self-made.  Even with rags to riches type stories someone, somewhere gave someone else a chance.  Other people helped that person succeed.

Then there are the various features of society that make success possible: public education and universities, transportation infrastructure, law enforcement, fire departments, the judicial and legal system, patent protection, safe drinking water and food standards (and the means of enforcement), a national defense, and the list could go on.  Providing all of this to three hundred million people is not free.  As wealthy venture capitalist Nick Hanauer put it, if zero government, taxes, and regulation were truly the ideal environment for thriving businesses, places like Somalia or the Congo would be the home to the world’s most successful companies.

I do think there is a realistic and reasonable path to a comfortable life for almost anyone who has the capacity to learn, work hard, and overcome the peer pressure to waste money on unneeded junk.  Our decisions do go a long way towards shaping our future but it’s too simplistic to think that personal effort and ability are the only determinants of economic outcomes. A lot of people at the very top would like us all to swallow that (especially those like David and Charles Koch, the Walton heirs, and others who inherited dynastic wealth from daddy) but I think that’s just so they can absolve themselves of any responsibility to contribute and give back to the society that made their opulent lifestyles possible.

(Note: Economic mobility can be measured by how closely a son’s earnings are correlated to his father’s earnings.  By this measure France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway, and Denmark are all more upwardly mobile than the United States.)

Stay Thirsty My Friends

About twelve years ago on a typical sweltering summer evening, I sat on the steps leading up to my apartment sipping on a lukewarm Coors Light (nectar of the gods at that time) longneck. Lukewarm because during July in Texas if you don’t down it in less than two minutes that’s what happens. I probably shotgunned the first one for that very reason but I was taking it easy on number two. There was no hurry. I had nowhere to be, nothing to do. I was almost always grateful for that condition back then. Not that I had a bustling social life. By then I had almost no social life. I’d phased it out over a number of years for reasons that were surely misunderstood by those who I ran with for so long before.

I needed to explore and expand. I needed to start figuring out who I was and who I would be. I needed plenty of solitude and free time; time to dabble in loneliness and introversion and unfamiliarity. In short, time and space for an inward journey that had begun years before but was constrained by old habits and roles.

It’s fascinating to feel yourself changing as it happens. To notice things that were once so deadly important to you become not that important at all. To watch your previous hopes and fears dissolve and be replaced by new hopes and fears; in my case, ones that were now mostly vague and undefined.

Back in those days – I call them my apartment days – there were some very large and looming questions, intimidating but exciting. Will I graduate with a high enough GPA? Where will I live? What will my job be? How will I get that job? There will be a girl. Who will she be? What will she be like? How will we meet? Have we already met?

These are fun questions. It’s only natural for there to be a little anxiety around questions like these, and for me there was, but more importantly there was just an underlying sense of knowing that it was all going to work out. I never knew how. I just knew it would work out. I never stressed myself over it too much. There was something beautiful about not knowing. That little bit of anxiety was really more like anticipation.

Many a summer evening was spent sitting out on those steps, drinking beer and letting my thoughts wander where they may. Reflecting on where I’d been, looking out into a vague outline of the future. I always felt like I was ‘on my way up’ during that period, which made sense because as a college student that is really the only direction to go. And that is a very free feeling. Those college days had their stressors. Make no mistake about it. There were exams to study for and cumbersome, time consuming projects with approaching deadlines - always last minute undertakings for me. But there was also a certain wide open, anything is possible feeling of freedom that you really don’t appreciate when you actually have it.

That’s one of the things they don’t tell you when you are young and on your way up. They don’t tell you that that nothing-to-lose feeling, though it may have a bit of an edge, is actually a very worthwhile state of being. It’s a bliss that will go away once you’ve established yourself, acquired the things you set out to acquire, and generally achieved what you set out to achieve.

Sitting on those apartment steps ruminating away the summer evenings I often felt like I was starting to figure things out. It is so cliché but so undeniably true that when you’re young, totally inexperienced in the world, and know next to nothing, you really do think that you know it all. And that’s probably so because life hasn’t had time yet to confront you with what you don’t know. It’s easy to be convinced of your own brilliance when it’s been all theory and no practice. Nonetheless – it’s still a sublime state, a necessary one, and one that anyone over the age of thirty will probably find themselves missing at some point in their lives.

Which I think leads me to the point of this meandering, out-of-practice, disjointed attempt at an internet age cave scrawling. When I was sitting there nursing that watered down beer twelve years ago, I really had figured out a lot. I knew change was coming. I knew I’d get to where I needed to be in life and that worrying too much about it was a waste of energy. I knew that if I completed the immediate steps that were there in front of me that the future would work itself out. The Universe would provide. It always had.

But there was at least one epic truth that I was completely blind to. Success and achievement come with a price – a heavy price if we are honest with ourselves. And that price is a freedom and light-heartedness that can only exist when you have nothing to lose; when you have your whole life in front of you, when things are more theoretical than practical, more whimsical than utilitarian.

I have a lot now, in every sense of the word. I’ve accomplished what I set out to accomplish. I feel both lucky and grateful for it. But I also have a lot to lose now. And I’m old enough to see how fragile life really is. How it can go so quickly, and how forces that are completely out of my control could take it from me.

Do I long to go back to being twenty five, sitting on a balcony drinking beer with scarcely a care in the world and not much to lose? Not for a second. This is a different phase of the journey, with different happiness and different anxieties. I didn’t see the flipside of adulthood and success when I was twenty five but I can look back on some of my concerns from that time and be comforted and reassured about what lies ahead. Those old questions have been replaced with new ones that are no less intimidating or significant. But I have the experience now to know that worrying about them is not worth my precious time. Now, just as then, the Universe will provide. And knowing that is one of the things that make me smile when I sit out on the back porch and have a beer these days.

Perspective

When you go over two months without writing a blog post you know what happens? You kind of forget how to make a blog post. But after that much times goes by you start to feel compelled to write something because over the years some friendships have formed and your only point of contact is the blog and it’s only fair to let those people know that you are still alive and that you still know how operate a keyboard. So…I am, and I do.

I’ve often thought it would be kind of cool and useful to start writing little life lessons down that a 34 year old Ben would tell a 20 year old Ben (or some other young dude). I recently made a mental note that when I got back to this blog that is exactly what I would do, but as it is, I’m going to keep that on hold for the time being because something very significant happened a few weeks ago and it merits a mention here.

A few weeks ago I received a message that my two year old niece had had a really bad accident and was in ICU at one of our local hospitals – one that just happens to be one of the best children’s hospitals in the United States. She had fractured her skull and face in multiple places and was on a breathing machine with an uncertain future.

Getting this news was a 9/11 kind of moment for me (and obviously more so for my brother and his wife). I’ll never forget where I was and what I was doing at the time or the tones of voices of the various family members who I spoke to, all within maybe a five minute period. That period was followed by a frantic rush to get out of the house and to the hospital. On arriving at the hospital I saw the single worst sight I have ever seen in my entire life: that precious two year old girl with a hugely swollen face, large black/red circles around her eyes, small amounts of blood coming from her nose and ears, and numerous tubes coming out of her throat and limbs, and the various machinery that connected to those tubes; then of course my brother and sister and law, and the looks of horror and helplessness on their faces.

I’m not going to try to describe the emotion or drama of that whole event. For one, I’d never do it justice but the main reason is because it doesn’t matter now. What matters now is that this is happy post. And these are happy times. These are times that are the little wake up calls reminding you that every moment is precious and nothing is to be taken for granted.

To sum it up, my niece was in ICU on a ventilator machine for about five days. On the afternoon of the fifth day they removed her breathing tube (and the other various tubes) and she immediately began breathing on her own and her body began functioning as it should. It wasn’t an easy journey by any stretch but after two weeks she was released from the hospital, and now, on the third week, she is walking, talking, climbing, laughing, eating, and doing all the things that two year olds do; which is really something considering this time last week she could not walk without falling over or stand up without holding on to something. She is in a large neck brace and still has some physical therapy ahead of her but for the most part is back to her old self.

I do not like the word miracle but this has been an extraordinary recovery and endless Gratitude is the name of the game for this uncle and this family.

On Civility, Or: Real Life Versus The Internets

Those of us who have spent a considerable amount of time discussing and debating politics and current events online have a tendency to become quite the vitriol spewing blowhards. There is something about this medium – primarily the anonymity and lack of physical proximity to one’s opponents – that just fosters over-the-top invective. As an admitted and experienced online socio-political demagogue, I’m more than qualified to express this observation. I’ve spent enough time engaged in this activity to realize that those of us who do this become cartoonish caricatures of normal, opinionated human beings.

That’s not to say that it’s a completely negative or non-worthwhile hobby. To the contrary, if you hang out in the right online locales and tangle with enough well-informed, intelligent opponents, it can be quite the learning experience. But almost as a rule, it gets very nasty very fast and otherwise mature, reasonable adults end up in virtual shit-slinging fests that would (or should) be completely humiliating in a less anonymous, real world environment.

I’m all for debate and discussion. Indeed, it is a pity to me that discussing politics is considered such an impolite taboo. It’s one of the things that drives me to online discussion forums. In the real world we are so concerned about not offending our peers that we have conditioned ourselves to just not discuss these matters that really do affect all of us very deeply. It’s like we’ve admitted that we lack the capacity to have grown up discussions about grown up topics. This, in my view, is a serious mistake. Vigorous debate is healthy, necessary even. Especially in a democracy where, allegedly, peons like us actually have some control of our political fortunes. It’s okay that we have strong disagreements. That is actually the point of a democratic republic; to have a structured and civilized way to direct public policy in a manner that accounts for differing viewpoints and preferences. It is more than a little tragic that it’s socially acceptable to spend hours arguing about sports or reality TV shows that have zero real impact on any of our lives, but it’s a big no-no to talk about the debt ceiling or healthcare debate, or tax policy, or our wars – things that, unlike whether or not Lady Gaga has a penis, actually do matter.

The reason for me saying all of this is that yesterday I actually did call both of my senators (John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchinson) and my representative (Dr. Michael Burgess) to “make my voice heard” on this debt ceiling debacle. When an online demagogue like myself does something like this, the first thing you realize is that ranting and raving like a hysterical lunatic will get you absolutely nowhere. When you have an actual person on the phone (much less face to face) and they are speaking to you intelligently and with courtesy about these issues that you may feel so passionately about, you realize that, like you, they are human beings just trying to do the best they can. Pardon the corniness. Granted, this doesn’t apply to everyone but I think it’s safe to say that it applies to most. When talking to Michael Burgesse’s aide, who was (thankfully) being bombarded by calls yesterday, it certainly applied to her. When you are used to communicating these issues through hyperbole and angry rhetoric, actual contact with a reasonable human being kind of deflates your balloon. And what you realize – or what I realized – is that articulating your thoughts respectfully and in real time, to someone who is treating you – despite your strong disagreement on the issues – with courtesy and kindness, is a very rewarding and challenging thing.

Being polite, sticking to facts, being specific, avoiding insults and inflammatory rhetoric, certainly feels more constructive than the ad-hominem, ball-kicking, hair-pulling internet brawls that have become the norm for many of us. But in our defense, because of the aforementioned strange cultural norm, the interwebs are the only outlet available to those of us who enjoy and see value in spirited debate and open political discourse.

Now I may very well be deluding myself. My call yesterday might have been utterly meaningless in the scheme of things. But I don’t see how it could have been any more meaningless than getting in juvenile(ish) pissing matches with complete strangers online. The online thing has its place and purpose and I won’t deny that. But in theory, this democratic republic of ours affords some actual say and power to us individual citizens, and that power is not being put to any kind of meaningful use by simply yelling at people we disagree with online. There is probably not a single one of us who does not want change in some form and directing all of our political energy to the blogosphere will not do much to affect that change. In real life, calling someone a teahadist or libtard will do nothing but guarantee that other people will immediately discount you as an unreasonable extremist. If you want change, you do not want to be discounted. If you want to be able to persuade or inform your fellow citizens, you cannot come off as a blowhard. There will always be the real-life blowhards and they will always be the laughingstocks of everyone else.

I’m not sure what the moral of the story is here. I do know that I had a conversation with someone yesterday who was near someone in power, and we were/are on opposite ends of the political divide. We talked in specifics, in a reasonable manner, and listened to one another receptively and at a bare minimum my views were registered and acknowledged. My “voice was heard”, for whatever that is worth. I’m as cynical as the next guy but that style of discourse sure felt more constructive than the anonymous, online variety.

I’m familiar enough with history to know that social progress and positive change has always started from the ground up, with seemingly inconsequential people like you and me. Maybe the internet has, among other things, served as a kind of trap where otherwise politically active people who give a shit get stuck, instead of taking an approach that might have an actual impact. Just a thought.

The Mexican Fisherman

An American tourist was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked.

Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The tourist complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The Mexican replied, "Only a little while."

The tourist then asked, "Why didn't you stay out longer and catch more fish?"

The Mexican said, "With this I have more than enough to support my family's needs."

The tourist then asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

The Mexican fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life."

The tourist scoffed, " I can help you. You should spend more time fishing; and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat: With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor; eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You could leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles and eventually New York where you could run your ever-expanding enterprise."

The Mexican fisherman asked, "But, how long will this all take?"
The tourist replied, "15 to 20 years."

"But what then?" asked the Mexican.

The tourist laughed and said, "That's the best part. When the time is right you would sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions."

"Millions?...Then what?"

The American said, "Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos."

I came across this a few weeks ago and have been meaning to put it here, for my own reference if nothing else. This story elegantly illustrates one of the fundamental problems of the collective American psyche – the over-emphasis of material and financial “success”. More is always better. As one person put it: We live to work, they work to live.

One of the great things about America is that each individual is free to determine their own personal values and choose how they want to live their life. What’s so interesting is how little variation there actually is when it comes to those values and lifestyle choices. Our cookie cutter idea of success is so pervasive that the entire culture seems to be built around the acquisition of stuff and money. We express our unique, rugged individuality by pursuing the exact same goals as everyone else and conspicuously consuming the same products.

It’s worth noting that a population willing to work ever longer hours, sacrifice their personal relationships, time with family, and opportunities to pursue other areas of human development chasing this pre-packaged ideal, works out very conveniently for the ultra-wealthy business owner and executive class. In short, people who can never have enough make for great employees. The carrot and stick approach is a fabulous way to get the most out of your human capital. Sadly, it can easily be observed that even when people do achieve this very narrowly defined version of success they are still just as discontent as before, often even more so. This myth about what is supposed to make us happy and what we are supposed to be is probably one of the greater ills of our time.

My Top 5 Fiction Favorites

I recently finished reading two Charles Dickens novels and liked one of them so much that I thought to myself, “you know, this is easily in my top five favorite novels of all time”. That thought prompted the question of what exactly are my top five favorite works of fiction and the answer came so easily that it seemed significant enough to get on record. I like to do this sort of thing because it’s a given that preferences will change over time and it’s neat to look back years later and see what my tastes were at a particular phase of my life.

I’ve been an avid reader through most of my adult life but have always underestimated the value of fiction, being more concerned with history and fact and how the world works and why things are the way they are. You can go a long way towards that with non-fiction, assuming you do your homework and always try to get the background on the author’s motivation and agenda and what factors are involved with their particular point of view. Everyone is bullshitting you to some extent, just as you bullshit others and yourself to some degree. We can’t help it. But we can consider information that is presented to us with that in mind. The importance of this cannot be understated if you are truly interested in gaining an accurate view of the world.

But anyway…I’ve generally neglected fiction because I’ve been interested in learning about reality and practical things that I can apply in my own life. It’s only been over the last few years that I have ventured off into the wide, wonderful world of novels. And in doing so I’ve come to realize you can learn a tremendous amount from them also. Instead of facts and figures you learn about the human condition and the limitless scope of human creativity and imagination. Non-fiction can make you smart but fiction can make you wise. Personally I have come to value wisdom over intelligence.


So without any further ado here are my top five favorite fiction works (in order):

1. Jitterbug Perfume – Tom Robbins
2. Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
3. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
4. Island – Aldous Huxley
5. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy – J.R.R. Tolkien


This, of course, is subject to change and the number five was totally arbitrary.

Maybe next time I’ll do top ten.

Global Mourning

I recently found myself in a discussion about global warming, which is something I will only do with individuals who are least nominally capable of grappling with objective reality. On topics such as this that limits my prospects considerably.

The conversation went through the typical motions and concluded with my associate making a statement along the lines of: The American people are hostile to government action that addresses global warming because they know it will increase their costs at the pump and quite frankly, many wouldn’t be able to afford it.

Prior to the above statement I had been expressing my amusement and semi-bewilderment that the majority of the public had been convinced to believe something contrary to the conclusions of legitimate and rigorous scientific findings.
My associate’s retort was a valid one and we both commented on how common it was for individuals to be selectively skeptical of medical findings that interfere with lifestyle habits they are strongly attached to, downplaying the risks of smoking, eating Big Macs, or whatever.

This is all well and good and I appreciate and agree with the point that was made, but my objection lies not so much with my fellow Americans being reluctant to pay higher gas prices, but rather with the fact that they have been convinced that there are no risks associated with that choice; that “global warming is a hoax” or that it is a hotly debated topic within the scientific community. My problem is with the multi-billion dollar public relations campaign being waged by the most powerful corporations on Earth to sow doubt and skepticism, and generally manipulate opinion in the same cynical fashion that had tobacco industry funded doctors publishing reports telling us that not only was smoking not bad for you, it actually had positive health benefits. The parallels between the “global warming is a hoax” and “smoking has no harmful health effects” campaigns are striking. Both are cases of incredibly powerful industries doing damage control when overwhelming evidence starts to show that their product is harming human beings.

That Americans want to protect their pocketbook against higher gas prices is understandable and they cannot be faulted for that. But allowing themselves to be manipulated on such a mass scale to be “skeptical” of conclusions reached by over 90% of the experts in that field, while gullibly swallowing propaganda fed to them by oil companies is pathologically stupid. It’s unforgiveable.


The media presents the debate as if there are somehow two equal opposing sides. That the assertions of corporate-owned right wing politicians and television pundits, along with a few oil company funded “studies”, are the equivalent of the overwhelming, worldwide, scientific consensus on the topic. Given that no entity on Earth – with the exception of Wal Mart – rakes in more revenue than the five major energy corporations, and that the advertising dollars from these companies is staggering, perhaps it’s at least explainable (though by no means acceptable) that the media so complicit in this mass ignorance.

It’s true that most Americans get their information about the outside world from watching television and don’t have the time to do in-depth research on all of the issues of the day. But this is a potentially tragic situation, and one that does not do the collective intellect of the American public justice.

I would submit that given the opportunity to make a truly informed decision between lower gas prices now and taking action to reduce the consequences that science tells us will result from not lowering our carbon emissions, the result would be different than what we are now seeing.

If the same discipline that brought us cell phones, modern medicine, and space travel is telling us that there are very real and likely catastrophic environmental costs associated with continuing to burn fossil fuels at the current pace, those costs should be reflected in the price at the pump. Otherwise the market, that Hallowed Deity, is grossly distorted. And if the public was more informed as to how our wars in the Middle East and the so called war on terror are directly related to oil, they would realize that those costs should also factor in to their price at the pump.

The truth is that gas prices in the US are artificially low and this is solely the result of the power wielded by the energy corporations. Yes, this gives the illusion of being easier on the pocketbooks of American consumers, but the true cost is eventually paid one way or another. That may take the form of trillion dollar wars that costs lives in addition to taxpayer dollars, or environmental catastrophes with costs that we may not yet be able to comprehend but would be psychotic not to consider. By the time we begin to understand those costs it will probably be too late, and future generations will look back on us a society of gullible, short-sighted dupes that were either too selfish or too stupid to confront reality and make the necessary but difficult changes that could have prevented such a tragic predicament.