Who's to blame for this mess?

Blaming doesn't even make sense.

I'm inspired to think this by a long article that hit my inbox this morning about who's responsible for the Euromess.  Googled "who's to blame" and got almost 6 million hits.  Six million.  Let's see, what failures are being examined?  The euro, the supercommittee, the great Gulf Oil spill, Nickelodeon's loss of ratings . . . everything but Who put jam on the cat?

The idea that some Wun Giant is to blame for giant things like this doesn't make sense in the light of our interdependence.  A great many actions culminated in that oil spill, including, I am afraid, my own reckless use of fossil fuel flying places in airplanes just for fun, drying clothes in a dryer, flicking on light switches.  I was a smaller contributor perhaps than a manager who decided some problem on the oil platform could be ignored, but I added to it.  Then there is the large diffuse problem of human nature and behavior.

The denotation of blame is to assign responsibility.  But it nests with words that assign judgement, like culpability, guilt, reproach, fault.   And what happens when you point a finger?  You have a war.  You have sides, someone saying "I didn't do it, Sammy did!  He did it!  You always blame me.  It isn't fair."  This is a pretty good translation of American political talk today.

I am sensitive to this issue because it takes place on the small scale of our lives.  I was the scapegoat in my family, courtesy of my father. There is an odd mechanism there, in which all the pain and distrust of an alcoholic family is laid at the doorstep of The Wun.  This is similar to sacrificing a goat to God to wash away our sins, a tradition found in some societies. 

What is the problem? The karma created by our actions is not washed away.  To restate: You don't get away with nothing.  It's easy to see how harmful the blame game is in a family - if the whole problem is Billy, nobody looks at their own behavior.  And if nations or politicians put their energy into blaming the other, we have gridlock.  The only way to move ahead is to ask, What are the causes? * To assume a nonblaming attitude.

This tempts me to go to the many finite causes of unemployment, such as doctors buying expensive software to answer and make phone calls, so they can fire the people who used to do that.  Or to climate change - public places cooling the air in summer down to 68 (the guys in suits are comfortable that way).  These things are matters of individual choice.  It gets subtle.  Fixing it is not about blame or exculpation, but about looking at reality.  Reality.  And that means looking fairly at our own part in this mess.
~~~~~~~

* Though you can never really untangle the causes.  Maybe the way to move forward is to ask, What needs to be done here?  or What can I do?

Folk Songs

I've been gathering songs I still love, songs that occur to me at times - most of them pre-rock from the fifties and folk songs, and so many of them speak the dharma - the truth, reality.  Above, "So long, it's been good to know you," sung by Woody Guthrie.  It's the Library of Congress recording, accompanied by photographs from the WPA, which are now available on a huge database.  If you have never seen these, prepare to get tears in your eyes.

It's interesting to me how the first batch of songs that have come to me (my playlist is here) are about the despair of the poor, starting with Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Sixteen Tons."  Music goes past just words and touches the heart, the whole body, the source of rhythm.  I have to figure out how to get playing my guitar again.

The Problem the Automakers Can't Solve

[car of my youthful dreams]

In a word, cars are too good now.

The Big Three bailout is so important that David Leonhardt’s column is page one news today in the NY Times (“$73 an Hour: Adding It Up”). Here’s the statement that grabbed my attention:

The real problem is that many people don’t want to buy the cars that Detroit makes.

It is true, and fascinating, that for some decades now, most of us have not acted in our own self-interest. Daily there is new evidence that our behavior, including spending and saving, is nudged by forces unseen. That fact does not surprise the ad agencies. They always sold cars on the basis of appeals to our fantasies of power and freedom and joy, of being someone by virtue of having the biggest, shiniest machine in the neighborhood.

Nevertheless, you couldn’t help but notice that your Honda or Toyota, decently maintained, would run reliably for a long, long time. That’s what a lot of people bought. And that’s what they’ll keep. This is going to add to the Detroit automakers’ problem. They won’t get me to buy a new car, even if they start making good cars, because I don’t need one. My Civic runs great. So does Tom’s Odyssey.

Need vs. want. We keep learning to distinguish. Those of us in the pre-Boomer generations can only be amused when columnists earnestly advise working people to pack lunch (that would be, those who still have work). This advice has been in the Times not once, but twice this week. It's a switch from their usual coverage of how to eat out cheap, that is, for less than $100. In a way, things are looking up.

Christmas in Rehab

It occurs to me this morning that what happened to "the consumer economy" was that everyone sobered up and realized we've made an awful mess of our lives. The economy is looking like a holding tank for drunks. Continuing with the analogy, I wondered whether thinking about the present task as a recovery program can help us get somewhere with this mess.

Recovery from any addiction starts with that glimpse of stark reality known as "hitting bottom." I like Dante's description in The Inferno of waking up to find yourself in a dark wood. Recovery programs often help reinforce this realization by encouraging people to testify graphically to just exactly how awful they were. How awful were we as a nation? Consider Christmas.

What a burden it had become! Long shopping lists, waiting impatiently for other people to do the wrapping that was once fun. Obligatory parties. Pre-decorated artificial trees. Disappointment. Something had happened to a holiday that once featured hand-signed cards and cookies made from scratch, and handmade gifts and cherished traditional ornaments. All those things were now purchased by people who also bought storage containers and closet organizers, because we already had more stuff than we could handle.

One horrible Christmas years ago (before I sobered up on this matter) I sat with relatives and watched a little girl literally stagger with tiredness, opening hundreds of dollars worth of Barbie paraphernalia, all bought on credit by grandparents who were going to declare bankruptcy after the holidays. A favored first grandchild, she had been opening gifts all day long, and the evening before. She was only three, but she knew she was supposed to be pleased with every pink outfit that emerged from the recklessly torn paper. She kept trying to smile and do what people told her: here's the remote, you can run the convertible! Blindly, she punched the buttons. Put Barbie in the car! She tried.

Tomorrow the bad news about retail is going to be official; people did shop on Black Friday, violently in fact, but they bought only bargains. That wasn't the idea. Retailers can't afford to have people shop like that. The idea was to lure you into the store with a loss leader (something reasonably priced) and have you exultently fill your cart with other, high-priced stuff. It's looking like the November retail figures will be more sobering news as far as the stock market is concerned, but maybe it's good pain, really.

I notice that my neighborhood is far less illuminated this year than in the past. We ourselves used to string old-fashioned colored lights on one of the pines at the edge of the ravine, but that tree is almost dead, with the climate change. And we figured out that those lights were real energy hogs.

It's okay. The ravine is beautiful as it stands. Maybe Christmas can be beautiful too, can be about peace on earth. What we were doing was beginning to seem garish, inappropriate, tiring and, like getting drunk, not really much fun the morning after.

OMG, vampire phenomenon totally explained

I did not spend 23 years getting educated without learning how to talk about books I won't read and movies I refuse to see. The latest such movie is Twilight, which has not only teen-age girls, but some Moms (as distinguished from Mothers) lining up at midnight in matching tee-shirts and squealing with glee when the clerk takes the tarp off the stack of novels.

What is surprising about this? The vampire novels of Anne Rice have been solid bestsellers for many years. In general, the vampire myth falls in line with the romance novel: an innocent girl is swept away by the allure of a clearly dangerous guy. Recognize Wuthering Heights? An anthropologist studying the culture would suggest that these stories mirror the submission expected of women, and make it much more glamorous than actual ordinary oppression and domestic abuse.

It gets worse. These stories train girls to see masochism (danger, getting hurt) as sexy. I really recommend your kids stick with Harry Potter. Or is that old economy? The question unfolds another line of enquiry -- is this phenomenon in some oblique way actually about what the wealthy have done to the rest of us?

The picture (from the film) suggests that he is longing to see her bare neck. Maybe the neck (modestly concealed) will be the next erotic zone. A refreshing idea. I, for one, have lots of scarves.

I Can't Find my Cows

I like to begin my day with a smooth cup of Fair Trade coffee with cream, and a bitter dose of the latest financial news and opinion.

The reason I care about the economy is that we saved some money during our working years. Like almost everyone else, we grew to expect a certain useful return from the stock market to supplement our pensions. This was important to us because we were both disabled by chronic illness before we had expected to retire. And we have high medical bills.

Each morning now, I see more and more financial authorities predicting a very long, deep recession. What that may mean for us is that our wealth will grow more slowly than we thought, maybe not even keep pace with inflation. We are cutting back in many ways so we can afford to stay in the house we love.

All this uncertainty got me thinking about an ancient story about the burden of ownership. (Parenthetically, let me remark that it doesn't matter if a story happened, as long as it is true.)

In the story, the Buddha is traveling with some monks. Maybe they are just doing the routine daily begging for food. In the ancient tradition, monks take a vow of poverty, own nothing perhaps but one robe, one bowl. In theory, at least, donating food to those who were dedicated to the spiritual life was considered a privilege and a blessing.

The group is sitting by the roadside - one of those spiritual crossroads, maybe - resting, when a layman comes rushing up in a terrible state of anxiety.

The Buddha asks, "Can I help?"

The man says, "I can't find my cows! This morning I found my fence had broken down, and all my cows escaped. Now I can't find them anywhere! Have you seen them?" This is in an economy where your wealth is your cows.

The Buddha promises to keep his eyes open, and the frantic man rushes on. Everyone sits silent for a while, thinking. Chattering is frowned upon in the monastic tradition.

At last the Buddha smiles and says, "Monks, think how fortunate we are, you and I." He gestures at the fields, mountains, sky that surround them. "You and I, we have nothing to worry about. We don't own any cows!"

What it is

This photo, one of mine, does not have an obvious connection to my topic today. I titled it "improbable sunset," thinking of my sister-in-law Diane's comment that sunset is often so gorgeous that if you painted exactly what you saw, it would look patently artificial. This is a real sunset, untouched, and viewed from an ordinary spot, a parking lot, as you can see.

A contrarian thinker, Edward Hadas, writes today in the NY Times, ". . . in comparison to real human calamities---natural disasters, epidemics and wars---messed up markets aren't a big deal."

He is right about that, and it's a good perspective. The fact is, if the house burns down and you manage to get out with the cat, you will be very grateful just to be alive. Granting that, we need to be careful about minimizing the probable effect of what's happening on our own small lives. For those who don't have much in the way of investments, it may all seem irrelevant. So far.

What's happening? The consumer economy has died. The death bell of No More Easy Credit is continuously tolling. Sometimes it is obvious; it tolls over the body of the sexy, crazy American automobile industry, for example. Whoops, no one saved money to buy the next car, you could always get a loan and cash back too; now you can't even get a loan. If you do have enough cash to buy a car, you don't want a gas hog, having seen what the price of gas can do. Auto dealerships with row after row of big, shiny SUV's are closing all over the country. General Motors---can you believe it?---is in big trouble. It is affecting every economy on the globe.

But some of it is yet to become obvious, the part about you. We're all in this together. The news will go something like this . . .

Shoppers spend less on groceries, buy fewer prepared foods, eat out less, start choosing the cheaper entrees. That means the checker at Giant Eagle and the guy at MacDonald's are going to be let go, along with the waiter at the sit-down restaurant, the dishwasher there, the guy who does valet parking. The restaurant begins to cut corners, stops buying produce from the local organic gardener, say.

Every job lost means governments bring in less revenue. Taxes, that is. On the local level those taxes have been supporting the infrastructure of civilized life: police, fire, road maintenance, sewer and water. Then there's the second tier of "essential services:" the schools, the parks, the library, the arts. When there isn't enough money for all that, what do you think will be cut? Whose job?

Then there are the nonprofits, including churches, which provide another level of services that maintain the social order. They are already seeing the electric bill go up; most were already operating on pared budgets. If church members lose their jobs, will they pay their pledge to the church or NPR or The Nature Conservancy? Not if it's pay that or buy groceries.

The message is not Be Very Afraid---fear is not a very good guide. The message is, be realistic. While this is not a calamity, it is much more than a speedbump on the hilarious theme park ride we've been on, which now (here's the connection) looks as improbable as the sunset in my photograph.

This is a big fall. We will land in a different economy. As the shock waves hit every home, every city, the experience is going to be not unlike the alcoholic's "hitting bottom." It had to happen to get us into recovery. And whatever anyone tells you, recovery's not a party.

Enough

These are sobering times. The party’s over. But it was a party we found exhausting. All along this wild ride of greed and consumption, some of us kept turning toward simplicity and responsible living, tried to create space in our lives.

I wrote this poem in 2000, thinking about Buy Nothing Day. The theme that year was “Enough!”

In America, the Friday after Thanksgiving had become traditionally a day of hectic consumption, huge sales, the malls jammed, people trying to “get their Christmas shopping done.” (An odd way to see giving, isn’t it?)

Those of us who observed Buy Nothing Day simply pledged not to spend any money that day. Sounds simple, but it wasn’t. You’d be baking and run out of sugar and have to borrow a cup from a neighbor, like in the old days, when folks just didn’t “run to the store.” You’d get bored, but couldn’t go to a movie. You had to make sure you had gas in the car.

This poem sprang off that experience to imagine a simpler and more satisfying life that would be in many ways a throwback to the world of my childhood at its best. In the poem, I assumed people would choose this life. Instead, the busy consumer economy/lifestyle has toppled all around us. Yet, perhaps we will find new satisfactions in a more down-to-earth way of living.


Enough
by Jeanne Desy

One year, children, everyone got fed up . . .
and stopped buying.
Nobody went to the mall that year,
nobody went to WalMart or
ate fast food or frozen pizza,
flew on a plane, bought a CD.
The economy came to a halt.

Unemployment rose to 50 percent.
The people who liked to work found work
and the rest stayed home with the kids.
Everyone planted gardens,
and cooked their own food
and cleaned their own houses,
everyone did their own laundry,
washed their own cars in the summer twilight.
People wore slippers around the house.

The market declined for designer shoes,
theme parks and day care, acrylic nails
and Prozac, cellphones and pagers.
Ringing and beeping tapered off, and
the air was spacious and quiet.
Nobody played the lottery, couldn’t afford to,
and no one bought guns.
There was not much to steal anymore,
and not much to fight over now.
Everyone had enough to eat
and a roof over their heads.
That seemed to be what mattered.

The tax base eroded—there was
no money for missiles now, no money for war.
Young men stayed home and tended gardens.
Old men designed wonderful toys,
grandmas made biscuits and everyone learned to sew.
Happiness blossomed, addictions declined,
no money for drugs now, anyway nothing to escape.
People grew their own catnip and drank tea
made with mint from their gardens,
and ate nastursiums and heirloom tomatoes.

Without ads, the TV went quiet.
There were no celebrities now,
everyone made their own music
with home-made drums and ancient guitars,
and told the old stories and wrote poems
with pencil on paper and read them out loud
over the breakfast table. Factories closed.

The planet cooled, the air cleared.
You could see the stars.
Wildflowers grew where there had been lawns,
rabbits came back to the yard, and foxes and owls.
The old folks sat on porches with dogs at their feet,
and shelled peas. Barefoot women
hung sheets to dry in the sun.
Everyone just took care of themselves
and each other, and
no one was rich anymore, so no one felt poor.
Now that there wasn’t so much,
there was more than enough.

© Jeanne Desy 2000

You're in the wrong business

. . . if you didn't get one of these for your birthday -- a tiger cub. Vladimir Putin did. Really. That's how I came by the picture.

And that's about all the fun news I could wring out of this day, on which we closely examined our retirement savings portfolio. Oh, okay, maybe a little stock market joke stolen from my friend Tom:

What with all the economic news, I slept like a baby last night. Woke up every hour crying.