General Motors, perhaps the greatest symbol of American manufacturing and business, filed for bankruptcy this morning amid a firestorm of massive debt, union disagreements, federal bailouts and gross mismanagement. A company whose stock was once synonymous with risk-free investing has vanished from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, its shining blue and chrome nameplate now tarnished, hanging crooked above the wreckage of a vacant factory in middle America. In many ways, a bittersweet victory for the grand theory of systemicide.
It seems fitting on this occasion of corporate failure to release to the world the Systemicide principles of un-management: a manifesto of business that casts aside traditional notions of order and hierachy in favor of an organic, natural, and reasonable code of human productivity that reflects a desire to create a happy, sustainable, and hyper-productive workplace.
- Divide the work calendar into manageable chunks.
People like university schedules because they are comprised of finite units with tangible outcomes and a foreseeable ending. Upon completion, they know that they will have sufficient leisure time to recharge their intellectual curiosity, to reflect upon what they have learned, and to celebrate other, often more social, aspects of their lives. This seems to create an environment where people are motivated to produce interesting and useful work, where they can see the rewards of that work, and where those rewards are directly tied to the quality that work. If a student finishes a particularly difficult semester and is rewarded with exemplary marks, the positive reinforcement is immediate and gratifying. The student will take the skills and strategies learned during that semester and identify ways to leverage them toward further success. Conversely, a student whose grades have suffered because of faulty or inefficient strategies is likely to identify the causes of poor performance and work to improve them in the future. This assumes, of course, that the student is interested in receiving the reward of good grades. Though this may not always be the case in a university setting, when we replace academic success in the form of grades with financial success in the form of monetary compensation, we find that the person in question will almost always be interested in the reward.
Why the business community has chosen to abandon this construct in favor of a never-ending cycle of homogeneous toil makes little sense to the manager interested in maximizing the potential and sustainability of his employees' efforts. Just like a university schedule, the business calendar should be divided into manageable chunks with substantial scheduled leisure time between them. While the exact structure of the calendar will undoubtedly vary based on the type of enterprise, the ideal structure is four quarters with at least two weeks of time off between them. While the thought of giving employees eight weeks off will cause most American managers' heads to explode, I'd be willing to bet that such a schedule would yield more productivity than the traditional American schedule. With strategic goals set for each quarter, projects that require completion within specific timeframes, and evaluations at the conclusion of each time chunk, employees are naturally incentivized to work hard, meet deadlines, and care about performance.
- Pay for performance, not time.
This one seems so simple, and yet it may be the most grossly misunderstood principle of productivity. If you pay people for time, the are naturally inclined to work slower. This lowers the effort they need o expend while at the same time increasing the amount of compensation they receive. Creating a system that rewards employees for producing less lowers profits, bores employees, stagnates growth, and stifles innovation.
This doesn't mean that employees need to be paid like contract workers who receive compensation only when they finish a project - that arrangement may encourage employees to rush through projects in order to buy groceries for the week, degrading the quality of the finished product even if more projects are accomplished in a given time. It simply means that you let employees go home when they're done. In almost all work situations, some days are lighter than others. Making employees stay until an arbitrary time won't increase productivity. More often than not, peer pressure will dictate when employees head home anyways. A focused, productive, and efficient day of work should be rewarded with an early dismissal, not penalized by an arbitrary chronology. Creating a culture where work is done in teams will serve to organically eliminate slackers, or at least to highlight their incompetence. When they make themselves visible, under-performers should be fired immediately. No performance, no pay.
- Incentivize ownership and reward success
The more connected people feel to their work, the better their work will be. Whenever possible, give employees the chance to take ownership over a task or project. In particular, allow junior employees to take leadership positions on projects that include senior employees. This serves several distinct purposes. First, it encourages junior employees to work hard because they won't want to appear incompetent in front of their higher-ups. Second, it gives the most talented employees a chance to separate themselves from the pack organically, without the divisive and poisonous effects of traditional hierarchical promotion. Third, it forces managers and senior employees to understand the strengths and weaknesses of junior team members, allows them to leverage their experience at all levels of the organization, and fosters an environment in which everyone, regardless of rank, is continually pushed to improve their skills. Lastly, it allows young, ambitious employees to feel as if every project is a new chance for success. Those who take ownership of projects that turn out to be exceptionally successful should be rewarded financially, optimally with a fixed percentage of revenue generated by their work. Rewarding success with money is important, but the reward must be directly proportional to success. Adherence to that simple rule of bonuses might have saved more than one Wall Street hegemon.
- Don't fight the seasons.
Despite a highly-technical and impeccably-engineered work space, and despite America's insistence on an anti-natural economy, humans are fundamentally affected by the seasons. Daylight savings time was a step in the right direction, but businesses can do even more to reflect these seasonal changes to keep their employees happy and productive. Shifting hours back in the winter time and forward in the summer (say starting at 10:30 in the dead of winter and 6:30 in the heat of summer)makes perfect sense from a physiological standpoint. Before the advent of the industrial revolution, this took place naturally - the sunrise would dictate the start of the work day. Recreating this cycle attaches people to the natural world, allows them to spend daylight hours with their friends and families when the weather is nice, and breaks up the mental drudgery that and monotonous delirium that accompanies most corporate schedules.
The type of work being done can also be segmented by season. Save the more clerical, dense, and grind-it-out tasks for the winter, when distractions are fewer, and utilize the spring and summer months for the more creative, innovative, and hands-on projects. Strategy and planning are best held off until the fall, when the days get shorter and humans are naturally prone to prudence and practicality. The human animal has been around much longer than the modern workplace, so why not change the latter to suit the former, instead of trying to reverse three million years of evolution?
- Engage and leverage your employees' other interests.
This doesn't mean simply encouraging them to read books in their free time, nor does it mean that blatantly unrelated tasks should be tolerated during work. Instead, employees should be prompted to find ways their outside interests can be related to their professional lives. Is World of Warcraft related to Financial Accounting? Probably not. But the expansion of virtual communities like W.O.W. and the market for virtual goods certainly is. How do we calculate inventory of virtual goods? What happens to the cash cycle when no physical product exists? Is computer software an asset, or a cost? And how does one calculate the liability of a flaming lava sword?
Even if they appear unrelated to core products or services, employees' interests can provide new and refreshing contexts within which to explore concepts and ideas that an organization encounters every day. Whether it's W.O.W., whitewater kayaking, knitting, or fiction writing, chances are there's a lesson or mantra that can be applied to whatever business you're in.
Ask employees to think about and look for these connections, however vague they may seem, and encourage them to present these 'case studies' of sorts, to their employees. Aside from getting them to think outside the box, it encourages team bonding and can be a nice way to break up a busy work week. And talking about what makes them happy makes people happy.
- Don't confuse ability with experience.
One is learned, one is innate. It's impossible to say which is more important, and valuable arguments can be made in favor of either. But they are distinct traits to be recognized and separated when possible. In sports, the difference between the two is easy to recognize. Sometimes a young superstar will blaze past an experienced defender on his way to the goal, or the endzone, or the basket. Other times, the experienced defender will take a better angle, or make a craftier play, and nullify the superior ability of his younger counterpart. Millions of examples of both instances exist. The winner is determined by circumstance, the equalizer. In business, the two are sometimes harder to differentiate. Experience can be the key to crafting a successful, stable deal, or finishing a project on time and on budget. Or it can be the blinders that prevent a manager from seeing the new and innovative methods his competitors are employing. Ability can be the incalculable intangible that pushes an stagnant company into the stratosphere, or it can be the hubris than plunges as sustainable one into debt.
The important thing is to realize that past experience doesn't always translate into future success, just as inexperience doesn't necessarily translate into certain failure. As with the sports, the results are largely situational. But remember, ability only gets experience when given the chance.
In retrospect, perhaps GM should have relied a little more on ability and a little less on experience. In the end, reliance on the tried and true formula turned out to be its failure. And as with the banks, it has taken a crisis to get the machine to stop moving long enough to assess its overall health. This is why the system is prone to crisis. Predisposed to catastrophe. Predestined to period failure. The successful and sustainable business of the future must take the time to pump the brakes and change the oil every few months. Just like the natural world in which it exists, it must recognize that seasons come and go, that cycles begin and end, and that value is neither created nor destroyed, but simply changes form.
Showing posts with label system. Show all posts
Showing posts with label system. Show all posts
Monday, June 1, 2009
Sunday, May 25, 2008
An Ode To The Loop, 25 G, and the Legendary P
When we spoke it came out in waves, push after push of thought and expression without a hint of cynicism, critics of our world from the inside out. there was a distinct feeling that we were on the brink of something real, a constant aching for the engines of social change. there was no real explanation for our feelings - we had it all - but there was a strange and persistent twinge inside each of us, a splinter in our collective side that reminded us, somehow, of that which we could not account for. there were days ahead that we could not predict, and we were wary of the system they might place us in. the shackles of adulthood we becoming real, just as we were beginning to understand the expansive freedom of youth. so, naturally, we threw them aside with force and waded deeper into our lives, determined to emerge unscathed, as if walking through a waterfall dry.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
To Retrofit or Rebuild
In 1960, there were slightly more than three billion people living on planet Earth. In less than fifty years, that population has more than doubled. The size of the Earth and its bank of resources, of course, has not experienced such remarkable growth. This fundamental conundrum presents our species with a challenge that would doom any other creature we know of to population decline and near-certain extinction: too many people, not enough food.
Yet because our species has been given the power of the rational mind and the ability to anticipate the future we may be able to accomplish in the impossible, turn back the clock on our collective doom, and salvage a pattern of existence for our species that is communal, sustainable, and healthy. The key word, however, is may. Our planet is wounded, the victim of an overaggressive carnivore species who has battered its fragile systems, the offenses myriad and scattered like so many bits of destructive shrapnel. Each of these wounds, the isolated environmental abuses we see mounting in size and scope each day, deserve our dedication attention. But as with a slashed artery, attending to these before stopping the bleeding seems to skip past unwise toward downright foolish.
The task is, by nature, too broad, too basic, too general. It will not be accomplished by traditional means, must not be approached as other problems have been, for one simple reason. The methods we have of solving international dilemmas – depression, world war, nuclear standoff, genocide – are incompatible with the environmental emergency we face today. The basis for international law and regulation, the basis from which we derive a system of global capitalization, and the basis for most of our social institutions (perhaps with the interesting exception of spiritual ones) is predicated on a paradigm of exploitation, use-value, and profit. These institutions and practices not only encourage environmental degradation; they cannot survive without it. How can we solve problems from within the very system that mandated their existence?
This view does not mean that the entire system of regulation, distribution, and domination must be torn down in some sort of grand expression of rebellious anarchy, nor does it mean that such measure are entirely unwarranted. Everything that can be done from within must be tried, and with haste. But it must be understood that ultimately these solutions will fail unless they are overwhelmed in the reasonably near future by a shift in mindset that transcends all systems of power and classification, be they monetary, national, racial, gendered, or otherwise. There are ways to make the current system more efficient, but as with retrofitting and existing building or machine, nothing can replace that gains to be made by rethinking the entire process from the ground up. What follows is an examination of some of the most successful attempts at piecemeal reform, what I’ll call retrofitting capitalism, and a few ideas for how to start fresh where and when we get the chance, called building a new humanism.
Retrofitting Capitalism
There are several successful examples of how to make capitalism less detrimental to the environment or how to use market principles to mitigate the destruction. While some are more successful than others, they provide insight into the type of reform necessary in the short term as we struggle to shift toward a sustainable human lifestyle.
The first and perhaps most appealing is the internalizing of externalities, most notably in the form of a carbon tax but extending to other reforms like higher tariffs on imports and more emphasis on transportation expenses passed on to the consumer. Because capitalism essentially fails to compute the worth of natural resources, the price point of the goods they are used for rarely reflects their actual human value. Not only does this encourage exploitation of resources at a grand scale, it promotes processes that create waste, what businessman Ray Anderson calls “throughput” – that portion of resources which is used but creates no value. Internalizing the cost of this throughput would mean higher production costs and higher prices at the purchase point – a boon to the consumer and producer alike. But as profits decrease capitalism can become our ally; firms will find ways to become more efficient and waste less or they will perish, victims of perfect competition. As the European Union’s carbon taxes and trading programs extend in scope and size, businesses are become increasingly aware of their CO2 emissions, as they would be any other increase in total costs. While the system has been only mildly successful at achieving significant reductions in total emissions (more credits have been allocated than necessary) , the ability to implement and enforce a such a system has been effectively proven. Excellent results are certainly possible within this approach, but they will be dependent still on the ability of the market to police itself through government regulation and enforcement. While providing the possibility for immediate reforms the ultimate effectiveness of the a cap and trade system is inherently limited because it seeks only to curtail current practices and makes little effort to create new ones. We must, wherever possible, strive to create change that is holistic and interdisciplinary, making new roads instead of retooling old ones.
Building a New Humanism
When we are presented with opportunities redefine the way we live in the world as a set of sustainable relationships with our environments and each other, we must understand how large and valuable the opportunities for wholesale change in lifestyle and process can be. We are given few chances to start fresh and must capitalize on them if we want a noticeable redemption of the natural environment.
The physical construction of new buildings, communities, and cities is perhaps the most obvious arena to enact these kinds of wholesale change, and yet it may also be the most effective and important way to begin a larger movement. As demographics continue to shift toward urban living arrangements and populations continue to grow, the way we structure our built spaces will have enormous repercussions for our physical and social patterns of behavior, our mental and spiritual relationship with the natural environment, and the size and type of impression our species leaves on the planet with each passing generation. If we can structure our living spaces to reflect a worldview and lifestyle that is sustainable, healthy, and integrated with our natural surroundings, the results can be enormous. The concept, though it may sound flighty and optimistic, is far from abstract.
The technology exists to create buildings that not only do less harm to the environment, but none at all. In fact, we have found the techniques to build homes and offices that actually create energy surpluses that can be fed back into the main grid. Greenhouse and hydroponic technology allows the cultivation of produce at latitudes and seasons previously unconscionable. A wide of array of environmentally friendly products and services are now available for construction and development projects, their costs decreasing every day. In simple terms, the opportunity for a sustainable future is on the table in front of us, we must use every tool we can find to make it a reality.
New buildings alone will not be enough – of that much we can be certain. By structuring built environments in ways that promote community, activity, and connection with natural elements, however, we can hope to move beyond physical change to social change. Imagine an inner city neighborhood in Calcutta or Hong Kong or New York. Imagine the same city with buildings that allow light to filter into the street, a park every two blocks, a solar bank and turbine on every roof next to a community garden. Imagine a passive heating and cooling system that allows fresh air naturally into the buildings’ corridors and common areas. Imagine terraces with plants, wide streets with bike lanes and a zero-emissions system of public transit, and imagine universal access to the rivers, lakes, parks, and shorefronts that a sustainable lifestyle values and protects. These are changes that can be made now, with each new building and community we construct. To choose otherwise – and make no mistake, it is our choice – is a fatal mistake.
We have reached a precipice, a point from which we can see two options and must decide for ourselves. We have the resources, the technology, and reasonable judgment to envision, plan, design, and build a new humanism that puts people ahead of profit, understands that nature and man will always be intrinsically linked, and pursues new and innovation solutions to complex problems. So far, however, we have chosen to follow a path that leads to expanding, accelerating destruction of the natural environment for capital gains – a pursuit of more for more’s sake that is fundamentally opposed to the reality of a finite planet. We can re-tool it, retrofit it, and slow it down with regulation, enforcement, subsidies, and the like. Yet until we are able to change our the pattern of our collective human habits, to realize the fundamentally integrated functioning of our species and its reliance on natural systems, we will be unable to rule out a catastrophic collapse, and eventually, extinction. If we are to survive, we must say goodbye to René Descartes, reconnecting the mind to the body and the body to the earth, once and for all.
Yet because our species has been given the power of the rational mind and the ability to anticipate the future we may be able to accomplish in the impossible, turn back the clock on our collective doom, and salvage a pattern of existence for our species that is communal, sustainable, and healthy. The key word, however, is may. Our planet is wounded, the victim of an overaggressive carnivore species who has battered its fragile systems, the offenses myriad and scattered like so many bits of destructive shrapnel. Each of these wounds, the isolated environmental abuses we see mounting in size and scope each day, deserve our dedication attention. But as with a slashed artery, attending to these before stopping the bleeding seems to skip past unwise toward downright foolish.
The task is, by nature, too broad, too basic, too general. It will not be accomplished by traditional means, must not be approached as other problems have been, for one simple reason. The methods we have of solving international dilemmas – depression, world war, nuclear standoff, genocide – are incompatible with the environmental emergency we face today. The basis for international law and regulation, the basis from which we derive a system of global capitalization, and the basis for most of our social institutions (perhaps with the interesting exception of spiritual ones) is predicated on a paradigm of exploitation, use-value, and profit. These institutions and practices not only encourage environmental degradation; they cannot survive without it. How can we solve problems from within the very system that mandated their existence?
This view does not mean that the entire system of regulation, distribution, and domination must be torn down in some sort of grand expression of rebellious anarchy, nor does it mean that such measure are entirely unwarranted. Everything that can be done from within must be tried, and with haste. But it must be understood that ultimately these solutions will fail unless they are overwhelmed in the reasonably near future by a shift in mindset that transcends all systems of power and classification, be they monetary, national, racial, gendered, or otherwise. There are ways to make the current system more efficient, but as with retrofitting and existing building or machine, nothing can replace that gains to be made by rethinking the entire process from the ground up. What follows is an examination of some of the most successful attempts at piecemeal reform, what I’ll call retrofitting capitalism, and a few ideas for how to start fresh where and when we get the chance, called building a new humanism.
Retrofitting Capitalism
There are several successful examples of how to make capitalism less detrimental to the environment or how to use market principles to mitigate the destruction. While some are more successful than others, they provide insight into the type of reform necessary in the short term as we struggle to shift toward a sustainable human lifestyle.
The first and perhaps most appealing is the internalizing of externalities, most notably in the form of a carbon tax but extending to other reforms like higher tariffs on imports and more emphasis on transportation expenses passed on to the consumer. Because capitalism essentially fails to compute the worth of natural resources, the price point of the goods they are used for rarely reflects their actual human value. Not only does this encourage exploitation of resources at a grand scale, it promotes processes that create waste, what businessman Ray Anderson calls “throughput” – that portion of resources which is used but creates no value. Internalizing the cost of this throughput would mean higher production costs and higher prices at the purchase point – a boon to the consumer and producer alike. But as profits decrease capitalism can become our ally; firms will find ways to become more efficient and waste less or they will perish, victims of perfect competition. As the European Union’s carbon taxes and trading programs extend in scope and size, businesses are become increasingly aware of their CO2 emissions, as they would be any other increase in total costs. While the system has been only mildly successful at achieving significant reductions in total emissions (more credits have been allocated than necessary) , the ability to implement and enforce a such a system has been effectively proven. Excellent results are certainly possible within this approach, but they will be dependent still on the ability of the market to police itself through government regulation and enforcement. While providing the possibility for immediate reforms the ultimate effectiveness of the a cap and trade system is inherently limited because it seeks only to curtail current practices and makes little effort to create new ones. We must, wherever possible, strive to create change that is holistic and interdisciplinary, making new roads instead of retooling old ones.
Building a New Humanism
When we are presented with opportunities redefine the way we live in the world as a set of sustainable relationships with our environments and each other, we must understand how large and valuable the opportunities for wholesale change in lifestyle and process can be. We are given few chances to start fresh and must capitalize on them if we want a noticeable redemption of the natural environment.
The physical construction of new buildings, communities, and cities is perhaps the most obvious arena to enact these kinds of wholesale change, and yet it may also be the most effective and important way to begin a larger movement. As demographics continue to shift toward urban living arrangements and populations continue to grow, the way we structure our built spaces will have enormous repercussions for our physical and social patterns of behavior, our mental and spiritual relationship with the natural environment, and the size and type of impression our species leaves on the planet with each passing generation. If we can structure our living spaces to reflect a worldview and lifestyle that is sustainable, healthy, and integrated with our natural surroundings, the results can be enormous. The concept, though it may sound flighty and optimistic, is far from abstract.
The technology exists to create buildings that not only do less harm to the environment, but none at all. In fact, we have found the techniques to build homes and offices that actually create energy surpluses that can be fed back into the main grid. Greenhouse and hydroponic technology allows the cultivation of produce at latitudes and seasons previously unconscionable. A wide of array of environmentally friendly products and services are now available for construction and development projects, their costs decreasing every day. In simple terms, the opportunity for a sustainable future is on the table in front of us, we must use every tool we can find to make it a reality.
New buildings alone will not be enough – of that much we can be certain. By structuring built environments in ways that promote community, activity, and connection with natural elements, however, we can hope to move beyond physical change to social change. Imagine an inner city neighborhood in Calcutta or Hong Kong or New York. Imagine the same city with buildings that allow light to filter into the street, a park every two blocks, a solar bank and turbine on every roof next to a community garden. Imagine a passive heating and cooling system that allows fresh air naturally into the buildings’ corridors and common areas. Imagine terraces with plants, wide streets with bike lanes and a zero-emissions system of public transit, and imagine universal access to the rivers, lakes, parks, and shorefronts that a sustainable lifestyle values and protects. These are changes that can be made now, with each new building and community we construct. To choose otherwise – and make no mistake, it is our choice – is a fatal mistake.
We have reached a precipice, a point from which we can see two options and must decide for ourselves. We have the resources, the technology, and reasonable judgment to envision, plan, design, and build a new humanism that puts people ahead of profit, understands that nature and man will always be intrinsically linked, and pursues new and innovation solutions to complex problems. So far, however, we have chosen to follow a path that leads to expanding, accelerating destruction of the natural environment for capital gains – a pursuit of more for more’s sake that is fundamentally opposed to the reality of a finite planet. We can re-tool it, retrofit it, and slow it down with regulation, enforcement, subsidies, and the like. Yet until we are able to change our the pattern of our collective human habits, to realize the fundamentally integrated functioning of our species and its reliance on natural systems, we will be unable to rule out a catastrophic collapse, and eventually, extinction. If we are to survive, we must say goodbye to René Descartes, reconnecting the mind to the body and the body to the earth, once and for all.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Why Hip-Hop Is Better Than Government
Spits straight, gains weight, won't take your claim, shit on your game, take aim at your will.
No, hip-hop won't hate, won't comiserate with these fools at the gates with these cats, straight house cats not wiling to go and see the results of their elite complicity, the ghettos full of kids left behind and junkies in a bind, sleepin' on the streets while the politicians' daughters win track meets.
Hip-hop can't classify, identify, indemnify the causes of the american poverty, the highs in white houses spitting lies at black faces, forgetting the truth about people in places, constantly avoiding all incriminating traces, denying different races play a role when the dark-skinned ones are the only ones that they stole.
Hip-hop won't judge and won't budge, holds deserved grudges and has its own judges, taking cases to street over soul-inspired beats, speaks to those who listen and listens to those that speak, evolves of the mind and never abandons the grind, working hard for effortless flows, from the cypher to the show, takes you as you come and may never let you go.
Hip-hop is the meditation of the mind, a divine contraception of ideas and reception, the confluence of lessons learned in long private sessions, with friends and L's moving in procession to the beat, the beat, the beat of impression that never preaches down to the masses but comes up with the grasses between the concrete blocks of the world that walks.
Hip-hop don't charge taxes, it relaxes, the body and mind at the same pace, sayin' grace to the pioneers of street lure and emcees of rap galore, spreading the rhetoric of a new asthetic in rhymes and sayin' fuck it to the times, fuck it to the lines of propaganda bullshit, fuck it to the last of this too long BUSH-shit, fuck it to the congress and courts that try to save, all they've done is re-enslave.
Hip-hop is better than government.
No, hip-hop won't hate, won't comiserate with these fools at the gates with these cats, straight house cats not wiling to go and see the results of their elite complicity, the ghettos full of kids left behind and junkies in a bind, sleepin' on the streets while the politicians' daughters win track meets.
Hip-hop can't classify, identify, indemnify the causes of the american poverty, the highs in white houses spitting lies at black faces, forgetting the truth about people in places, constantly avoiding all incriminating traces, denying different races play a role when the dark-skinned ones are the only ones that they stole.
Hip-hop won't judge and won't budge, holds deserved grudges and has its own judges, taking cases to street over soul-inspired beats, speaks to those who listen and listens to those that speak, evolves of the mind and never abandons the grind, working hard for effortless flows, from the cypher to the show, takes you as you come and may never let you go.
Hip-hop is the meditation of the mind, a divine contraception of ideas and reception, the confluence of lessons learned in long private sessions, with friends and L's moving in procession to the beat, the beat, the beat of impression that never preaches down to the masses but comes up with the grasses between the concrete blocks of the world that walks.
Hip-hop don't charge taxes, it relaxes, the body and mind at the same pace, sayin' grace to the pioneers of street lure and emcees of rap galore, spreading the rhetoric of a new asthetic in rhymes and sayin' fuck it to the times, fuck it to the lines of propaganda bullshit, fuck it to the last of this too long BUSH-shit, fuck it to the congress and courts that try to save, all they've done is re-enslave.
Hip-hop is better than government.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Banana Republicans
What would you say about a country whose GDP growth rate stands at 10.3%? Whose poverty rates have dropped by 10%? Whose leader has offered aid to minorities and those in poverty in foreign countries? Sounds like a good deal to me.
Now what would you say about a country who is stockpiling Soviet weapons and aircraft? Whose leader is regarded by some as the most dangerous and divisive pundit in the Western hemisphere? Who stages protests and speaks out vigorously against the most powerful country in the world?
Enter Hugo Chavez. Part revolutionary, part drama queen, part politician, the Venezuelan leader is both loved and loathed – but he rarely goes unnoticed. During President Bush’s recent visit to Latin America, Chavez made nearly as much news as the leader of the free world, staging demonstrations and events, often in close proximity to Bush’s, as a counterweight to the president’s rhetoric of human rights and strengthening relations with Latin America.
Of course, President Bush had nothing to say about Chavez, whose name he refuses to speak out loud. Chavez, who has taken to calling Bush “El Diablo” has been essentially erased from the president’s official language. After all, if you his name isn’t spoken, then he must not exist, right?
Unfortunately for the administration, Chavez does exist, and his voice is getting louder. Far from the criminal the Bush administration would like to portray him as, Chavez is the leading voice in a growing contingent of Latin American countries that are fed up with the dominance of American-based corporations in their native lands.
As most countries in Latin and South America continue to struggle to provide basic human needs for a large percentage of their citizens, the anti-poverty rhetoric of a corporate-heavy American policy becomes more and more transparent. The privatization of natural resources such as water, oil, natural gas, and (perhaps most famously) fruit has led to a trend of rising prices and constricting access for native citizens. But Chavez, working with other leaders, has begun to spread the rhetoric of change, relying on nationalism and anti-American sentiment to help incite a movement back toward national ownership.
Venezuela has nationalized its oil industry, one of the largest in the world, and it appears that others are following suit. Last year, Bolivia made the decision to nationalize its own natural gas reserves, and Colombia, despite outward statements that may suggest otherwise, has expanded production of cocoa, its largest cash crop.
But what makes Chavez and Venezuela unique is the oil. Unlike other third world leaders, Chavez is sitting on an enormous reserve of petroleum – that magic black substance the US seems to be willing to go to all ends of the earth to procure. What’s more, Venezuela remains the fourth largest importer of oil to the United States. So while the Bush administration can dismiss Chavez now as they dismiss all the others who denounce its policies, Chavez remains in control of a resource that becomes more valuable every day, especially to his gas-guzzling American opponents. It is his always ready and rarely mentioned trump card.
OIL
Last September, Chavez made a push to solidify his stance in the United States. Acting through Houston-based Citgo Corp. and in conjunction with Joe Kennedy’s Citizen’s Eneregy project, Chavez promised to provide Venezuelan oil at low cost to about 450,000 low-income families in the United States. Promoting the program at the United Nations General Assembly, he made strong remarks denouncing the consolidation of power in the highest office in the land. Responding to the claims of extremism often made by his American critics, Chavez had this to say: “The imperialists see extremists everywhere. It's not that we are extremists. It's that the world is waking up. It's waking up all over. And people are standing up.”
Yet the response to this seemingly benevolent act has run the gamut from praise to damnation, both from ordinary citizens and political figures. Arguing that the subsidies amount to nothing more than an attempt to curry favor in a disenfranchised demographic, his detractors have called for outright refusal of Venezuela. Supporters, on the other hand, praise Chavez for his ability to see human need ahead of financial gain.
Despite the contentiousness of the action, Venezuelan oil, subsidized or not, continues to pour into the United States. According to PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil firm, Venezuela plans to expand production to nearly 3.5 million barrels a day this year, with an estimated 50% of the total yield flowing directly into the United States.
“If discounted fuel from Venezuela is somehow unfit for the needy, the full-price Venezuela oil shouldn’t be enough for the cars, boats, jets and furnaces of the wealthy,” said Kennedy. In the U.S., where federal assistance for programs like Citizen’s Energy that provide low-cost heating fuel has been cut drastically during the Bush administration, the incentive for refusing Chavez’s oil seems low.
But in Alaska, another targeted location of CITGO’s low-cost oil initiative, some citizens are speaking out. Letters in the Anchorage Daily News express the sentiments from those who are less than grateful for the donation of Venezuelan oil. One resident called for those who accept the oil to “no longer be accepted as U.S. citizens.” Others aim for the heart, like Alexander Clark of Homer, Alaska: “There are many brave and proud rural Alaskans wearing the uniform of this country who are engaged in combat with the very enemy that Chavez supports. How proud of you will they be?”
Clark’s admonition is a common one, and the belief that Chavez is allied with destructive forces around the world is not entirely unfounded. He has developed relationships with both Syria and Iran and defended the rights to nuclear armament of the latter. He is widely known to revere Fidel Castro as a model of anti-American resistance, and was the sole world leader to visit Saddam Hussein in 1991. Though there appear to be no explicit links between Chavez and known terrorist organizations, the implications abound. Marked by dense vegetation and a lack of organized government presence, parts of Venezuela, especially those along the Colombian border, are suspected areas of “narco-terrorist” activity stemming from the production of cocaine and other narcotics. Despite the irony that these activities are fueled primarily by demand from the United States, these connections have prompted the U.S. State Department to label Venezuela a “liability” in the “international community’s fight against terrorism.”
Yet in the era of an administration that has used strangely similar language as a basis for the invasion and sanctioning of other resource-rich countries, the admonition bears little weight. The oil industry and its handmaidens in Washington have together created a rhetoric of terrorism against democracy, socialism against capitalism, extremism against determinism. In this light, Chavez seems only one of a multitude of targets of U.S. criticism.
“If objections to Venezuelan oil are about democracy,” said Kennedy, “then critics should look at the December elections won by President Hugo Chavez with nearly 70 percent of the vote. Venezuelans have now spoken four times in his favor.
“I'm not going to defend or demonize Chavez for his moves toward socialism, but it does seem like we favor selective socialism here in the United States for big corporations that get to socialize risks and privatize profits.”
Monday, February 19, 2007
6, Uptown
“Gangstas of Gotham, hardcore hustlin’”- Mos Def
I take the 6, uptown. At 34th, the train is all white. By 59th, half of the suits are gone but caucasia still prevails in my car. After 86th, the change starts, and by 110th I’m one of two white people on the train. And this is strangely comforting.
I am a product of a Catholic, white, upper-middle class neighborhood. I went to a private boarding school in Connecticut. I go to a Jesuit school in Boston. All of these things influence my place in the world, influence the way I think and the way others think about me. I am guilty of elitism, even if I don’t know it. So when I stay on the 6 past Manhattan, headed for the Bronx, I know I don’t understand. I know I can’t fit in, can’t begin to understand the complexities of the environment that surrounds me. And when I listen to my homegirl, a teacher in Hunts Point, I can’t ever understand the problems she sees everyday.
Save my own, I don’t know anyone’s parents who were under 25 when they had children. I don’t know what it’s like to grow up in the city, to have drugs and violence around me in profusion. I don’t know what it’s like to be discriminated against by police and constantly marginalized by a government that wants to forget about me. But I can stay on the train past Manhattan, I can walk the streets of the South Bronx, I can listen with learning ears to Mos Def and Common and Nas and know, for certain, that if my life had been different I wouldn’t have been able to rise above it. But I am white, and I know I cannot understand. That is my one, incommunicable sin. I am an imposter.
The misconception of the ghetto in most Americans’ thought is that it looks scary, different, cold. That the people who live there are in some way different beyond economics, capable of different things. Bad things. That somehow ‘thugs’ are manufactured and perfected, trained as murderers and drug dealers from the start. They don’t realize that the most of the people they think about are kids, pushed into the hustle by money, excitement, and often the very people who love them most. It’s not a struggle, or a problem, or a disease – it simply is.
The man next to me on the six stands two or three inches taller than me. His beard two or three inches longer. His hair two or three shades greyer, his skin more than two or three shades darker. He’s talking to himself. I’m listening. “You think you free,” he says, “but you ain’t. Same old slaveowners, ain’t nothin’ changed. Ain’t NOTHIN’ changed. Nosah. Ain’t nothin’ changed.” No one else on the 6 pays attention. He stares out the window into darkness. He keeps talking. I listen for a long time, understanding some of it, missing most of it, but hearing every word.
“You go to school,” says the man next to me on the platform. I turn my ear and look at him as if I’ve misunderstood. “You go to school?” he repeats, this time with inquisitive inflection.
“ Yes,” I say, “in Boston.”
“Boston, oh.” He turns away. “I used to live in Lowell,” he says, and I see his smile for the first time. “Long time ago.”
We stay silent for a while. I’m in a city I don’t know. I can’t be sure of protocol when it comes to other people. Finally I give in to my curiosity. He seems affable.
“You from here originally?” I ask. He looks at me as if I’m kidding. I’m not.
“No,” says. He looks up at me and smiles, and I am struck by his balanced features and remarkably consistent skin tone. His eyes are piercing, his smile astonishing. “I am,” he pauses, “Dominicano.” He smiles broader, beaming with his declaration. I hear the word in my head for the rest of the trip. Dominicano. And what could I say with such pressing importance? What could I declare with such surety? Blanco? Gringo? Irish? Maybe. But despite my education and my economy and my freedom of movement, I won't mean it like he does.
Coming back, downtown 6, I get off at 103rd. It’s a little past 11 at night. Now, rising to street level from the stairs, I open my eyes to the darkness. It’s quieter than I would have expected, despite the figures that dot the street. At night the bustle gives way to the hustle. Eyes dart when I walk by, clearly out of place, and despite a confident walk a focused gaze I’m careful to remain carefully alert in this environment – searching the corners of darkness. Shit, I realize I’m as bad as anyone else – I’m looking for stereotypes – young black males with baggy pants and – there they are.
And there it is. They. The extension of my incommunicable sin. The other. The ghetto. I listen to the conversation as I pass.
“Damn she din’t call you back yet yo? Ya ass is done, she out right now son-” He laughs.
“Nah, s’ok. She’ll get at me, just wait. And who you waitin’ on anyways? Get outa here punk-”
They’re joshing, half laughing, sparring. In the group of four, the youngest is maybe 14, the oldest 16. At their age, my friends and I got jobs slinging papers in the neighborhood, playing and working like these guys are. The object is different, but the verb is the same. It’s what you do.
The next morning homegirl brings me to a restaurant around the corner. It’s a hallway, mostly, some tables in the front and a hot line beyond a thin curtain in the back. We order burritos and for the first time since Tijuana get what I’m looking for – a mass of shredded chicken, fresh refritos, and tart guacamole smothered in cheese and salsa verde. The tortilla is handmade. The two next to us converse in Puerto Rican Spanish, rolling and fast, shades of Portuguese and Dominican, far from the Castilian in textbooks. They get up and pay, handing the young cashier a 5 for their full meals and drinks.
We finish and approach the register, I pull out my wallet. She writes a slip, hands it to me. $15.95. I offer a 20 and smile, taking my four singles and replacing them in the fold. If only we could get the healthcare system to work like that, I think.
The problem, if we choose to think of it like that, is not the people but the system itself. Somewhere between 86th and 110th, the opportunities go away, the chances get slimmer, the obstacles bigger. Fewer people are going to make it out. It’s the difference between an invisible barrier that has nothing to do with color or heritage – only indifference and ignorance. Put me – white, male, of sound mind and body – in a project at 153rd instead of a brownstone on 65th and strip me of my education, my citizenship, my language, my income. Watch me falter and fail to get by, give up minimum wage for the risk and reward of the game. I don’t have the stock market anymore, I got the rock market – and it never goes down.
And so the 6 uptown becomes the channel that runs beneath the lines on the map, drawn in white and brown, rich and poor, that criss-cross the city, the culture, the nation, the world. It’s a conduit between two worlds, a single train that simultaneously separates and connects the down-town upper-crust with the up-town downtrodden. Opening your eyes and ears on the 6 is easy, but opening your mind to see the larger picture is imperative – you’ll see that the suit at 43rd, a lifetime New Yorker, isn’t lying when he says “ I’ve never been up that far.”
I take the 6, uptown. At 34th, the train is all white. By 59th, half of the suits are gone but caucasia still prevails in my car. After 86th, the change starts, and by 110th I’m one of two white people on the train. And this is strangely comforting.
I am a product of a Catholic, white, upper-middle class neighborhood. I went to a private boarding school in Connecticut. I go to a Jesuit school in Boston. All of these things influence my place in the world, influence the way I think and the way others think about me. I am guilty of elitism, even if I don’t know it. So when I stay on the 6 past Manhattan, headed for the Bronx, I know I don’t understand. I know I can’t fit in, can’t begin to understand the complexities of the environment that surrounds me. And when I listen to my homegirl, a teacher in Hunts Point, I can’t ever understand the problems she sees everyday.
Save my own, I don’t know anyone’s parents who were under 25 when they had children. I don’t know what it’s like to grow up in the city, to have drugs and violence around me in profusion. I don’t know what it’s like to be discriminated against by police and constantly marginalized by a government that wants to forget about me. But I can stay on the train past Manhattan, I can walk the streets of the South Bronx, I can listen with learning ears to Mos Def and Common and Nas and know, for certain, that if my life had been different I wouldn’t have been able to rise above it. But I am white, and I know I cannot understand. That is my one, incommunicable sin. I am an imposter.
The misconception of the ghetto in most Americans’ thought is that it looks scary, different, cold. That the people who live there are in some way different beyond economics, capable of different things. Bad things. That somehow ‘thugs’ are manufactured and perfected, trained as murderers and drug dealers from the start. They don’t realize that the most of the people they think about are kids, pushed into the hustle by money, excitement, and often the very people who love them most. It’s not a struggle, or a problem, or a disease – it simply is.
The man next to me on the six stands two or three inches taller than me. His beard two or three inches longer. His hair two or three shades greyer, his skin more than two or three shades darker. He’s talking to himself. I’m listening. “You think you free,” he says, “but you ain’t. Same old slaveowners, ain’t nothin’ changed. Ain’t NOTHIN’ changed. Nosah. Ain’t nothin’ changed.” No one else on the 6 pays attention. He stares out the window into darkness. He keeps talking. I listen for a long time, understanding some of it, missing most of it, but hearing every word.
“You go to school,” says the man next to me on the platform. I turn my ear and look at him as if I’ve misunderstood. “You go to school?” he repeats, this time with inquisitive inflection.
“ Yes,” I say, “in Boston.”
“Boston, oh.” He turns away. “I used to live in Lowell,” he says, and I see his smile for the first time. “Long time ago.”
We stay silent for a while. I’m in a city I don’t know. I can’t be sure of protocol when it comes to other people. Finally I give in to my curiosity. He seems affable.
“You from here originally?” I ask. He looks at me as if I’m kidding. I’m not.
“No,” says. He looks up at me and smiles, and I am struck by his balanced features and remarkably consistent skin tone. His eyes are piercing, his smile astonishing. “I am,” he pauses, “Dominicano.” He smiles broader, beaming with his declaration. I hear the word in my head for the rest of the trip. Dominicano. And what could I say with such pressing importance? What could I declare with such surety? Blanco? Gringo? Irish? Maybe. But despite my education and my economy and my freedom of movement, I won't mean it like he does.
Coming back, downtown 6, I get off at 103rd. It’s a little past 11 at night. Now, rising to street level from the stairs, I open my eyes to the darkness. It’s quieter than I would have expected, despite the figures that dot the street. At night the bustle gives way to the hustle. Eyes dart when I walk by, clearly out of place, and despite a confident walk a focused gaze I’m careful to remain carefully alert in this environment – searching the corners of darkness. Shit, I realize I’m as bad as anyone else – I’m looking for stereotypes – young black males with baggy pants and – there they are.
And there it is. They. The extension of my incommunicable sin. The other. The ghetto. I listen to the conversation as I pass.
“Damn she din’t call you back yet yo? Ya ass is done, she out right now son-” He laughs.
“Nah, s’ok. She’ll get at me, just wait. And who you waitin’ on anyways? Get outa here punk-”
They’re joshing, half laughing, sparring. In the group of four, the youngest is maybe 14, the oldest 16. At their age, my friends and I got jobs slinging papers in the neighborhood, playing and working like these guys are. The object is different, but the verb is the same. It’s what you do.
The next morning homegirl brings me to a restaurant around the corner. It’s a hallway, mostly, some tables in the front and a hot line beyond a thin curtain in the back. We order burritos and for the first time since Tijuana get what I’m looking for – a mass of shredded chicken, fresh refritos, and tart guacamole smothered in cheese and salsa verde. The tortilla is handmade. The two next to us converse in Puerto Rican Spanish, rolling and fast, shades of Portuguese and Dominican, far from the Castilian in textbooks. They get up and pay, handing the young cashier a 5 for their full meals and drinks.
We finish and approach the register, I pull out my wallet. She writes a slip, hands it to me. $15.95. I offer a 20 and smile, taking my four singles and replacing them in the fold. If only we could get the healthcare system to work like that, I think.
The problem, if we choose to think of it like that, is not the people but the system itself. Somewhere between 86th and 110th, the opportunities go away, the chances get slimmer, the obstacles bigger. Fewer people are going to make it out. It’s the difference between an invisible barrier that has nothing to do with color or heritage – only indifference and ignorance. Put me – white, male, of sound mind and body – in a project at 153rd instead of a brownstone on 65th and strip me of my education, my citizenship, my language, my income. Watch me falter and fail to get by, give up minimum wage for the risk and reward of the game. I don’t have the stock market anymore, I got the rock market – and it never goes down.
And so the 6 uptown becomes the channel that runs beneath the lines on the map, drawn in white and brown, rich and poor, that criss-cross the city, the culture, the nation, the world. It’s a conduit between two worlds, a single train that simultaneously separates and connects the down-town upper-crust with the up-town downtrodden. Opening your eyes and ears on the 6 is easy, but opening your mind to see the larger picture is imperative – you’ll see that the suit at 43rd, a lifetime New Yorker, isn’t lying when he says “ I’ve never been up that far.”
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Swimmers Wanted
First, the cars. They’ve got to go. Replace them with rickshaws, bicycles, flying saucers, or magic carpets – but for heaven’s sake get rid of the cars. Then we can start talking, and after that maybe we’ll get somewhere.
When one is presented with the grandiose task of saving the world, as we all have been since the beginning of time, it becomes rather important to have a firm grasp on the terra firma we inhabit. Because despite our personal beliefs and morals, we are all living polygamous lives, attached as much to the planet and each other as to any spouse or family member. And as a part of this human constellation I am constantly and continuously appalled by the beauty and grace of this doting earth, our collective and enduring life-partner.
There is something undoubtedly spiritual, and now thinking about it, undoubtedly Christian about this relationship between man and his surroundings. Earth as the savior of the human race, willing to suffer for our sins of folly as we dump, poison, maim, and rape her alive, reveling in our shallow and falsified sense of supremacy and control.
We are not an inherently evil people – the concept of evil itself has little use for the rational thinking, who, upon meditation will realize that its definition is so subjective as to effectively erase it from the fabric of reality. Yet individually we possess the power to stifle good, and collectively we can stifle it almost entirely if we please, leaving the world dirty, dark, and barren, scattered with the remains of a society and a species that long ago had a glimpse at something spectacular but moved along too quickly to realize it.
This is where the Christian mythology breaks down. If we miss our opportunity, as Judas missed his, to allow good to flourish, the result will not be salvation and eternal forgiveness, it will be extinction. The serpent will cease to be a necessary spur for the development of an otherworld paradise and will simply remain a serpent, most likely slithering around on earth long after our grand stupidity condemned us to an early grave. This realization is cause for both desperation and rejoice.
When we think and talk about the greatest accomplishments of human history, we mention agriculture, the steam engine, space travel. We fail to realize that our single greatest talent, responsible for all things we’ve ever accomplished, is our ability to self-realize; that is, to actively recognize the fact that we are human beings living in an environment that includes more than our own simple existence. It from this impetus that we realize the need for food, shelter, and water, from this impetus that we realize our physical limitations and take steps to protect them, from this impetus that we create massive structures and otherworldly technology. And it is from this simple impetus that we can realize our own collectively irresponsible behavior and take steps to reverse it, saving Judas from the Pharisees, as it were. That alone is reason for supreme hope.
So I will start by swimming against the current in an effort not to break away but to drag the whole school with me, interconnected as we all are. If a few turn around and start swimming, a few more must follow, and a few more, a few more, until the whole gamut sprints into the arms of that most faithful spouse I know, the one who provides for us in times of need and times of plenty, in times of sickness and health, and the one who, in death, will ultimately and unconditionally receive us.
When one is presented with the grandiose task of saving the world, as we all have been since the beginning of time, it becomes rather important to have a firm grasp on the terra firma we inhabit. Because despite our personal beliefs and morals, we are all living polygamous lives, attached as much to the planet and each other as to any spouse or family member. And as a part of this human constellation I am constantly and continuously appalled by the beauty and grace of this doting earth, our collective and enduring life-partner.
There is something undoubtedly spiritual, and now thinking about it, undoubtedly Christian about this relationship between man and his surroundings. Earth as the savior of the human race, willing to suffer for our sins of folly as we dump, poison, maim, and rape her alive, reveling in our shallow and falsified sense of supremacy and control.
We are not an inherently evil people – the concept of evil itself has little use for the rational thinking, who, upon meditation will realize that its definition is so subjective as to effectively erase it from the fabric of reality. Yet individually we possess the power to stifle good, and collectively we can stifle it almost entirely if we please, leaving the world dirty, dark, and barren, scattered with the remains of a society and a species that long ago had a glimpse at something spectacular but moved along too quickly to realize it.
This is where the Christian mythology breaks down. If we miss our opportunity, as Judas missed his, to allow good to flourish, the result will not be salvation and eternal forgiveness, it will be extinction. The serpent will cease to be a necessary spur for the development of an otherworld paradise and will simply remain a serpent, most likely slithering around on earth long after our grand stupidity condemned us to an early grave. This realization is cause for both desperation and rejoice.
When we think and talk about the greatest accomplishments of human history, we mention agriculture, the steam engine, space travel. We fail to realize that our single greatest talent, responsible for all things we’ve ever accomplished, is our ability to self-realize; that is, to actively recognize the fact that we are human beings living in an environment that includes more than our own simple existence. It from this impetus that we realize the need for food, shelter, and water, from this impetus that we realize our physical limitations and take steps to protect them, from this impetus that we create massive structures and otherworldly technology. And it is from this simple impetus that we can realize our own collectively irresponsible behavior and take steps to reverse it, saving Judas from the Pharisees, as it were. That alone is reason for supreme hope.
So I will start by swimming against the current in an effort not to break away but to drag the whole school with me, interconnected as we all are. If a few turn around and start swimming, a few more must follow, and a few more, a few more, until the whole gamut sprints into the arms of that most faithful spouse I know, the one who provides for us in times of need and times of plenty, in times of sickness and health, and the one who, in death, will ultimately and unconditionally receive us.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)