Financial Morality and International Tax Laws

Here in the UK Amazon’s last year tax payment was announced and Margaret Hodge is furious. Hodge is chair of the influential Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons (PAC), which is “seen as a crucial mechanism for ensuring transparency and accountability in government financial operations...” While selling goods worth £4.3billion, Amazon only paid £4.2million in taxes last year. Amazon is able to pay such low taxes because when UK consumers buy products from amazon.co.uk “the payment is taken by a subsidiary based in the low tax jurisdiction of Luxembourg.” While shoppers go to amazon.co.uk to buy, their bill will show Amazon EU S.á.r.l.

Actually, Hodge always seems furious at someone or something: bankers, multi-national corporations, etc. She wants people and corporations to be financially moral. In the case of Amazon, financially moral means paying more taxes than the law demands. Her position and anger are laudable, but here’s a mental exercise for you. You’ve been paying X amount of tax for years but this year you hired a tax lawyer who tells you you have been paying more tax than you need to. The tax lawyer says this year you only have to pay Y amount of tax. You say: “No, no. I want to pay more tax than I am legally required to do. That’s how much I love my society!” Or you say: “OK.” To demand corporations to be financially moral is somewhat naiveté.

The thing is, while Amazon’s behaviour is despicable and in a common sense way immoral, it is not illegal. Amazon is simply utilizing national and international tax laws. These laws were written and passed by elected official in numerous countries. They didn’t one day drop out of the sky from God. They are not a force of Nature. They are laws created and passed by politicians to fulfil certain purposes. I doubt those purposes were to satisfy our sense of what is fair and just.

If, like Margaret Hodge, you don’t like the way Amazon and other multi-national corporations pay taxes in the various countries they do business, then you could email or call your elected official, but I suggest it would be a waste of time.[1] While politicians will make a lot of noise about international tax laws, they are not going to do anything about them anytime soon. First, they tells us that the issues is very complicated and second that it requires international cooperation. For example, it is no good for the UK to change its laws if the U.S., Germany, Ireland, Luxemburg, Hong Kong, Singapore – well, you get the idea – don’t change theirs. Yes, international tax law is complicated and demands international cooperation. But I’m assuming it was complicated and necessitated cooperation to write and legislate the current tax laws.[2] So what gives? It’s hard not to believe that something else is in play here.

To assume that our elected officials will change international tax laws so that multi-nationals pay a fair share of tax in the countries they make millions in various currencies will only lead to anger and heartache. Our politicians are themselves either members of the 1% or are so beholden to the 1% that they will do what is required. I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way things will change is through mass movements, protests and boycotts. Politicians need to be voted out of office and replace by those who agree to pursue the policies we support. If you don’t like the way Amazon is paying taxes around the globe, then follow Margaret Hodge’s example and boycott the company. It is still possible to buy our books, CDs, DVDs and goodness knows what else from other companies (though in ten years it may be very difficult to do so). Yes, you may have to pay more for your book and let your Kindle sit idle until Amazon gets the message, but it’s put your money where your mouth is time. If you don’t want to stop shopping through Amazon, then don’t complain about corporate taxes.

For Amazon to reconsider its position would take a massive boycott, which would in turn take organisation, sacrifice and time. If coupled with a real threat to politicians to change the laws or be voted out of office, then progress could be made. But the key word here is massive. Amazon is too big, too rich and too powerful to take notice of the occasional short-lived protest or the fury of a solitary politician. It would take lots of people over a long time.

Boycotts, protests and movements. More of that later.

Copyright © 2014 Dale Rominger

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[1] I should qualify that statement. I believe it would be a “waste of time” if your sole purpose is to get your elected official to change the laws. On  the other hand, emailing or calling does serve the purpose of getting your position on record and taking a principled stance, both of which are not a waste of time.

[2] In the area of international tax laws, complication and cooperation seem to overwhelm our politicians while complication and cooperation in, say, waging international war can be overcome. Go figure.

So Who Taught the Episcopalian Lady Sailboat Theology

I once knew an Episcopalian lady in Newport, Rhode Island, who asked me to design and build a doghouse for her Great Dane. The lady claimed to understand God and His Ways of Working perfectly. She could not understand why anyone should be puzzled about what had been or about what was going to be.

And yet, when I showed her a blueprint of the doghouse I proposed to build, she said to me, "I'm sorry, but I never could read one of those things."

"Give it to your husband or your minister to pass on to God," I said, "and, when God finds a minute, I'm sure he'll explain this doghouse of mine in a way that even you can understand."

She fired me. I shall never forget her. She believed that God liked people in sailboats much better than He liked people in motorboats. She could not bear to look at a worm. When she saw a worm, she screamed.

She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he can see what God is Doing...

The above quote is from Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Cat’s Cradle, among other things, is a critique of religion in general and Christianity in particular. However, you shouldn’t assume that Vonnegut didn’t like Jesus. As he said in God Bless you Dr. Kevorkian: "If it weren't for the message of mercy and pity in Jesus' Semon on the Mount, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake."

For me the interesting bit in the Cat’s Cradle quote is the part that says the Episcopalian lady from Newport, Rhode Island believes God likes people in sailboats better than people in motorboats, never mind how God feels about people who can’t afford boats. The symbolism is clear. People in sailboats are posh. People in motorboats are working class. People without boats are, well, I dread to think.

Let’s assume that the Episcopalian lady is a good person, and if she is, we really must ask where she learned about sailboat theology. She didn’t pop out of her Episcopalian mother believing in sailboat theology. She certainly didn’t learn it from Jesus, or more accurately from the people who wrote the four gospels about Jesus. I know the people who created and believe in prosperity theology would disagree with me, but I’m going to go out on a limb anyway and say that she definitely did not learn sailboat theology from Jesus. So where did she learn it?

There’s a church in Rome called The Papal Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, or St. John Lateran for short. It is, of course, the Pope’s church. Among the many interesting and beautiful features of the church I want to highlight two. First are the huge magnificence bronze doors. The doors were taken from the Roman Senate, the Curia on the Forum Romanum. The second is the utterly beautiful gold ceiling of the basilica. Both the doors and the ceiling must say something about the church’s relationship to money, power and the state, but let’s concentrate on the gold ceiling.

Descriptions of the basilica emphasize proudly that the gold is real gold leaf and not paint. It is rarer, however, to read about where the gold came from. In fact, it came from Central and South America where state sponsored expeditions stole the gold from the peoples who lived there. It’s also worth noting that in addition to stealing the gold, the invaders enslaved and murdered the peoples of Central and South America. And when I say murdered, I mean murdered approximately 95% of the population. The Basilica of St. John Lateran is covered in stolen gold which is covered in genocide.

I know this because I visited Rome with my friend Gerry. Gerry is somewhere between an agnostic and an atheist and he likes to visit churches when  he travels.[1] I spent a good deal of my life in churches and so tend to avoid them when I travel, but he’s a friend so I happily go along. Gerry does extensive research before visiting a place and it was from him I first learned about the doors and the ceiling. As we sat in St. John Lateran looking up at the gold ceiling he was overwhelmed by the beauty and I by the offence. To Gerry the church is an artifact and to me, hopefully, a living representation of faith. I also told him that given its origins the gold ceiling would be an offense in any building, but in a church it was outrageously offensive. I told him that a church with political doors and stolen gold ceilings dripping in suffering and murder is not a church of Jesus Christ. It is a church of the world, and a very particular part of the world. It may do a lot of great things. The ceiling may be beautiful and the doors strong. But it’s not a church of Jesus Christ. It is a church that teaches and represents sailboat theology. The only possibility for redemption for such a church is to dismantle the ceiling.

At some point in the life of St. John Lateran men, and I’ll go out on another limp here and insist it was men, made a decision to accept the gold from the state and adorn their church with it. It didn’t just happen. It wasn’t an accident. It was a decision. And I would say that today it is utterly impossible for the men of the church to dismantle the ceiling, sell the gold and spend the money on something that might be less offensive to Jesus than theft and genocide. That decision will never be made.

It’s not that we render unto Caesar, we climb under the covers with Caesar. Why? Well, the relationship benefits us. We may get a great ceiling. We may get a better chance at lottery funds. We may get an exemption from laws making it illegal to discriminate against woman and LGBT people (though interestingly not against people of colour). We may get an exemption from paying certain taxes. And we may get an invitation to the Queen’s garden party.

I would suggest that it is impossible for us to not accept the invitation to the Queens garden party. After all, our leaders get to rub shoulders with the powerful and prestigious and to reject such an invitation would ostracise us. And while we don’t discriminate against women, it is nice not to be held legally responsible for those among us who do discriminate against people in the LGBT community. And what idiot would even suggest we refuse exemptions from paying taxes? We’d go bankrupt. And who can blame us for taking lottery money? It’s pretty much the only source of funding out there. Never mind that it is a form of gambling that takes money disproportionately from the less well off. I think on these points we can all agree. But perhaps we could at least admit that we’re a long way from Jesus and that all these things have practical, theological and relational implications. Nothing is neutral.

Now, I’m not against institutional organisation. All movements either die or become institutionalised, though I have for years believed there is a use by date on institutions after which they misplace the founding reason for their existence. Also, I bet some of you are thinking I’m being a bit hard on the poor old church that, after all, has to live within the world. I myself have always said the church has to live within the world, though deciding which part of the world seemed rather important to me. I bet some of you can give me examples of local churches without gold ceilings that find sailboat theology offensive, and I would have no problem believing you. Hell, I’ve visited a lot of them in more countries than I can remember. Here’s the thing though. When Gerry and I were sitting in St. John Lateran he said that the beauty of the gold ceiling compensated for its history. I said that, while I was moved by the beauty, it could never compensate for its history.[2]

I find myself in the position, and I’m not alone, where the good bits of the church no longer compensate for the bad bits. For years I did my best to work on at least some of the good bits while challenging at least some of the bad bits. But looking back, it seems not a lot has changed. And while, I didn’t make the decision to accept the gold and adorn my church ceiling with it, looking in from the outside, it sure seems like I’m willing, if not happy, to leave it where it is. The words collusion and culpability come to mind.  

So what to do? Here are five suggestions to get us started.

• Admit that we are not the church of Jesus Christ and probably are not capable of being the church of Jesus Christ. We are the Church of the World which more than not embraces sailboat theology.
• We must begin dismantling the ceilings.
• We must recognise that people looking in are very capable of seeing the often times big gap between our rhetoric, that which we tell the world about who we are and what we believe, and that which we actually do in the world.
• It’s unrealistic for us to think that the institution that taught the Episcopalian lady in Newport, Rhode Island about sailboat theology can save her from sailboat theology. If she can’t save herself, she will have to seek help elsewhere.
• Finally, we have to realise that the Episcopalian lady in Newport, Rhode Island is, either alone or with others, saving herself from the Church of the World. 

Copyright © 2014 Dale Rominger

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[1] My friend Gerry could be a victim of sailboat theology, if he actually cared. Some of my evangelical and fundamentalist friends find it difficult accepting he is a decent human being, but either way it doesn’t really matter. They are saddened by the knowledge that he will suffer in hell for all eternity. My liberal and progressive friends have no difficulty at all accepting he is a decent man, but are saddened because true happiness and peace escape him, even if he does not realise it. Right or left, it doesn't matter. They know better about Gerry than Gerry does himself.
[2] As Gerry and I continued talking and after his reading American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World by David Stannard, Gerry too came to consider the gold covered ceiling as inappropriate.

Plutocracy ~ Ploutos Meaning Wealth and Kratos Meaning Power

The vast income accumulated by the narrow slice of super-elite at the top of the wealth pyramid has created a kind of global “canopy economy” that has lost its connections to the nations and people they sprang from.[1]

Two things seem self-evident to me. First the Plutocrats, more commonly known as the 1%, are not going to change their ways and join the rest of us in our respective societies. They rule. Second, governments, whether democratic, ostensibly democratic, military or totalitarian, are not going to make the 1% change their ways. They are either paid off by or belong to the Plutocrats.

Over the past thirty years or so, those in the financial industry have created an entirely protected, indeed cocooned, world in which only they live. It no doubt has its internal logic and morality, where what is legal can be far from what our common sense would say is ethical. In their world, individuals, companies and corporations have become obscenely wealthy and powerful. It is the natural state of this world. While what happens in this world may seem unethical, immoral, illegal and absurd to us, it is for them reasonable and perhaps even just. An example. The way CEO’s are reimbursed for their labour.

It is not uncommon for a CEO to be given a golden hello, a retention payment, a substantial salary, annual bonuses above salary and finally a golden good-bye. These various payments in the form of cash, stock options and pension benefits amount to millions for individuals and collectively billions for boards. For example, Barclays Bank gave £32m ($53.1m) to its 12 member executive board. Not to be outdone, Prudential paid eight directors on its board £47m ($78m). In addition two other people not on the board were paid £25m ($41.5m): £7.6m ($12.6m) to one and £17.6m ($29.2m) to the other.   I have no doubt that within the upper echelon of both Barclays and Prudential these payments made sense and were justified. To us they are breathtaking.

In our world it is difficult to justify that kind of money going to so few individuals. However, two basic justifications are offered to explain such obscene payments. First, companies and corporations need to offer high salaries and bonuses in order to attract and keep the best people. None of us are offered a huge bonus for agreeing to accept a job. That would be absurd. None of us are given substantial bonuses if we agree to stay in the job (retention bonus). It’s assumed that if we wanted the job we might hang around for awhile. No bribe necessary. None of us are given huge bonuses above our salaries for doing the work we were hired to do. But in the financial world all this is normal practice and to question such practices is incomprehensible. Anthony Jenkins, chief executive of Barclays, said the £32m ($53.1m)payment to his executive board, including £3.2m ($5.3m)to himself, was necessary to avoid a “death spiral” in which, apparently, everyone would quit their jobs and, perhaps, move to Hong Kong. So far no government or society has tested this claim, but it’s worth noting that the High Pay Centre, an independent non-party think tank established to monitor pay at the top of the income distribution and set out a road map towards better business and economic success, collated the international and UK research on pay and found no flight of staff, no shortage of executive talent and interestingly, no relationship between pay and performance (see also Polly Toynbee). And what about those retention bonuses, those additional payments that are to assure the newly hired executive stays in post? Well,  Euan Sutherland, who was paid £3.5m ($5.8m) which included a retention payment, walked out on the Co-operative Group because he said it was unmanageable. I haven’t heard that he gave back the retention bonus.

The second justification for obscene payments is that compensation is linked to performance. This claim, which may be believed within the financial world, is, of course, nonsense when viewed from the outside. As I said above, High Pay Centre found no direct relation between pay and performance in the world of executive reimbursement. An example, might help. Lloyds Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland, though reporting losses of more than £45bn ($74.8m) over the past five years, are handing out £35m ($58.1m) in bonuses to their executives. What’s particularly galling about this is that both banks are partially owned by the public: 33% and 81% respectively. 

With the possible exception of Iceland, no government has really challenged the financial sector. Even after the 2008 crash, governments have done little to regulate the industry. Half hearted measures were passed in the U.S. and the UK, and there was a lot of passionate hot-boiled rhetoric about the pros and cons, but the banks and hedge funds have continued business as usual. If we thought that after we the people, and not unimportantly we the taxpayers, saved the financial industry at considerable cost in funds, services and quality of life, our governments would reign in the accesses of the financial world, we were sadly mistaken. They have basically made us pay for the losses as the bonuses continued. Even in the midst of the crisis the bonuses continued and are now being paid out at levels greater than pre-2008 payments. This is even true in banks largely or partly owned by the people. If I belonged to the 1%, I might be asking why there has not been blood in the streets. As the 1% I screwed up royally causing an international financial meltdonw, but the people bailed me out and saved my job and bonuses, at a cost to their standard of living and their welfare safety net (which of course I do not need), and amazingly no blood in the streets.

We often read that our elected politicians and governments have been bought by the rich. I think this is partially but not wholly true. The 1% possess tremendous power. They can “buy” politicians through a number of different means. But it is also true that many in our governments are themselves members of the elite. In the U.S. half the member of the House of Representatives and the Senate are millionaires. In the  2010 in the UK 23 or the 29 cabinet ministers in the UK Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition government were millionaires.  Recently it has been reported that that number has dropped to 18 out of the 29 but their combined wealth is calculated to be £70m.  Oh wait! The ex-banker multimillionaire Safid Javid has just been appointed secretary for culture (he loves Star Trek) to the cabinet so that’s 19 out of 29.

Many in the our governments are members of the Plutocracy, or will become so. I am not saying they are all evil. That would be nonsense and unjust. But I am saying that my world is not their natural habitat. So, who do you think they are making the laws for?

This isn’t just a case of sour envious grapes on the part of the 99%, though anger is not misplaced. We did, after all, save their jobs along with our savings and pensions. It was not unreasonable to think our governments might have made the people who caused the damage to help pay for it. But it really did turn out to be a case of privatizing profits and socialising loss.[2] Even the idea put forward by a few that the government should make banks use their annual bonus pay-outs to repay the taxpayers was ridiculed by the financial sector. And when our elected official had been able to even comprehend the notion, they would have laughed in derision. No, this is not just about anger and envy. The thing is, the more they take, the less we have, and by less I mean weekly pay, salaries, investments, pensions, and vital services.

We are connected. Forbes reported that the “collective net worth of the wealthiest four hundred Americans reached a record two trillion dollars in 2013, more than doubling since 2003.[3] In the U.S. the combined net worth of billionaires has quintupled since 2000 while the income of the medium household has fallen.[4] In the UK the standard of living for most people has fallen below 2008 levels and will probably not recover to those previous levels until 2019. In the U.S. the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook found that that 75.4% of all wealth is owned by the richest 10% of the people.

 In the Video on Wealth Inequality in U.S. (which went viral and I encourage you to watch it) it was revealed that the upper 1% possess 40% of all the wealth in the U.S. while the bottom 80% own 7%. Furthermore, the 1% possess 50% of all stocks, bonds, mutual funds while the bottom 50% own only 0.5% of the same.

Obviously with great wealth comes great power and many are now arguing that the accumulation of wealth and power in an elite is actually threatening democracy. It can be argued that the U.S. is actually no longer a functioning democracy at all. It is, in fact, a plutocracy.[5]

Next week, a look at how the plutocrats treat the 99% and the implications for democracy. Following that, what can we do about it, if anything?

Copyright © 2014 Dale Rominger

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[1] Ferguson, Charles. Inside Job: Financiers Who Pulled of the Heist of the Century. London: Oneworld  Publications, 2012, p 12.
[2] Investopedia: A phrase describing how businesses and individuals can successfully benefit from any and all profits related to their line of business, but avoid losses by having those losses paid for by society. Privatizing profits and socializing losses suggests that when large losses occur for speculators or businesses, they are able to successfully lobby government for aide rather than face the consequences of said losses.
The biggest example of privatizing losses and socializing losses came during the TARP bailouts of 2008-2009 in which the United States government bailed out numerous banks, insurers and auto manufacturers after they had sustained huge losses in their business dealings, in some cases through unacceptable risk tasking and lack of due diligence.
[3] Brynjolfsson, Erik & McAfee, Andrew. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2014, p. 131.
[4] Ibid., p. 163.
[5] See: Plutocracy
The Great American Class War: Plutocracy Versus Democracy.
Plutocracy in America.

Climate Change or My Last Cup of Coffee

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is out with an unimposing nonthreatening title: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability.

I realise if they had gone with The End of the World as We know It, or perhaps, If the Methane is released We are All Going to Die, or even, Does Anyone Realise we Don’t have Another Planet to Go To? the climate change deniers would have a field day. (Climate Change Deniers are angry that we call them Deniers and are demanding we stop it right now because it sounds too much like Holocaust Deniers and implies that we’re comparing them to Nazis. I’m with Nick Cohen when he wrote: “The evidence for man-made global warming is as final as the evidence of Auschwitz. No other word will do.” Or as I put it more crudely: “Fuck them.” 

I bet this IPCC report will have the same impact on politicians and us as the last one: little or no impact at all.  

I doubt there is a leading politician alive that is willing to sacrifice his or her career and reputation to force through the changes that are needed, with the possible exceptions of the Chinese. Given their one party autocratic government they have more of a chance of making improvements, but it’s climate changes vs. making money and you know how that goes. If a U.S. president were to become a convert to climate change with the passion and intelligence that, say, Mikhail Gorbachev brought to transforming the Soviet Union, he or she would never have the power to get past the climate change denying baboons in Congress (my sincere apologies to all baboons, but I’m not too worried since they will become extinct somewhere down the road). In the meantime, we in the West are getting pretty damn good at recycling but still love to drive big gas guzzling 4X4’s in the city (4X4’s are important vehicles for the cities – you never know when you might run into an unexpected mountain to climb or a raging river to forge).

I suspect a lot of people read the news about the latest IPCC reports like I do: we take the reports seriously and then get depressed. We renew our recycling, watch the energy we consume, buy that hybrid or electric, but know full well that our political leaders have no intention of pursing the matter. Here in the UK our fearless leader David Cameron, who once said “Vote Blue and go Green” now says he’s sick of all that “Green Crap” (and his policies sure say the same). And even if our leaders did present a strategy that would actually save us, we would vote them out of office at our first opportunity.

Here’s a little list of big problems:

• The climate change deniers have big, no huge, money behind them.
• Politicians like their jobs (also read status, power, importance, wealth generating potential).
• It’s taking too long. We’re a short-term species. Getting through the night without getting eaten by some beast is about the best we can do in the forward planning area. If only climate change hit us like a brick and kept hitting us. We’re even going to run out of food too slowly.
• The poor will be the first to suffer while the rich will not suffer the consequence until nearer the end. This is a really really bad thing (and makes you think there actually might be a devil in charge).

From the IPCC report:

Differences in vulnerability and exposure arise from non-climatic factors and from multidimensional inequalities often produced by uneven development processes (very high confidence). These differences shape differential risks from climate change. (See Figure SPM.1)
People who are socially, economically, culturally, politically, institutionally, or otherwise marginalized are especially vulnerable to climate change and also to some adaptation and mitigation responses (medium evidence, high agreement). This heightened vulnerability is rarely due to a single cause. Rather, it is the product of intersecting social processes that result in inequalities in socioeconomic status and income, as well as in exposure. Such social processes include, for example, discrimination on the basis of gender, class, ethnicity, age, and (dis)ability.

Here is Figure SPM1:


And with a little more detail:

The people and countries who are most responsible will be protected from the consequences of their decisions, ideologies, theologies, and behaviour the most. This alone dooms us. I doubt the people of America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, China, for example, will really give a damn when the Pacific Islands are gone any more than the 1% give a damn that larger and larger sections of our societies are being left to live an almost sci fi dystopian existence.  

There is one area of small, indeed tiny, hope. Climate change is devastating the coffee industry. Middle class and rich people in all countries will have to contend with at first soaring prices and later very limited availability before they have to say good-bye to New York, London and Shanghai. Perhaps being denied coffee will move millions to demand action from their governments. Perhaps companies like Starbucks will take over governments and make the changes. Not likely, but it seems the only hope we have.

Good luck everyone (though you do realise it is already too late to save our major coastal cities, right?).

And in the meantime here are a few tables from Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability that might depress you more.

 

Copyright © 2014 Dale Rominger
(Sorry for the downer!)

Death ~ There’s Something to Dying Well

Death. Back by popular demand. Well, not exactly. I ended my last blog, Death ~ There's Something Bewildering about Nothingness, with these words:

If I get hit by that truck, I won’t have to worry about dying well. If I’m given a time line, then dying well will become paramount. But that’s another whole story.

Someone has suggested that I finish the story, not leave things hanging, and be finally done with death. So here it goes...

If one day I am told by a consultant in some hospital office that I have, let’s say, six months to live, one of my concerns will be whether or not I die well. I honestly think I should die well. Yes, I hear it – the “should” and the “ought” – two words that any good psychologist, minister, counsellor, wife, friend would tell me I shouldn’t succumb to, and certainly not while figuring out how to die. And yet...While acknowledging that the “shoulds” and the “oughts” can bring with them a heavy burden, it seems to me, given the magnitude of the issue, wanting to die well is not misplaced. Of course the obvious question is: What does it mean to me, for me, to die well?

Even before I begin to answer that question, I have a problem, and for those I am about to offend, please read on anyway. My problem is this: I’m sick of hearing about people dying well. Once they are told they are dying they are filled with the joys of life. Colours are more bright and intense. Birdsong is more beautiful and pure. They write poems, theologise and philosophise. They move family, friends and even strangers to wonder. And when the end finally comes, they die with a smile on their face. The standard is lifted high. They were courageous and faithful. They were impossibly magnificent in the face of death. Indeed, they embraced their death as they embraced their life.  

They drive me crazy. Don’t get me wrong. I admire them. Given my line of work I’ve known more than a few of them. I even sat with a couple of them when they died. My problem is, I don’t think I can do it. I think for me green will just be green  and blue will just be blue.  I think birdsong will just be birdsong, some will sound beautiful and others horrible. I don’t think I’ll have anything useful to say. I don’t think I will amaze anyone. And I can’t imagine I’ll be filled with the joys of life. Next to all these superhuman dying well people I will be one big fat failure at dying. I think there will be a big fucking cloud over my life, impacting everything I do, say and think. There will be no escape. My coming death will be the big, no the huge, “BUT” after everything. It’s a beautiful day, BUT. I love that music, BUT. This book is so interesting, “BUT.”

For good or ill, because of nature or nurture (or probably both), it’s the way I see the world, the way I’ve always seen the world. I can’t remember a time when there hasn’t been a “but.” It’s a beautiful day, but it’s going to rain tomorrow. That sort of thing. At times it has driven me crazy. But the “but” never goes away. The “but” doesn’t negate the wonder and beauty of life, but the “but” is always there sitting alongside me. (You can ponder the biochemical, psychological, philosophical and theological reasons for this if you want, but I’m not sure it would be a good use of your time.) In my experience people without a “but” see people with a “but” as negative, cynical, annoying, angry, crazy, pathological. On the other hand, people with a “but” see people who also have a “but” as realistic and reasonable. Of course neither is the whole truth. However (just a big word for but), here’s the point, I sincerely doubt the “but” will disappear when living towards my own death. How does a person with a “but” die well?

Perhaps the next question is this: So what? Who gives a damn if you die well? Why do you, Dale, give a damn if you die well? Because it’s my life and the manner in which I die will say something about my being and the way I lived. At least I think that is so. Besides, when I’m on my way out I would rather appreciate the moments and not despair the future. I would rather not be consumed with fear, sadness and bewilderment. I would rather live as best I can until I live no longer. I just don’t know if I’m capable of doing it.

I do wonder when people die well if all that they say and do, perhaps must say and do, is a true reflection of their reality. I can imagine that with my friends, acquaintances, on Facebook and Twitter, on YouTube and my website, at dinner in town, while walking in the park, talking in the telephone I could be very upbeat and philosophical about the whole thing. I mean, if I’m down about it, the people around me can hardly be up. Why burden them with more than the situation demands? The idea of death is burden enough. At the same time, however, at home in the privacy of my own heart, I could be lost in a quagmire of despair and fear. I can see dark circles under my eyes and sleepless nights, because who wants to wake up every morning and remember they are dying. Not me. And maybe that is what dying well is. Joy to the world and sadness of heart. Both real and true, companions in living and dying.

I do know that, more than likely, I won’t die well if I have to die alone. Many of us do die alone, but if it can be avoided it should be avoided. In May 2012 I wrote a blog entitled Aging, Dung Beetles and Me. I was thinking about aging and the things that fill our lives. I ended that blog with these words:

The flat screen [TV] can’t hold your hand when you’re in pain. It can’t wash the sheets and make the bed when you can’t lift a feather. It can’t cook you a warm meal when you have no appetite. It can’t clean your body when you can’t move and you don’t really care. It can’t whisper in your ear when you are frightened. And it can’t say goodbye when it’s time for the world to end.

Only the love of another human being can do those things. Admittedly that love can come from any number of people. From a spouse, partner, friend and, yes, even a stranger. When I die, I hope someone will be around.

So, how will I die well?

• Love people.
• Try and maintain my dignity.
• Include my wife and friends (or at least the friends who want to be included).
• Never blame anyone who does not want to be included.
• Cry when it is necessary.
• Rage against all the gods ever created by humankind if it helps.
• Remember everyone’s dying is unique. There is no gold standard.
• Re-member my life, as much is as possible, but stop if sadness overwhelms.
• Don’t worry how people will recall your dying. It won’t matter to me once I’m dead.
• Say goodbye to the people and things that are precious to me.
• Remember dying is not only necessary, it is natural.
• Don’t worry about being courageous. Courage is only a burdensome construct.
• If at all possible, do not be afraid. There is nothing to fear.

Copyright © 2014 Dale Rominger

Death ~ There’s Something Bewildering about Nothingness

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about death, my death specifically. No, as far as I know it’s not on the cards just yet, but reading Death and the Afterlife by the philosopher Samuel Scheffler and having been diagnosed with cancer in the past, I just got to thinking about it. As I said in Death ~ There’s Nothing Fearful about Nothingness and Death ~ There’s Nothing Pretentious about Sadness, when I started thinking about it three words kept coming to mind: fear, sadness and bewilderment. I did fear and sadness and now I’m stuck with bewilderment. I say stuck because I’m not entirely sure what it means in this context. Still, the word won’t disappear.

I must repeat what I said in Death ~ There’s Nothing Fearful about Nothingness. I believe my future is nothingness, not some kind of self-aware existence after my death. I have nothing against what is probably the majority of people who do believe in life after death. Life itself is so wonderful and so horrible that such a belief makes sense. When it’s wonderful it is hard to give it up and the longing that it may continue in some form or another can be intense. When life is horrible the longing that all our suffering, fears, heartaches, injustices will be rewarded by a new life of health, comfort and justice can also be intense. It goes without saying that believing in paradise is less frightening and sad then believing in nothingness. And I bet that those who do believe in an afterlife do not experience my bewilderment.

I’m a fan of the neurologist Antonio R. Damasio who argues that the bifurcation of the human mind/experience, into rationality and emotions is flawed. In Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain[1], he argues that both reasoning and feeling are necessary for a person to be whole and healthy, that in fact the sidelining of emotions and feelings undermine rationality. I mention this because when contemplating my death it is absurd to pretend that I can split myself in two, embracing my rationality and exorcising my emotions. To think rationally about my death is to embrace my feelings about my death. To acknowledge my feelings necessitates my thinking rationally. It is only in a kind of rational/emotional reasoning that I can make some sense out of the fear and the sadness. But what of the bewilderment?

Perhaps my Descartian bifurcated self can make sense of bewilderment: I intellectually can comprehend my nothingness. Throw in my emotions, however, and I’m stumped, which is to say that Dale as a whole being can’t truly understand, embrace, comprehend, imagine his own nothingness, because to do so has profound implications. I think bewilderment is my response to standing on the edge of those implications.

Perhaps I simply lack the mental and emotional capability to comprehend my own nothingness. My brain overloads and shuts down in self-defence, like when I try and imagine what the expanding universe is expanding into. Yes, I know I will return to nothingness, but how can that be? The “how can that be” question is not a rhetorical question, at least not for me. Nor is it a theological question. It is an existential question, which can easily lead to an existential crisis. My nothingness seems to call into question the meaning, purpose and value of my existence.

The opposite of nothingness is, of course, “something.” But other antonyms of nothingness are eminence, importance and significance, and these words take us deeper. While the logical opposite of nothingness is “something”, the ontological opposite of nothingness is “being.” My nothingness is the negation of my being, where “my being” means all that makes me me: my mind (you can substitute soul or spirit if either makes more sense to you) and all my memories, histories, experiences, knowledge, thoughts, contributions, potentials, plans, hopes, dreams, loves, joys, sorrows, fears, confidences. Obviously I left out my physical body in that list. I did so because in actual fact something of my physical existence will continue until the universe experiences its “cold death,” which is a long long way off. As I said in Death ~ There’s Nothing Fearful about Nothingness “...my atoms will return to the cosmic dust and in time will contribute to the creation of something new (a sun would be nice).” So, nothingness will not have the final say regarding my physical being, but it certainly will regarding everything on the above list.

I experience bewilderment – confusion, incomprehension, disorientation, bafflement, puzzlement and maybe panic – when I attempt to contemplate my negation, which also means the negation of my meaning, purpose and value. While my atoms will survive, my essence will not. The question remains, however: While the negation of my meaning, purpose and value while I am still alive would certainly usher in an existential crisis, why would their negation after my death do the same? I suppose because it’s not about logic, but is about ontology. Being is important to us, it is us. Not being is a crisis.

So there you have it. It’s the best I can do. If I get hit by a fast moving truck, I’ll not have to concern myself with all this again. On the other hand, if one day some consultant in a hospital office tells me I have six months to live, then I most certainly will. If I get hit by that truck, I won’t have to worry about dying well. If I’m given a time line, then dying well will become paramount. But that’s another whole story.

Copyright © 2014 Dale Rominger

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[1] Damasio, Antonio R. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. London: Picador, 1994.

Death ~ There’s Nothing Pretentious about Sadness

Last week, in Death ~ There’s Nothing Fearful about Nothingness, I got to thinking about my own death, motivated by the influences of having read Death and the Afterlife by Samuel Scheffler[1] while dealing with the lingering shadow of having had cancer.[2] I wrote that when I think of my death three words come to mind: Fear, Sadness and Bewilderment. Last week it was Fear, this week Sadness.

While fear is very real, associate mostly with the transition from death as a distant idea to death as today’s reality, it is not my predominate emotion when thinking about my death. Sadness is.

Whenever I try and imagine my not being here, it simply saddens me. I feel sad because all that is me – memories, histories, experiences, knowledge, thoughts, contributions, potentials, plans, hopes, dreams, loves, joys, sorrows, fears, confidences, relationships, face, hands, arms, chest and all the way down to my toes – will no longer exist. And when thinking about my ceased existence, a question spontaneously pops into my head: how can the totality of all that simply no longer exist? What a damn waste. What a sadness. Surely that kind of loss needs to be acknowledged in some way, preferably some profound way.

When the feeling of sadness engulfs me a second emotions runs up just behind, like a younger sibling trying to catch up. This younger sibling is embarrassment which comes from the thoughts: You’re feeling sad because you’re dead? How pretentious of you. Who the hell are you to feel sad about the loss of your rather insignificant existence? Who the hell do you think you are?

Well, fair enough. I am not important in the grand, or even minor, scheme of things. This is not a statement of false modesty. I simply am not. I am like most people in this regard. Except to my family and friends I am fairly invisible. I am easily forgettable. Again, in the large and small scheme of things, there will be nothing universally tragic about my non-existence. I googled: How many people die each day around the world? I got between 152,505 and 154,138.[3] One day I will be one of them. No more, no less.

Embarrassing or not, however, I do feel sadness when contemplating my non-existence. It is my non-existence after all. And while I am certain I have not been the best son, brother, cousin, uncle, husband, friend, employee and citizen in the world, nonetheless, I still kind of like me. Don’t get me wrong. I give myself a good kick from time to time, but still, I could be a lot worse.

I would suggest, that it is not pretentious to actually like yourself enough to mourn your own passing into nothingness. Just don’t get stuck there.

There is a second source of sadness. I feel sad for my family and friends. In my novella Alien Love, my protagonist Pepito Pusinka Russell is somewhat full of himself, I hope in a humours and loveable way. Early on in the story, speaking of his own death to a psychiatrist, he says:

I don’t know how or when I will die. However, my gut level knowledge of my finitude is grounded in my make-believe death, that is, in imagining my own death. And I can’t imagine my make-believe death without survivors. Without them my dying would be tarnished. Without them it would have no meaning. I see them attending  the memorial service, standing at my grave, going back to the house for food, speaking in lowered tones and sharing the appearance of laughter. I am saddened by their ordeal, to the point of tears. My death commemoration, optimistically called a celebration of my life, is, as I imagine it, like Theodor Storm’s description of such an event in The Rider on the White Horse: “ The banquet table seemed to sag under the silence and loneliness.” I think that says it all. I see them literally surviving my death, though it will be difficult for them. I see them reacting to it, living with it. I see them moving on and through the event of my death. It is their living through it that will give my death meaning. Their lives will be changed by my death. How could it be otherwise? [4]

As you see, Pepito Pusinka Russell is not bothered by feelings of embarrassment concerning his potential pretentiousness as I am. When I image my own death and non-existence, my assumptions of how it will affect those close to me impact my emotional response. It saddens me that they will suffer and that they will have to live on without me. It is the second clause in that sentence that ushers in more embarrassing questions: So you think you are so indispensible, do you? You think they can’t get on without you? Well, who the hell do you think you are?

Again, fair enough. But in my defence, I am quite clear in my mind that I am not indispensible and I am equally clear that my family and friends will get on in life just fine without me. But if relationships mean anything, it is not wrong for me to be saddened that they will experience sorrow. In fact, if I did not, you should question my ethical integrity and my understanding of relationship itself. Nor is it s farfetched to feel sadness when imagining the impact of my absence in their lives. Surely if I am worth anything, and if my participation in the relationship has/had any value, then surely they will notice my being gone from their lives, and sometimes with sadness. And, importantly, the concern for other’s sorrow takes me out of myself and helps me avoid getting stuck in self-mourning.

I would suggest, that it is not pretentious to acknowledge that your family and friends will mourn your passing into nothingness. Just don’t overdo it.

There is one last source of sadness that needs brief comments. It saddens me that I will miss out on so much. I mentioned last week that I regret that I will not be around when humankind finally discovers life on another planet. The human adventure, though fragile, continues and I will not be a part of that, mostly as a witness obviously, but still I belong to this sometimes amazing and sometimes despicable species. I would like to see where we are are going.[5]

So I feel sadness for myself, for my family and friends and for missing out on the human journey when thinking about my death and non-existence. I want to emphasise, that while sadness can be intense, it is not a tragic sadness. It would be if death were a rare occurrence and it just happened to befall me or if I were a person of note – an artist or thinker or even a politician. None are the case which means the sadness is deeply personal and specific, but not tragic.

To say that contemplating my non-existence can be at time frightening and sad, is not to say that I actually understand it. So, next week, Death: There’s Something Bewildering about Nothingness.

Copyright © 2014 Dale Rominger

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[1] As I said last week: “It’s important to note that by afterlife Scheffler is not talking about the continuing existence of an individual after death. He’s talking about the continuation of the human species after an individual’s death and what that means to the understanding and valuing of our lives. It’s a very interesting book, though I have to confess I was sympathetic to his argument going in.”
[2] The phrase “have had cancer” is somewhat ambiguous. At present it appears I am clear of cancer. However, it’s cancer, so for the rest of my life I will be checked to see if the bastard has returned.
[3] I must confess the exact nature of the numbers make me sceptical.
[4] Rominger, Dale. Alien Love or Thank You Alpha Centauri. Bloomington: Xlibris  Publishing, 2012, pp 32-33.
[5] There is a flip side to this concern. It may be that our species is, in effect, committing suicide through climate change which may lead to conflict and war. The future may be bleak and we have no other planet to go to. So, at times I am actually glad I will not be around to see what is going to happen.

Death ~ There’s Nothing Fearful about Nothingness

I recently read Death and the Afterlife by the philosopher Samuel Scheffler. The book is actually two lectures and an essay by Scheffler with commentaries from four other leading philosophers. It’s important to note that by afterlife Scheffler is not talking about the continuing existence of an individual after death. He’s talking about the continuation of the human species after an individual’s death and what that means for the understanding and valuing of our lives. It’s a very interesting book, though I have to confess I was sympathetic to his argument going in. However, reading the book naturally got me thinking about my own death and that’s what I want to talk about.

Believe me, I don’t obsess about my death, though reading Sheffler’s book and having had cancer does tend to bring the subject to mind. So here goes an initial faltering incomplete attempt of actually thinking about what my death means to me.

When I contemplate my death three words stand out: Fear, Sadness and Bewilderment.

Fear

It’s important to realise I distinguish easily between my fear of the way I will die and my fear of death itself. Being frightened that I may die a painful or violent death is not the same thing as fearing death itself. So let’s put that aside.

I suspect I’m not along in fearing one’s death. Though Epicurus (341-270 BC) assured us a long time ago that there was nothing to fear[1], death can still frighten the bejeebers out of us. And yet, when I try to locate the source of my fear, the referent behind the fear, I run into difficulty.

I do not believe I will continue as a self-conscious, self-identifying being after my death. The best I can hope for is that my atoms will return to the cosmic dust and in time will contribute to the creation of something new (a sun would be nice). I believe I will cease to exist as a sentient being. No more Dale. So perhaps it is the fear of non-existence that frightens me. If so, such a fear strikes me as an unreasonable emotional response to an idea (death is only an idea because it hasn’t happened yet) built on the rather unsubstantial foundation of nothingness. There is nothing to fear about non-existence, it simply is what it is: the absence of my self-conscious existence, or the absence of my being. I did not exist before I was born and when I contemplate that non-existent state I don’t experience fear (actually I don’t experience anything). So why fear my non-existence after death? There’s nothing fearful about nothingness. And yet, when it’s late at night and the world is asleep and I contemplate my death, which is inevitable (my death, not the contemplation), it can be frightening.

Perhaps the locus of my fear is found in the sometimes disturbing knowledge that I will miss out on so much: the love of my wife and friends, the chance to participate in their lives, the things I’ve left undone, the fact that the human adventure, indifferent to both my existence and non-existence, will go on just fine without me (and here we touch upon Scheffler’s Afterlife), and that eventually I will be completely forgotten[2]. There is much I wish I were not going to miss. For example, I often say that I regret I will not be alive when scientists finally discover life somewhere off our home planet. But it is not fear that I experience when contemplating the things I will miss. It is sadness – which I will speak about next week.

Perhaps, for at least some of us, there is something inherently fearful about the knowledge that we will cease to exist, even though there is no logical reason to fear non-existence. When you do not exist you obviously cannot experience anything, including fear and death. However, there is a complete school of thought in psychology I stumbled across called terror management theory (TMT) which says that humans as sentient beings are able to understand their own deaths and that this ability “creates an anxiety in humans; it [death] strikes at unexpected and random moments, and its nature is essentially unknowable, causing people to spend most of their time and energy to explain, forestall, and avoid it.”  

A painting by Kurt VonnegutSo I am forced to wonder if the fear stems from the not knowing when I will actually die, not knowing my unexpected and random moment. Paul Ricoeur, in Living Up to Death, makes the point that my death before the fact is just a make-believe death. My death awaited lacks certitude because I simply do not know when I will die. As Ricoeur said, I oscillate between my “appetite for life and the grace of insouciance.”[3] Could it be that it is easier to cope with the concept of non-existence rather than the not knowing when it will begin? Does the not knowing frighten me? Well, at times it certainly makes me uneasy, but I mostly experience that insouciance Ricoeur was talking about. And sitting here now as the clock approaches midnight I find it difficult to locate real fear in the not knowing.

However, when I was diagnosed with cancer I thought it a real possibility that I would be given an estimated end time. It was the anticipation that I might know when I was going to die that frightened me. I think my fear grew from the knowledge that that which I know intellectually – I  am going to die someday – might become a knowing in a qualitatively different way – I am going to die on this day. As the full implications of my diagnosis hit home the inevitability of my death became crushing. The transition from death as an idea, something that will happen someday, to death as a impending reality, something that will happen today or tomorrow, was frightening (so much so that I destroyed a lamp in the living room, the unfortunate object that was in my reach at that crucial moment). Obviously there is a psychological finesse going on here. Death that will happen some unknown day is distant. Death that will happen one day soon seems immediate. While both deaths are in the future, the first is vague and the second is specific. Specificity in death is scary.

Well, enough for now. Next week: Death ~ There’s Nothing Pretentious about Sadness.

Copyright © 2014 Dale Rominger

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[1] “So death, the most terrifying ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since fro the former it is not, and the latter are no more.” Epicurus, Epistula ad Menoeceuum in Scheffler, Samuel. Death and the Afterlife. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 84.
[2] I have achieved nothing that will get me into the history books. In time my immediate family (wife, sisters, cousins, nieces, nephews) and friends will die and with them the memory of me. Perhaps some of my sisters children’s children or my friends’ children might think of me for an odd moment, but eventually they too will die. All trace of me will disappear.
[3] Ricoeur, Paul. Living up to Death. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London. 2009, p. Xiii.

rUK, Fashion, TV and the Free Market All Down the Rabbit Hole

Do you know what rUK is?

In the past people would say that a woman does not have a penis, rather than say a woman has a vagina. You would never hear anyone say I man doesn’t have a vagina, but always a man has a penis. You see where I’m going with this. I’m not talking about penises and vaginas. I’m talking about how language can reflect where the power lies.

rUK - Sort OfA new thing has appeared on the horizon here in the UK. The new things is rUK. rUK is part of the discussion heating up about the possibility of Scotland voting for independence, which means leaving the UK. rUK is short for “the rest of the UK. It makes sense, rUK. But it could have been mlUK short for “maybe leaving the UK” which, of course, would stand for Scotland. In the language about the independence debate it is the UK, not Scotland that is re-identified.

Makes no difference to me. I’m really an outsider looking in and have no firm opinion about whether or not Scotland should go, except to say, that if they want to go, then they should go. It feels like they want to quit the club but keep some of the best bits of club membership: the Queen (who would have thought), the pound, free travel, military cooperation, etc. The want to leave the club but still be able to use the club lounge, and when the rClub members says, “Well, if you leave you can’t use the club lounge anymore” the mlClub members get all huffy and self-righteous and declare the lounge is as much theirs as rClub members. If they can pull it off, more power to them.

Fashion, the Media and Fantasy Politics

I have always wondered why the fashion industry gets free advertising every day in the media. It's not as though most of us watching or reading can afford the clothes being shown, and I doubt most of us would want to wear them - sometimes they are so weird. This $1.5trillion a year industry gets millions and millions in free advertising in the guise of news stories. Funny old world.

Today, February 19, 2014, The Guardian gave Anya Hindmarch free advertising for her luxury handbags and other shit. Or...

Breaking news! The UK came to a standstill when Anya Hindmarch displayed her luxury handbags and other fashion accessories on a London catwalk. David Cameron was so overwhelmed by the luxury goods he announced he is quitting politics so he “can spend full time learning how to make luxury handbags and fashion accessories.” Others have voiced concern that no one is going to work, but instead standing in line to buy Anya Hindmarch handbags that cost from £800 to £2000. At present know one knows where HandbagsandothershitGate will lead, except to say that millions are hoping Nick Clegg will joins Cameron his is new career.

Today, February 20, 2-14, The Guardian gave free advertising to Gucci and designer Frida Giannini. Or...

Breaking News! Gucci fashion show in Milan yesterday changed UK politics for ever. Today the Liberal Democrats announced they were so impressed by Frida Giannini’s designs for Gucci the leadership has decided to convert the entire party into a fashion company. When Tim Farron, President of the Liberal Democrats, was asked about this bold and risky decision he said: “Well, let’s be honest. We can’t do much worse than we’re doing now. And let me emphasise. We are willing to change any or all of our plans and designs at the drop of a very luxurious and expensive hat. For example, we have already dropped our Fashion of the People campaign in the hopes that Gucci will gives us a foot in the door of the fashion industry where we can make the tough decisions that will be needed to demonstrate that we are grown-up players in the business. Besides, The People aren’t major players in the industry anyway, and there are plenty of charities shops selling hand-me-down clothes, usually located near a money shop or a payday lender. We are hoping to get started by emulating Gucci boots that sell from £550 to £1000.” 

Today, February 21, 2014, The Guardian Prada.
Today, February 22, 2014, The Guardian gave free advertising to Versace.
Today, February 23, 2014, the Observer gave Roberto Cavalli free advertising.

I was going to keep writing my little political satires on fashion and politics, but free advertising for fashion never ever stops. I give up.

TV Eats Itself

For years people have been worried about the impact of television on our brains, our health, our society, our everything. Many of us thought that “reality TV,” which of course has nothing to do with reality, was finally that step too far that would end all speculation. But no.

In Britain Gogglebox has become a big hit programme and is being moved to primetime. Gogglebox is a TV show showing people watching TV. That’s right, millions of people in Britain are sitting in their homes watching people watching TV. There is nothing more I can say. Really.

The Protected Ass - Sorry! I mean the Free Market

The Tory/Liberal Democratic government is hiring private contractors to decommission Britain’s aging nuclear reactors. Value for money I’m sure we will be told in this free market world of adventure capitalism. There is a hitch, however. If in the act of decommissioning these private companies cause a minor or major radioactive incident – in other words, if they fuck up – they will not be held financially liable for the cost of cleaning up their own mess. The Tory/Lib Dem government will “indemnify the private contractors,” meaning the compliant tax payers of Britain will pick up the tab, even if it is billions of pounds.

How much do you want to bet that at least some of these private contractors sing the praises of the free market and condemn government interference in the private sector. The taxpayers have been giving welfare to private corporations since the beginning of time in the form of subsidies, indemnities, tax cuts, etc. Free market my ass.

Copyright © 2014 Dale Rominger

Bankers and their Conduct Issues

“The vast income accumulated by the narrow slice of super-elite at the top of the wealth pyramid has created a kind of global ‘canopy economy’ that has lost its connections to the nations and people they sprang from.”[1]

Here in the UK two too big to fail banks have announced increases in their annual bonus pay-outs. Lloyds Bank, still partially owned by the public – which makes not a damn bit of difference – announced a 8% to 10% (depending upon what news story you read) increase of bonuses to £395milion. At least Lloyds made a profit last year.

Barclays Bank has announced it is increasing its bonus pay-out by 10% to £2.4billion, even though it reported a 32% fall in annual profits and that it will be cutting 12,000 jobs. Anthony Jenkins, Barclays’ chief executive, waived his bonus for this year which would have been £2.7million.Yes, a goodwill jester, but he still shocked even The City when he announced the 10% increase for other top players. Unfortunately, his commendable decision to refuse his bonus didn’t impress his financial director, Tushar Morzaria, or his executive management team, all of whom are taking their bonuses after “tapped shareholders for £5.8bn of fresh cash.” 

Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, has suggested that a large portion of bankers’ bonuses should be held back. He said:

"Compensation of bankers should be held back and deferred for a very long time. There should be an ability and an expectation that a firm takes back compensation if an individual is found to have taken risks or if there are conduct issues. More pay should be deferred for a longer period." 

Since the public bailed out the banks in 2008 politicians have been very politely asking bankers to hold back on the bonus payments, to no avail. Sometimes the word “demand” is used, but we all learned quickly that it meant nothing. Even the state owned banks ignored the politicians and us, which was easy to do. The politicians are still talking about legislation to restructure the bank and we the people got angry but didn’t occupy The City, demanding change or revolution. The politicians talk and we stayed home.

Carney’s words are interesting because the Bank of England does have the power to limit bonuses “if a bank was deemed to have inadequate levels of capital.” I won’t hold my breath. However, Carney mentions two things in regard to banker compensation: taking risks and conduct issues. On the risk issue, I can’t help but quote Charles Ferguson from his book Inside Job:

“...the single most powerful driver of risk taking and fraud was clearly the fact that all the benefits were appropriated by those running the financial system, while costs were borne by everyone else.[2]

People in finance who can make obscene amounts of money are not going to stop taking risks out of a sense of moral obligation to the public who will covers their losses. Why should they? The only way to stop unreasonable risk is through the restructuring of the banks and new legislation. Both depend on the government to act.

Conduct issues can be translated as immoral and/or illegal activities. There is often a dislocation between what we the public see as immoral behaviour and what is considered illegal. The laws do not fit our common sense notion of morality in finance. And again, assuming that bankers will voluntarily take note of our concerns and act accordingly is utter nonsense. Even Epicurus recognised that desires for wealth and status can never be satisfied. Such desires have no limits.[3]

Given the announcements by Lloyds and Barclay, politicians may once again begin taking about "the need to change the banking culture.” Suggestion on how to do this  will vary but most will be a nudge nudge policy.[4] The nudge approach assumes that after some 30 years of greed, illegality, defrauding their customers, cheating their own banking system and giving themselves obscene amounts of money, bankers will be transformed into reasonable, responsible and law abiding people if only we ask them really nicely to do so. Other policies may be more firm, but personally I don’t think that taking away their knighthoods will be enough. So, here’s my idea of how to change the banking culture.

First, change the laws so that unreasonable risk and conduct issues become illegal.

Second, actually arrest those who break the law. Fining the bank alone will not do it. In a recent case of a bank illegally selling their customers insurance they didn’t need or know about, when officials were asked why no one was arrested, the answer was simply that the bank, not individuals, was at fault and was fined. Such a claim is dumbfounding and insulting. We are told that huge sums of money are given to individuals to reward them for their contributions to the bank, while at the same time we are expected to accept that immoral and illegal activities in the bank are not the responsibility of any individual. As Ferguson said:

“Tolerance of overtly criminal behaviour has now become broadly, structurally embedded in the financial sector, and has played a major role in financial sector profitability and incomes since the late 1990’s.”[5]

Fourth, if found guilty, fine the criminals amounts of money that will actually have a negative impact on their wealth and throw them in jail. While the threats of losing substantial amounts of money and imprisonment can focus the mind, nothing will change if bankers continue to believe they can get away with anything. They certainly have until now. Governments have to stop protecting them at the expense of the public.

Change the laws, arrest people, jail them. That will change the banking culture.

Copyright © 2014 Dale Rominger

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[1] Ferguson, Charles. Inside Job: The Financiers Who Pulled Off the Heist of the Century. London: Oneworld Publications Limited, 2012, p. 12.
[2] Ibid., p. 228.
[3] Ferguson Smith, Martin. Lucretius: on The Nature of Things. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. 1969, Loc 515-519 (Kindle Edition).
[4] The Tory/Lib Dem government’s Nudge Unit, formally called the Behavioural Insight Team is being privatised. Well, of course it is!
[5] Ferguson, Charles. Inside Job: The Financiers Who Pulled Off the Heist of the Century. London: Oneworld Publications Limited, 2012, p. 186.

I Think Someone’s Watching Me

Someone may be watching me. I just can’t shake the feeling.

We’re all up to date on the National Security Agency (NSA in the U.S.) and the Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ in the UK) spying on all us nice and docile citizens. They retrieve and store data on our phone calls, text messages, emails, internet browsing, website viewing (they know you’re reading this right now). They do this with the help of telecommunication and other private companies: Verizon, Vodafone, British Telecom, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo!, to name just a few. We’ve learned that the NSA and GCHQ have even hacked into the backbone of the internet, creating backdoors and goodness knows what else to compromise the very security that, for example, all internet finance depends on. All those prime number encryption algorithms don’t do much good if the spies have direct access ( See New York Times  and Scientific American).

Of course, it’s not just governments collecting and storing my life. All those great companies started in dorm rooms and garages years ago are selling parts of me every day. Facebook, Amazon, Google collect and sell my metadata to anyone out there with deep enough pockets. And those unknown companies and organisations with deep pockets have accumulated huge databases of our private and personal information. I bet you haven’t heard of “data brokers.” I hadn't. They buy and sell collect and story information about us. For example, Acxion, Inc has detailed dossiers on 96% of Americans and 500 million people world wide. For each of these people it stores 1500 data points covering people's net worth, shopping habits and contact information. (See New York Times and Abine)

What do we want? Privacy! When do we want it? After we checked our Facebook status and bought that book!!

Here in Britain the police have for years infiltrated green activist and university student organisations as a matter of course. At least two copper were undercover for years and fathered children with activists. When their tour of duty was up, they simply disappeared. Tough to know who your friends are these days, not to mention who your daddy is. George Monbiot gives a quick rundown of police undercover surveillance:

Among them were the British campaign against apartheid in South Africa, the protest movements against climate change, people seeking to expose police corruption and the campaign for justice for the murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence. Undercover officers, often using the stolen identities of dead children, worked their way into key positions and helped to organise demonstrations...Some officers illegally used their false identities in court.

The British police have 8000 CCTV cameras all over Britain and to date capture 26 million images each and every day of people like you and me. The police estimate that by 2018 they can increase that number to 50 to 75 million. The automated numberplate recognition system (ANPR) has 17 billion photos in its archives. If you’re on the highways, they know it, and pretty much know where you are going and where you’ve come from.

Not to be outdone, the Tory/Liberal Democrat government wants the NHS to join in the fun. 26 million households in England will be getting the Better Information Means Better Care leaflet telling us of the exciting new development of collecting all our confidential medical records and putting them in one place, the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) via the General Practice Extraction Service (GPES). The information to be extracted will inlcude our NHS numbers, date of birth, postcode, ethnicity and gender. As I understand it, my GP will be required to transfer my confidential information (once transferred my “information” becomes “data”). And what do I have to do to help? Well, absolutely nothing. The leaflet helpfully point out: "If you are happy for your information to be shared you do not need to do anything. There is no form to fill in and nothing to sign. And you can change your mind at any time."

I can, of course, opt out by finding the right form, filling it in and giving it to my GP. This is nudge nudge strategy. Set the default option as “do nothing” to “participate” and most people will do exactly that, nothing. Tory and Liberal Democrat ministers will then announce the programme is a great success because we all joined in. It must be true, therefore, that all along we wanted our confidential medical information be collected and sold. Of course, not opting out is not the same thing as joining in, but never mind.

Obviously, some good will come of this. Researches will have access to vast amounts of data and by pooling and analyzing that data they will learn more about health, disease and treatment in England. There’s a rub, however, and as always it’s about money and privacy. The database will be available to “approved researchers” and they don’t just include my GP, NHS folks and university researches. No, for a fee private insurance and pharmaceutical companies, for example, can also have access to my confidential medial information. That’s right, someone is going to make some of money off my getting cancer. And once the private firms have the data they can use it in any way that benefits their interests. I’d bet my own personal metadata that no Tory or Liberal Democrat government minister will have any influence over data usage by private firms once that data has been purchased.

It’s now being reported that the police and other government bodies will have “backdoor” access to our medical records in the database. At present the police have to find our GP who hold our medical records and then go to open court for a disclosure order. When the new database is in place the police will simply have to go to the NHS information centre and ask for the information.

Of course, as with all the spying, police infiltration, data collection, data selling, data storing, image capturing and archiving, there is absolutely nothing for me to worry about. I’m assured that my personal information, well most of it anyway, will be “scrubbed” of “personal identifiers,” but as is always the case, probably not enough to make me completely disappear. Even the guy selling the programme on behalf of the government told The Guardian there is a slight risk:

Mark Davies, the centre's public assurance director, told the Guardian there was a "small risk" certain patients could be "re-identified" because insurers, pharmaceutical groups and other health sector companies had their own medical data that could be matched against the "pseudonymised" records. "You may be able to identify people if you had a lot of data. It depends on how people will use the data once they have it. But I think it is a small, theoretical risk," he said.

Right. As John Naughton said in the Observer: “All of which makes one wonder what Davies has been smoking.”

Concerning the scrubbing of identifiable data, Pulse has also discovered that requests “for identifiable patient data have been approved more than 30 times since April by the group of independent experts which will oversee access to confidential records uploaded to the controversial care.data scheme.” I guess the best thing to say is “watch this space.” 

They – government ministers, spies, private companies, the police – keep telling me that no one is, at least not yet, collecting my “content” but just my metadata and thus I have nothing to worry about. But anyone who can watch TV or listen to the radio or read a news item knows that metadata is the name of the game. Why the hell do you think the likes of Facebook and Google sell my web and search activities. By pooling data and analyzing that data they can probably tell my wife a thing or two about who I am and what I get up to. Through analyzing metadata the spies and the advertisers can construct a detailed and accurate profile of who I am, what I do and with whom I do it.

Pulse: At the Heart of General Practice Since 1960, asked GP’s this question:

Do you plan to personally opt out of the care.data scheme?

The results:

• Yes – 41%
• No – 43%
• Don’t Know – 16%

GP’s who are opting out of care.data have said that they have “concerns over the safety of the data and the way the scheme was to be conducted...”; that patients might be misled about the “confidential nature of the data extraction”; that it’s not “clear to whom the data may be sold.” (From the above Pulse link)

Question: Who owns my private medical records? I thought it was me, but perhaps I am wrong. In any event, my records will be sold and no one's going to deposit money in my account after the sale.

Well, ridiculously, I may make a stand this time! It’s ridiculous because I haven’t made a stand on anything else. I haven’t stopped using Gmail or Google searches, Facebook, Amazon, my mobile phone, browsing the internet, etc. But I just may refuse to allow my confidential medical information being sold to private insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and God knows who else.

If you want to consider opting out yourself, go to medConfidential. Remember, this is not an opt in programme. You must opt out or your private medical records will be included in the new database. I’ve printed out the dissent form and letter to give to my GP, and just might do it. Only, she’s great and over worked and when I dump the form on her desk at my next appointment she’ll have more work to do. Life! Or, I could just say, what the hell. I’ll be dead before any of this matters.

Where’s George Orwell when you need him?

Copyright © 2014 Dale Rominger

The Great Sentimentality Hoax

I recently read a collection of essays by Milan Kundera entitled Encounters. In a  piece entitled The Total Rejection of Heritage, or Iannis Xenakis, when discussing “sentiment as justification for human cruelty”[1], Kundera recalls Carl Jung’s essay on James Joyce’s Ulysses. The essay was published in 1932 and in it Jung said

Atrophy of feeling is a characteristic of modern man and always shows itself as a reaction when there is too much feeling around, and in particular too much false feeling. From the lack of feeling in “Ulysses” we may infer a hideous sentimentality in the age that produced it. But are we really so sentimental today?…there is a good deal of evidence to show that we actually are involved in a sentimentality hoax of gigantic proportions. Think of the lamentable role of popular sentiment in wartime! Think of our so-called humanitarianism! The psychiatrist knows only too well how each of us becomes the helpless but not pitiable victim of his own sentiments. Sentimentality is the superstructure erected upon brutality…[2]

I’m not interested here in Jung’s take on Ulysses. I can’t read the damn book, though goodness knows I have tried more than once.[3] I am interested in the phrases “we actually are involved in a sentimentality hoax” and “sentimentality is the superstructure erected upon brutality...”

I think a distinction needs to me made between sentiment and sentimentality:

Sentiment: of or prompted by feelings of tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia. (There is nothing wrong with having feelings of tenderness and sadness, though nostalgia - a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past - is indeed a slippery slope sliding us right into the middle of sentimentality.

Sentimentality: exaggerated and self-indulgent tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia. (There is a lot wrong with exaggerated and self-indulgent feelings and thoughts.)

So to be clear, here I am talking about sentimentality.

It has often fascinates me, and equally as often disturbs me, that we use sentimentality to cope with, justify or even glorify human brutality. As Jung notes in his essay, the most obvious example of this is our response to war: our preparation for war, conducting of war and remembering of war. Sentimentality may help survivors and mourners cope, but it also builds a superstructure, as Jung says, which holds the entire war industry in place. Without war sentimentality coupled with nationalism sentimentality, how could such utter brutality and destruction industry not collapse under its own weight: death weight, mutilation weight, destruction weight, financial weight?

I experienced my first Remembrance Day in England as a minister in a small church in Cumbria some 26 year ago. The Church of England of course led the event. I was asked to read scripture in the C of E church, which I was happy to do. Of course I was asked to read Isaiah 2:4

And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

Flags were paraded into the church. Military symbols and representatives were in show. Dignitaries were present. The sermon was appropriate for the occasion, though not necessarily appropriate for Isaiah 2:4. After the service we proceeded outside to a World War I memorial honouring local men who had died in that war.  I had nothing to do so simply observed.  

I saw an elder woman crying. Next to her stood her daughter with her right arm around the older woman’s shoulder. The daughter’s left arm was around her young son. To their right were six boys age ten to sixteen, I guessed, standing erect in military type uniforms. The C of E minister was sombre. The band played. There was, of course, remorse and loss, but remorse and loss that played their proper roles in the event. There was honour, there was glory, both of which were necessary to prepare those at attention boys to go to war. There was a great sentimental hoax. It embraces us all.

It’s politically and socially heretical to suggest that the powerful feelings, indeed, waves of sentimentality experienced while commemorating war are not only unhealthy but destructive, that they blind us to the true reality of that which our sentimentality is directed. The hoax, freely embraced and shared, is that the brutality is actually what we imagine it to be, after the fact, in the glow of our remembrances and ceremonies. Sentimentality transforms reality and enables us to both weep for a husband, father, grandfather and dress up our young boys and girls in military uniforms, congratulating them on their imitation of the noble national warrior. Sentimentality transforms brutality into a particular expression of tenderness, sadness, glory and celebration. It hides the cruelty and destruction, or if they must be remembered, sentimentality reifies our transformed memories. It’s a great big self-imposed self-indulgent con. And it asks, indeed encourages, the boys and girls to prepare to sacrifice their lives on someone else’s future battlefield.

My uncle had a horrific World War II experience and came home as a very traumatised survivor. He became an alcoholic and a violent one at that. Once when I was very young, when we were visiting my uncle’s home, he became drunk and violent. I learned that night that he took it out on his wife. My dad took me outside to protect me from the violence and tried to explain. Years later my uncle was found drunk and beaten in an alley. Once it was discovered he was a veteran they took him to veterans hospital. While there he requested drawing paper, pencil, pen and water colours. He created a series of images all utterly devoid of sentimentality. He was simply not capable of such a thing. The images he created were no great hoax, but his response to human brutality. I have include one pencil and one pen drawing of he did while recovering in hospital.

No sentimentality. No superstructure. No hoax.

 

Copyright © 2014 Dale Rominger

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[1] Kundera, Milan. Encounters. London: Faber and Faber, 2009, p.76.

[2] I searched in vain for the actual essay but did find numerous essays on the essay. This quote can be found in all of them or standing on its own when you google Jung on Ulysses.

[3] Ulysses is one of the greatest novels ever written, though very few people can actually read and understand it. I have a friend in California who took a whole class on l how to read the book and still couldn’t understand large parts of it. Obviously I’m no fan of Ulysses and can’t resist this quote from Jung in his 1932 essay: "...I read to page 135 with despair in my heart, falling asleep twice on the way. The incredible versatility of Joyce's style has a monoto-nous and hypnotic effect. Nothing comes to meet the reader, everything turns away from him, leaving him gaping after it. The book is always up and away, dissatisfied with itself, ironic, sardonic, virulent, contemptuous, sad, despairing, and bitter."

Overcoming Devil Mountain

When I lived in Berkeley, California over thirty years ago, my then wife and I invited a friend to stay with us for a couple of weeks. One weekend when she was away on business, Jean and I had dinner, drank a bottle of wine and then pretended to watch TV. What we really did was talk. Jean was an artist and at that time was concentrating on sculpting. I fancied myself a writer, which was then largely aspirational . What we talked about was creativity: Creator ~ the one who creates; Creativity ~ that certain something the creator possesses; The act of creating ~ sitting down or standing up and doing it; and Creation ~ the thing created.

Nothing exciting there, indeed, rather banal. But then things got interesting. After discussing the obvious, we discovered that we both experienced “resistance” before the act of creating, which sometimes could be formidably. We acknowledged that we enjoyed and valued the act of creating and that we often, but certainly not always, liked what we created. However, we had to be honest and say that there was often a hill, though more likely a mountain, to get over before all that enjoying and valuing could happen.

I need to pause here for the sake of clarity. We often use the metaphor of climbing a mountain and reaching the summit to communicate self-fulfilment, self-actualisation, wonder and beauty, etc., understanding that the “peak experience” would not be so “peak” if we had not first endured the challenge of the climb. The mountain metaphor I use here, however, is not about self-fulfilment. Here the mountain is something in our way, the climb is a pain in the ass and standing on the summit has no value in and of itself. When reaching the peak the best thing you can say is that you are only a microsecond away from something that will be fulfilling if you can only take one more step. This summit is not a place to get stuck, but if you begin the slide down, that is begin creating, then all kinds of enjoyment and value await you. It’s fascinating that that one last step can be difficult.

So how to explain a strong resistance to something so good? Well, it could be simply a resistance to getting off one’s backside and doing something. It takes discipline and is often hard work to create. Discipline because to write a story, paint a picture, form a sculpture, compose music, etc., takes time, sometimes a lot of time. You have to keep going back to it time and time again. And, often to create something is just hard work. You can get stuck, bored, discouraged, lost. Creating sometimes demands that you rethink and rework, that you stick to it. When I was writing Alien Love I had the narrative mapped out. I wanted to explore if a person could truly change and what explanations might be given if indeed change happened. I thought I would look at biochemical, psychological and philosophical/theological explanation for personal change and their implications about responsibility (did I change or did my chemistry change?). But when I got to that point in the story it was obvious that the strategy wouldn’t work. I had to rethink the structure and direction of the narrative, and I had to rewrite. It was a lot of work. So, maybe this mountain of resistance is simply a desire to avoid discipline and hard work. On the other hand...

Perhaps there are philosophical/theological reasons for a resistance to creating, though another pause is needed here. Theological language is metaphorical in nature. When I use theological language I am not saying I believe literally in that to which I refer. For example, if I were to speak of the Christian Trinity, that does not mean I believe some three in one being literally exists. The Trinity is a metaphor trying to give meaning to the notions of God, Christ and Spirit and the relational concepts that bring them together. Nor do I believe the words God, Christ and Spirit refer to realities in the same way that, say, Jupiter, Neptune and Sun refer to realities. So...

I googled Devil Mountain and got this.Creator, creativity, creating and creation are often associated with the divine or the divine within us. Destruction (and here I include the resistance to creating) is often associated with the demonic. And no, I do not believe in a god or a devil in any literal sense, however, the language is useful and refers to qualities of the human character, spirit or soul. Nor am I saying that I believe outside entities intrude into my life imposing divine and demonic ambitions. I’m saying that that certain something that drives us to create and the resistance to create is something within us. Theological language can indicates how powerful they both are. Besides, in our wine influenced talk Jean referred to her resistance to completing the sculpture she was working on as “overcoming devil mountain.” That certain something that drives creative acts can be understood as a divine spark or the divine within us all. That resistance to creating, and the destruction of creation, might be seen as that something within us, the demonic spark, that fights against the good.

Philosophers and ethicists have pondered for generations the relationship between goodness (here = creativity) and badness (here = destruction). No matter what approach one uses we have always been able to articulated reasons for the good: Natural law says we are good by our nature; Utilitarianism because the good is best for the greatest number; Virtue because of the quality of character, or because goodness determines who we were, who we are and who we will  become; Situationism says we are good to maximize consequences; Humanism that we are innately good. I could go on, however, the question of our badness remains. If we are naturally good, why do we go against our nature? If what is beneficial for the greatest number is the greatest good, then why are we bad. If goodness makes us better people then why do we behave in ways that undermine our integrity? If calculating the consequences of our actions is best, then why do we act in ways that lead to negative consequences. If we are possessed of a divine spark of creativity, then we do we resist it?  

Of course Jean and I came to no profound and final conclusions about what the resistance was, where it came from or how to rid ourselves of its bothersome influences. We simply went to bed agreeing that it existed within us, got in the way and needed to be overcome at all cost. Otherwise we would probably spend the rest of our lives watching television.

Copyright © 2014 Dale Rominger

Music, Peace and The Quest

In my life thus far two things have eluded me: music and peace of mind (you can substitute the word “mind” with either “soul” or “spirit” if you like because I’m obviously not talking about “peace of brain,” which has no real meaning).

When I say music has eluded me I mean that I can’t sing, can’t play an instrument, can’t read music and no nothing about music history and theory. I can, however and obviously, experience music. But while my experience is often enjoyable and sometimes meaningful, it is certainly uninformed.

By peace of mind I mean…Goodness, I’m not sure what I mean, which is part of the problem. Nonetheless, I suggest it is an inner peace that I think comes through psychological, spiritual and material realities that both define and surround me and the way I perceive, experience and live life. When I say peace of mind has eluded me, I mean just that. I can’t find it or create it. I am not saying that I have never experienced peace. I have. But never in a permanent or even prolonged way. Peace is so utterly ephemeral to me and I feel and think it should be more enduring.

I’ve brought music and peace together here because the other day I listened to Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings again after many years. For almost six minutes the music slowly and beautifully repeats it’s sad melodic theme. It is the relationship between the beauty and sadness that strikes and moves me as I listen. The music seems to be a kind of resolved recognition that they must coexist. At just over five minutes the strings begin to hint at what is to come and at 5’55 they start to climb. At 6’42 you think they have reached their destination but then they climb higher, and then higher still, so that at 7’8, just when you feel as though your life is fulfilled and your heart will break, they stop. There is the briefest pause and then the music brings us once again to earth where the sounds are deeper and slower, because, I guess, we can’t live in the heights.

Before the music starts to climb at 5’55, what I “see” when listening, while certainly not darkness, is nonetheless dim tan tones. And while I do not experience confusion, I do sense an wispy fog. There is a hesitancy in the music that denies lucidity. And I see and feel the prominence of sadness over beauty, though just. By the time the music has reached its peak at 7’8 however, I see light and experience clarity. Here beauty has expelled sadness. All hesitancy has been vanquished. There simply is no room for sadness and tentativeness here in the heights. All there is is light and clarity and this is my moment of peace, bright and vibrant. But as always (!!) that moment does not, and perhaps cannot, last. The music brings us down. The tan tones become brownish. Things slow down. The clarity is tempered with the haze of the sound. Sadness resumes its seemingly natural home in human experience as the music fades into nothingness.

It is now obvious why I began by saying I know nothing about music and that I am disappointed that what peace I have experienced is so transitory. I find it very difficult to put music into words, and perhaps what I have written about the Adagio is worse than naïve. Nonetheless, it is my experience of the music. And, disappointed as always, the light of peace so powerfully gifted to me in the music only last a few seconds - though, what a wonderful few seconds.

What the music has left me with are questions it would be wise for me to apply to my quest: What is the relationship between sadness (that is the lack of peace) and beauty? What is the relationship between peace and beauty? Is it simply our lot that peace will forever be fragile and fleeting? Or, is the fact that my experience of peace is fragile and fleeting my failure?

In my book Notes from 39,000 Feet I wrote, in a chapter entitled In the Absence of Our Desired Hope, of an experience I had years ago in Greece, again about the nature and ephemeral nature of peace. Here I am more comfortable, here in words. So I leave you with those words. However, I began with the experience of music because it embraces something about peace that words cannot, something important that I cannot do without. Perhaps the bringing together of the above music and the below words will be of some benefit.

From Limeni, Greece:

I was sitting at a table on the water's edge under bamboo on the fifth day since my arrival. Five days previously, I had been struck by the beauty of the village and the bay. Beauty was a good enough reason to stop. On this day I was sensing the presence of peace as different, distinct from a feeling of peacefulness. As I sat drinking Greek black muddy coffee and retsina, eating bread, tzatziki, meatballs, and salad, I wondered what it was, this peace.

How much of peace is physical? The rough concrete pouring into the rocks. The water lapping, its peaceful sound, gently filling every crevice in the rocks, and just as gently running out again, as if in Buddhist meditation. The boats rocking rhythmically on the surface of the water. Gently. A small bird flying low across the water. The water shades of blue, light, almost transparent, merging to deep dark blue, almost black. Clean. A large bee humming in the bamboo over my head.

I was surrounded by quiet life, or a gentle living. The birds chirping, the bees humming. The buildings alive with time and being, and years of human living. The water alive, slowing filling and touching every space before moving on. The water contained life, surrounded life, created life. The rusty chains and water soaked ropes that joined boats to shore were alive. The ropes covered in green. The chains and rings and spikes rusting. Oxidation as life.

How much of peace is the community? At the end of the patio, to my right, two people sat at a table eating in silence. To my left, on a section of the patio without a bamboo covering, sat a young woman and a middle aged man. Her left foot was on the edge of the chair in which she sat and her right leg rested on another chair. Her hair was full and long and light in colour. Her body was slender, desirable. She wore dark glasses, a white blouse, tight blue jeans, and boots. She was posing for, indeed inviting, the man who sat  opposite her at the small table. He too was stylish. Gold chain on a bare chest, open white shirt, off-white loose trousers. From time to time they both made sure we were noticing them.

An old woman walked between us. She carried a bucket filled with frozen squid. She walked down four steps which were cut into the patio between the rocks and which led to the water, the bottom two steps submerged. The old woman took off her shoes and stood on the last step filling her bucket with water. She placed the frozen squid in the bucket of water to begin thawing, took them out of the bucket and hit them against the concrete steps. Then she filled the bucket again and put the squid back in the bucket to renew the cycle.

As I watched, I noticed still further to my left around the curve of the small bay, two people sitting on their balcony, looking back across the water, the boats, the taverna, at me. And behind us all, near the entrance to the taverna, sat an old man. Fisherman by the looks of him, weathered and unshaven. He sat by himself drinking Greek coffee, saying nothing. He hardly moved at all.

How much of peace is spiritual? The physical reaching into my body, mind, and soul. The sounds easing the mind. Beauty moving the spirit. The company of animals, people, water, and rust becoming a communion of sorts.

Even in that deep place of my being, within peace itself, there was slight disturbance in the form of an even deeper longing. Even as I experienced peace, I longed for it to go deeper, to flow in gently and fill every crack and crevice of my sometimes battered being. Even as I acknowledged with gratitude that peace existed in that moment, I longed for it to exist always.

Impossible.

Perhaps.

Peace for most of us is only a temporary experience. The most we can expect, because it is the most we have experienced. It is a repeating of the momentary. But we can long for, hope for, is for such peace to be permanent.

It is a glimpse of the divine, like a silent whisper. The deeper the peace, the deeper we pursue it, the closer we approach that which is divine. And that was it. That was what it was, this deep running longing. To reach the divine within me and without me, to touch it, to be the divine, so that I could be reconciled with the universe. The divine, not as temporary relationship, but as constant. Not as an exceptional experience, but as commonplace experience.

Even as I searched around me for the meaning of what was happening, things began to change. A breeze came up. The water was finding new energy. Gentle lapping became a crashing. The boats began to rock more violently, move towards me and the water splashed at my feet. The bamboo began to sing. The two people at the end of the terrace began to speak. The man and woman of glamour got up and began to leave, walking up the steps toward the road. As they left, the woman took off her sunglasses and smiled at me. She was inviting us all to watch. The old fisherman lit his pipe and coughed, clearing his throat unpleasantly, without the hesitation of self-consciousness. And two policemen walked down the steps joining us under the bamboo.

The moment had passed.

Copyright © 2014 Dale Rominger

Earth ~ A Pale Blue 0.12 Pixel

EarthriseYears ago when I was in seminary in Berkeley, California, a professor asked what was the most significant phenomenon to have occurred for humankind (if my memory serves, it was that dramatic and not, for example, the most important event in that particular year or decade). Possibilities were offered and all were wrong. The thing he had in mind was the photo of the earth rising over the horizon of the moon. The photo is now called Earthrise (NASA image AS8-14-2383) and was taken on December 24, 1968 by astronaut William Anders during the Apollo 8 mission, which was the first time human beings orbited the moon. 

The Pale Blue DotA second space photo is also reputedly a photo that has changed things forever: The Pale Blue Dot. The photo was taken by Voyager 1 on Valentine’s Day in 1990 when the space craft was 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometres) from Earth. In the photo Earth is only 0.12 pixel in size. Voyager was launched by NASA on September 5, 1977 to study the outer solar system and now 36 years, 4 months later (as of this writing) it is still sending messages back to Earth (it will do so until 2025). On August 25, 2012 Voyager left our solar system and entered interstellar space, the first human made craft to do so. In approximately 40,000 years Voyager 1 will be within 1.6 light-years (still some distance by human reckoning) form the red dwarf star Gliese 445, which is 17.6 light-years from our sun.  

It is argued that Earthrise demonstrates to humankind how beautiful and fragile is its home. The Pale Blue Dot declares that all that we have been, are and will be is being lived out on what Carl Sagan calls a “very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.”  It has been argued that the ideas of beauty, fragility and insignificance as illustrated in these two photos have changed us forever. Perhaps they have, but I would like to see some evidence. Don’t get me wrong. I find both photos inspiring. But life changing for our species?

We are still beating our beautiful and fragile environment to death. Yes, we have made progress and, yes, Earthrise probably is the most important environmental photo ever taken. And yet, humankind is the cause of species extinction and may be the cause of a mass extinction event in the future. We continue to burn fossil fuels with abandonment, which might make Earth uninhabitable for most species, including our own, in the not so distant future (if you think I’m being overly dramatic look up what will happen if the methane in frozen tundra and in the oceans is released, and that is just one game changing possibility).

A short list of anthropogenic effects on the environment might be helpful: climate change;  conservation; energy (conservation, renewable, environmental impact, etc.); environmental degradation; environmental health (air quality, water quality, soil erosion, effects on human health, etc.); genetic engineering; intensive farming; land degradation (pollution, desertification, etc.); soil (conservation, erosion contamination, etc.); land use (urban sprawl, habitat destruction, etc.); nanotechnology; nuclear issues (fallout, meltdown weapons, waste, etc.); overpopulation; ozone depletion; pollution; resource depletion (consumerism, over fishing, logging, mining, etc.); toxins; waste. 

If the Pale Blue Dot, only 0.12 pixel at only 3.7 billion miles away (we’re talking about the universe here don’t forget), is supposed to put in perspective our over blown self-importance and usher in a time of greater humbleness and understanding, then I’m discouraged. We continue to butcher each other over political lines drawn in sand, dirt, water and air (and if our civilisation survives the climate crisis we will no doubt draw lines in low earth orbit and then on the moon). We continue to butcher each other over ideologies that won’t even last long, relatively speaking, on our pale blue dot. We continue to oppress and exploit each other. We continue to beat and murder each other. We even continue to beat and murder our children. The perspective offered by The Pale Blue Dot seems to be meaningless in real terms.

Question: Is there a relationship between the self-image of our own importance and the way we treat each other? Whatever the answer it must be said that our proclaimed exceptionalism is extremely resilient. From the pre-science belief that the earth was the centre of the cosmos to today’s Anthropic Principle, that has been co-opted by religion and philosophy claiming that the universe is “compelled” or “created” to enable little old us to evolve or be created, our belief in our own exceptional status has rarely wavered. In this regard, perhaps some perspective would be helpful.

Milky Way, Orion Arm and the SunOur sun, and thus our planet, is situated within the inner rim of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way, which happens to be a minor arm of our galaxy. That puts us somewhere between 25,000 to 28,000 light-years from the centre of our galaxy. We, with our sun, have made approximately eighteen galactic orbits, which is a trip of about a 250 million year trip. Our sun is eighteen galactic years old. At fifteen galactic years old the most the planet earth had to offer in the way of life was unicellular microbes and multicellular bacterial colonies. And as Lee Billings says in Five Billion Years of Solitude, when we reach twenty-two galactic years old “some thousand million years hence, our planet may well return to its former barren state.”[1] In about 5.4 billion years when the sun has converted all its hydrogen into helium it will expand into a red giant, engulfing all the inner planets and perhaps earth. And if it does not actually obliterate earth it will burn it to a crisp rendering our pale blue dot an uninhabitable lump of molten rock. No exceptions.

The Milky Way has around 300 billion stars and astronomers are saying there may be up to 17 billion earth-like planets among them.[2] Along with our Milky Way it’s estimated that there may be up to 500 billion galaxies in the universe containing at least 70 sextillion stars (one sextillion equals 1000 trillion). You can bet a lot of those 70 sextillion stars are earth-like and a number of them are in their star’s Goldilocks zone.

When NASA turned Voyage 1 around to take a “family photo” of our solar system they did so on the request of Carl Sagan. He wrote a book entitled Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. Quoting Sagan seems like a good way to end:

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Copyright © 2013 Dale Rominger

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[1] Billings, Lee. Five Billion Years of Solitude. New York: Current, 2013, p.31.

[2] While the search for exoplanets     is a relatively new field of astronomy new techniques and discoveries are accelerating. The app on my tablet that notifies me every time a new exoplanet is confirmed lists 987 confirmed exoplanets and 996 selected planets for further study. Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanet claims 1056 exoplanets in 802 solar systems have been confirmed. The number will rise exponentially.