This line of argument runs that, it is each person’s responsibility to better his or her situation, not by ‘complaining,’ but by ‘doing.’  I.e., work hard, and/or if the situation is stinky, leave and find another situation.  By ‘voting with your feet,’ workers will teach bosses that they cannot get away with certain abuses, and over time the worst of these will disappear.

This line of argument, it will be noted, has become most common amongst those citizens of the U.S. who:

a)  Are the unwitting beneficiaries of a unique confluence of economic factors which made it extremely easy for American citizens to earn a decent middle-class living during the 63 years between 1945 and 2008, but which will perhaps never again favour US citizens so much (these conditions included a very developed US, and a very poor India, China, Africa, and Russia, and a socialist Europe. – which made the US by default an economic powerhouse, with a unique ability to command and produce resources – like the Dutch and English in earlier centuries, who had advanced economies and few competitors but which then lost this advantage and melded into relative mediocrity.)

b) Are ahead of the IQ, education, and starting social network curve, and thus can always find a better-than-average-paying job with relatively little effort and/or luck.

c) Have ‘paid their dues’ buy buying into the system – working long hours, sacrificing many dreams and goals outside of work life, sacrificing many quality of life issues, but receiving in return a better-than-average remuneration, which gives them a decent amount of capital and ‘stuff’ to protect.  Thus both ‘survivors bias’ (meaning they are already good at/accustomed to working within the system), and also ‘sour grapes’ bias – i.e., the very real element of jealousy for those who haven’t had to make such sacrificies, inspired even by the thought that anyone might have their cake without having to make the same sacrifices– play heavily into their opinions.

d) And/or, have been influenced by a highly professionalized corps of demagogues, who in the US are overwhelmingly funded and maintained by the economic elite, whose primary purpose is to find ways to sell the agenda of the economic elite to the masses, by appealing to and systematically inflaming their commonest fears of ‘the other.’  This strategy has over the past 20 years worked incredibly well, and created an army of Limbaugh-zombies, who are highly suspicious of science and logic, and who, hypnotized by Rush’s admittedly skillful demagoguery, will now systematically vote against their own best interest, and that of the global community, virtually in lock step with the agenda of the corporate elite… gee, how did that happen?  Isn’t it strange that the will of a large block of the working classes should correspond almost exactly with the agenda of the ultra-rich?  Gosh… some coincidence, eh?

A bit of reflection will reveal that this line of argument, however, is based on the following fallacious assumptions:

1- The economy is inevitably ‘darwinist.’  It assumes that the system is essentially as fair as it will ever get, because the economy is naturally a ‘survival of the fittest’ type system.  Libertarians like to assume that ‘nature’ inevitably requires people to struggle against one another for a piece of a very limited pie.

The problem with this is, that as I have argued elsewhere, there are many, many laws in place which make everyones’ lives so much better than they would be in a darwinist situation, and many of these have been won by long-term struggling and protest, and also by legislation.  For example, it is illegal to own your own rocket launcher.  The reasons for this should be obvious, but true libertarians suggest that we should all own them, if we wish.  This would very obviously create a Hobbesian dog-eat-dog world, in which nothing could get done.  So, the philosophy is flawed, fundamentally.  No other proof need be offered.  The point of democratic protest is to stir legislators to do the right thing.  In a totalitarian system, the point of it is to instill democracy, which will be more responsive to the will of the people.

2-  They assume, therefore, that there can never be anything wrong with the economy, or ‘the system.’  It just is, and as Pope wrote:  ”Whatever is, is right.”   So I ask them in response:  if you were a 19th century British factory worker, with children ‘allowed’ to work 80 hours/week, in factories with no safety features so that they died of ‘fluffy lung’ disease when they were 16, would you still have no right to protest?  Or if you were a low-caste Indian worker today, in which landlords ‘loan’ you your rent payments at extortionate interest so that you have to sell them your daughters (which happens on a grand scale), would you have no right to protest?  If your congress will not tax the top 1% at the same rate as the middle class, do you have no right to protest?  If MBA-admin people have systematically turned your profession from full-time to part-time contract-only work, while simultaneously increasing their own salaries, and those of their ever-expanding crony-networks, would you have no right to protest?  This line of argument boggles the mind.

3- The libertarian tea-partier types therefore assume:  It is not your responsibility to change the system if it is bad, except by choosing another work situation.   But again, in a democracy, is it not your responsibility to change a bad system?  Or even in a non-demcoracy, do you not have a moral obligation to change the system if it is exploiting people?  The wealthier American libertarian is so isolated from history, and the rest of the world, that they have no idea of how easily systems can get incredibly unfair.  And, sadly, even those who are exploited in the US, have fallen so prey to the Fox news and co. propaganda of the billionaires, that they have been brainwashed into supporting a system which could very easily be much less harsh on them (i.e., something closer to a European social system).

My same facebook friend who argues that OWS is an ‘evasion of personal responsibility’ is very active in local government.  He has a hometown, a network, and he votes for his own economic interests (i.e,. votes against any tax increases for his wealth bracket, etc).   Is it not the duty of those who are at the other end of the spectrum, who have fewer skills, less IQ, or are less able to submit themselves to a corporate regimen to also vote in their own best interests? This includes making a system in which the rules of the game allow for the most access by the most people, and the fewest loopholes for those who would exploit the system.  And I think that paying much less taxes, as a billionaire, is exploiting the system:  you have congress in your pocket.  That is plainly exploitation.

The economic system is hedged by laws.  It is not ‘pre existing’; it is not ‘natural.’  It is composed of them, it can only work because of the federal reserve, and hundreds of other systems built up over hundreds of years, which keep the economy running smoothly.  It also consists of safeguards, safe housing regulations, safe work regulations, insurance regulations, etc,. etc,. which are designed to keep the system from being horribly exploitative, as it is in India and Mexico.  The libertarians, would wish to live in a society which is just like India and Mexico today:  as long as they are the wealthy few who live in barbed-wired houses with a staff of armed guards.  If we had no regulatory safeguards, that is precisely what our society would look like.  I really am amazed at how my libertarian friends can possibly not see this?

So, in conclusion:

1.  The economic system is not just ‘work and wages’, but the laws which determine this relationship, its causes and effects, at almost every level.

2.  It is our duty to change these laws to make life as good for the many as we can – this means balancing quality of life with maximizing per capita income.

3.   If you have no truck with government (because you are young, poor, unconnected) , it is your duty to protest, to raise awareness and pressure on government, when it is clearly following the interests of the economic elite at the expense of the obvious interests of the non-elite.

4.  Those who bah-humbug the protestors tend to be either

a) well endowed with assets and thus have a vested interest and a survivors’ bias in preserving the status quo,

b) jealous of the idea that others might not make the same quality of life sacrificies that they have,

c) Lacking social empathy in general, or a code of morality which obliges them to make sacrifices to improve the common good.  Often, they have convinced themselves that they are improving the common good by ‘paying taxes,’ which is rather ironic; or if not this, they argue that they are improving the common good by working in and preserving an economic system which ‘creates the most jobs’

- not realizing that these jobs would be as exploitative as those in Indonesia and Nigeria, China, and most of the rest of the world, were it not for generations of protesters who have won the right to such things as weekends, running water, windows, and heat in all rental homes, pension plans (now a thing of the past), a basic concern with workplace safety (who cares about toxic emissions inside the factory?), the right to sue in cases of sexual exploitation (gee, would you like to be a nineteenth century serving maid?), and countless other, rather obvious when you think about it, improvements.

Recap:  Again, the only thing that makes the US a better place to work than Indonesia (with its seas of child labourers, and human trafficking, etc., etc.,), is its laws.  Yep.  Regulation.  That means, a legislature which responds to the will and needs of the many.  This is what won us Social Security, Equal Rights for non-whites, and anything else which keeps the system in the US from chewing up and spitting out the many, as it did before the 1930s (police routinely called in to shoot striking workers, etc. –  read some labor history, folks!!!).

Without protest, congress and other legislations will inevitably tend to serve the rich, who are their biggest campaign financiers (and who can most easily run for and win office, esp. in a system which is now designed to highly favour the rich, and the corporately sponsored).   Voting is the ultimate weapon, but the only way for those who do not control the media – i.e., the non rich, to send a message to fellow voters, is to demonstrate.

Finally, the decision to demonstrate is hardly ‘goofing off’ or avoiding work.  It often entails a serious personal sacrifice, for personal safety, for reputational safety, for economic security.  It takes, in short, balls.  (or balls-ettes).  Much more balls, I would argue, than it takes for you to report to the same job you have had for the last decade, and which provides all the creature comforts one could want, in exchange for a sacrifice of time and life quality which has long since become routine.

Well, one reason why the American right (and thus the global corporate elite) is paranoid about any notion of world government is that it represents the possibility of having uniform global labour laws.  Now, friends, global corporations thrive, and make most of their dough, on exploiting legal loopholes which arise between different countries.  It’s interesting, because while feudalism thrived on having many local legislations, capitalism is seen as having broken down this feudal mentality.  But now we see that the global companies are actually happy with the current fragmented world system, insofar as it gives them major tax shelters, and also, employment loopholes.

Thus, when unions in the developed world got too strong, they moved to the third world, where they can exploit the workers much more handily, for much less dinero paid.

Some day, however, it is more or less inevitable that we will come up with some global labour laws – kind of like global bills of rights.  This is simply too logical, too scientific, for it not to happen; unless we really do experience a return to the dark ages, but even then, at some future point, we’ll emerge again, and people who are sensible will realize that this is the only sensible way to do certain things.  Now I have stated that I think that local and regional government is best at many things, and that I think any global government should be federal.  But the only way for people to avoid exploitation, truly, is to have a global set of labour laws.  This means, that there will be universal rules for workweeks, for vacations, for minimum wage, and for working conditions.

Imagine:  universal rules for working hours, minimum wage, working conditions, maternity leave, etc.  So that if companies try to avoid them in one place, they will have to abide by the same laws elsewhere.  This, friends, would not spell the death of capitalism.  Far from it.  In fact, global capitalism could support all 2 billion of us (on this as the ideal global population, see other posts) with us working very few hours per week, at a lovely high living standard to boot.  Economists know this, but they are trained in business schools run by big corporations, and so aren’t the sort to broadcast it.

In Western Europe, they have fairly uniform laws regarding labour; and somehow, capitalism hasn’t died here.  MOst people are employed, and employed well enough.  If things are very expensive here, as I have argued elsewhere, this is primarily due to other reasons besides labour laws (including too many monopolies, small houses, and too-strict business-opening requirements).

So, imagine a world where you could enact generous and proper labour laws, and the companies wouldn’t be able to just say, “Ha!  We’re closing our factory… how do you like that, suckers?”

Proper labour laws.  What are these?   Gosh, how about, where everyone has a God-given right to work at a job which is suited to their abilities, and which maintains them in as much dignity as they can support, and which gives them time for things outside of work, while also ensuring that their company can get things done relatively efficiently?  Surely that sort of life-work balance isn’t that hard to come up with…. or to implement… it’s just that the corporate elite screams to high heaven if anyone gets the slightest notion in their heads that any concession at all over their 80 hour work-slave environment which they have forced most of us into nowadays, and so nothing at all gets done, because as soon as any legislator dares limit any workplace abuse, s/he is pounced upon the next day by the army of rightwing attack dogs which the elite pays in order to keep enough people’s anger directed at the people’s would-be champions, in the form of 24/7 ‘news’ diatribes.

No wonder we can’t get anything done in the US; but the Euros for the most part have their heads up their own collective cultural asses too much to look at the big picture, either, and so we find very little idealism over here, or effective movements for change.  It could be done; but we need to educate effective, actual economists, who are actually left-leaning, insofar as they support raising the living standards and lifestyle standards of the majority.  If we start to get these people being produced, we will find many more people beginning to talk about global labour laws.  Of course, we’ll need Arab and Chinese and African and Indian springs, and Latin American ones as well, but that doesn’t seem so impossible as before, or so far off… and then, armed with our army of compassionate economists, we can work with the lawyers who keep democracy afloat (see my article on the judiciary and the dark ages), to forge a truly compassionate, and yet totally functional and effective, global capitalism, which maximizes the living standards of all.

Not a bad idea, really?

This has a number of hidden effects that I don’t think that many economists plug into their primary equations.  In Holland, the houses are really small indeed, almost everyone lives without appreciable yards.  We stayed in the townhouse of this wealthy yuppie couple with a baby, and they had literally no garage, and one single storage closet.  The dude’s only tool area was one single toolbox stored in the cupboard where the brooms and cleaning stuff were stuffed.

So the point is that this dude cannot de facto be in the market for lots of dudely stuff, such as wheelbarrows, lumber, metal poles, chainsaws, giant tool benches, riding mowers, and a whole host of other things which for decades every middle-class American male took for granted as being part of his lifestyle.  Just think of all the things which the average American consumer buys  to fill up their garage space, their toolsheds, etc.  All of these things there is a huge market for in the U.S., and this in turn stimulates the economy.

In Europe, they literally do not  have space for more than a few smallish carpets, a few lamps, one or two framed pictures,  etc., and so there is little market for this, meaning that buying things, even for an uppery middle-class couple, is a relatively rare event.  Because normal household goods are de facto luxury items,  every single household thing is ridiculously expensive.  This is why anywhere outside of Ikea, you pay through the nose for these things.  There are no ‘discount’ furniture places in Europe; no deals, no bargains.  Everything is full price, all the time, think department store prices at best, absolutely not on sale, ever.  And outdoor lawn things are only for the super rich, and so they are accordingly luxury items, priced 3-4x what they are in the states.  Even fencing over here is astronomically expensive.  Our chicken wire was a Euro.33/foot for 50cm high stuff (it was 12 Euros for for 3 metres!!!!).  That is crazy.  And so the economy here is stagnant, in part because no one buys stuff, because they have no space for it, which ensures that no one makes anything, and therefore the prices are super high, so no one buys anything!!

So, the point being, another plank in our ideal economy should be:  everyone should have big homes and yards.  This keeps people in the market for more stuff, to fill their space, and besides, this gives them space to do, say, hobbies!!!!  YOu can’t have a pottery kiln in holland, or a metal shop, a machine shop, a garage even for your sports car, space for your boat, etc.  One of the great, hidden, obvious advantages of the US is that until the 1990s, so many people had space, the middle class had space that is, and plenty of it, to pursue whatever hobby they wanted.  Manufacturers saw this demand, felt it, and so they created products which were priced so that the middle class could pursue sailboating, music studioing, art studioing, and all those sorts of things which make life interesting and also make for a vibrant and varied economy.  Over here, there are no sewing stores even   – my wife has to pay 18 Euros for a yard of fabric!  No joke.  There are no discount women’s hobby stores, etc.  You always pay full price and then some, all the time.  This makes European life much much more dull than American life – there is no real way for middle class people to pursue many hobbies, both through lack of space, and through exorbitant prices.  So between this and the monopolistic rigid way of regulating business, this helps to keep the European economy sluggish.  The answer then:  lower population density, build big houses, and force developers to stake out big yards, like they had in the US in the 70s.  No family should have less than 1/3 of an acre.  This way, the lessening demand from lowering population will be more than made up for by individual citizens with more to spend, and more space to fill up!!!

-t.

Well, what do they want?

A problem is that the old Marxist ‘revolution’ model is dead.  A ‘revolution’ which does not involve democracy, i.e., one which is created by a few imposing their will through military means, will inevitably create a dictatorship of some stripe.  Democracy and capitalism are historically (before 20 years ago), entirely linked, and even today, it is my take that China (whose capitalism began with democratic, British-run Hong Kong), will become more democratic as a result of capitalism spreading there.  Thus, one cannot be rid of capitalism; as the chairman of the London Stock Exchange said yesterday, “it is self-evident that capitalism is the best way to produce wealth for the many.”  And this is true.  What this same chairman also said is also true:  the main way to ‘fix’ capitalism is to regulate it, so that it creates the most wealth for the most people.  That’s the key now.  The key is to figure out how, and what, is feasible.

Part of the reason the protesters seem to have ‘no message’ is because we now know that sloganism doesn’t work, that quick fixes don’t work.  What we want, as someone said, is no longer the basics, but the right to a solid middle-class existence.  And that has been written out of US life over the past 10 years.  While the internet boom was on, on one noticed; while their house values were steadily inflating, no one minded that they had to work more and more hours, and that their health plans, and retirement plans were being dismantled by an ultra-pro business government.  But now that the next bust cycle has sprung (which is inevitable in capitalism), everyone realizes that the safety nets they put in place in the 1930s are not just ‘for crybabies’ but in fact the only thing that stands between the average person and a bread line.

But, even lefties are realizing that too much social security breeds complacency.  While the right-owned media is very happy to tell us that teachers and everyone else needs to have a ‘highly competative’ job atmosphere to maximize productivity – you should have no job security they argue, or else you will become a lazy, bad teacher.  And the problem is, they are somewhat right.

So, we need to realize that the happy medium is what is needed.  Duh!!!! How hard is it for a pundit to say, gosh, we need a balance between too much and too little social security?  You never hear _anyone_ say that.  I guess it doesn’t sell papers or ads or something, and/or, really of course much of it is the private ownership of the media, which encourages sensationalism (vs. the so much more balanced, and sane, BBC, CBC, and PBS.).

History is now teaching us that it is legislation which creates the middle class.  The middle class has to protect itself, or else, it will not exist.  Big business does not want or need a middle class, per se; not in a globalizing world.  How do we legislate a middle class?

A)  Have a happy medium bewteen competition and job security and quality of life.

B)  Don’t be afraid of globalization.  Many jobs will stay right here despite the migration of manufacturing.

C)  Elect legislators on a specific platform of ‘maximizing opportunity, happiness, and wealth for the middle class.’  Why can’t we do that?  Well, we can.

D)  Agitate until those legislators can work freely, without their hands tied by a supreme court which is entirely pro-business, and lobbyists, and campaign donation laws which entirely favour a rich few.   (This is precisely what the ‘occupy’ people are doing.

E) Realize that we have to lower population, so that land is cheaper, and housing is cheaper, and so that we can all have our god-given right to property, space, fresh air, sunlight, and a decent slice of earth’s resources, for free, or for very little, like it used to be until the 1950s, about the time that earth reached 2 billion people.  This is the only way to have the middle classes guaranteed a share.  

If we keep these goals in mind, then our policymakers and economists and lawyers can come up with the deetails.  The system is complicated, but its goals can be quite simple, quite clear, and quite attainable, if only we have the chutzpah to realize this and not stop until we have remade society to work for us, the 99 percent.

And is Michael Moore a hypocrite for standing with the 99 percent.  What utter hogwash.  He has only made millions by agitating for the 99 percent.  Yahoo editorials, go find a less vile point of view to publish.

And I can state with confidence that until the early 1990s, europeans ate better than americans, or at least, many europeans did.  American food was fairly monolithic:  hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, spaghetti, and a bit of chinese food and some mexican thrown in to boot.

But then, the urban food revolution came to north america (both the u.s., and canada, that is), and by the mid-1990s, there was no cuisine that you couldn’t get ahold of in any urban centre or college town.  Thai was cool for a while but quickly became old hat.  Ethiopian, Kazakh, Indonesian, Yemeni, you name it, you could find a restaurant selling it.  And then, people started wanting to do this at home.

First came the garlic and spice revolution.  By the early 90s, people were using whole buds of garlic (i.e., 12 cloves) in their meals.  Through the mid 80s, all the recipies in your mom’s cookbook had the following spices:

-pinch of salt

-pinch of pre-ground pepper, 3 years old.

-1 bay leaf or 1/4 tsp dried oregano, 5 years old minimum.

Remember those days?  Vegetables were boiled until they fell apart under their own weight, catchup and mustard went with 50% of what you were served, and butter was the only accompaniment for vegetables.  But through the 80s, mexican food slowly took hold; spiciness became cool; Taco Bell went a long way towards making mexican totally normative in american cuisine.  After that came nachos at the pub, and some pubs raced to see how spicy they could make them.  Then came the chicken wing craze.  At the same time, alternative culture began to embrace vegetarianism, and so indian and asian food came in, which often had so many spices that you completely forgot that you weren’t having meat.  Creative uses of tofu made it tastier and crispier than most people’s roast chicken, and Thai cuisine’s use of peanut butter and coconut milk was to die for.

This combined with the 70s health food craze to create dishes that had a lot of vegetables, and the fresher the better.  By the mid 90s, raw foodism came into the scene, and lots of little bistros opened up in which you could get really creative sandwiches piled high with roasted peppers, eggplant, interesting cheeses, sprouts, cool garlickey dressings.  By the 2000s, Panera spread over much of the US, and for less than 5 bucks, you could get a gourmet sandwich that was quite good for you as well.  Gourmet bread became widely available.

Cookbooks came out in droves, which supported this new cuisine.  Co-ops opened which sold all sorts of exotic ingredients that could be found in these cookbooks, dozens of kinds of grain from quinoa to spelt, both whole and ground into flour.  Any cheeze you could imagine was available in these specialty stores.  Also by the early 2000s, the organic movement swept these ‘hippie stores’, and many people began to insist upon the green and healthful benefits of organic food.  This combined with the new exotic food movement, and became such a market force that mainstream grocery stores, quite reluctantly at first (since organic food is seen as being a ‘liberal’ and ‘environmentalist’ fetish, and therefore highly suspect by good republicans who wish to destroy the planet as fast as possible), began to operate their own organic sections, to compete with the independent organic-food-and exotic ingredient stores.

Then chains like wegmans began selling gourmet bread, organic food, and exotic ingredients as a central part of their marketing strategies.  Not only this, but the liberal urbane clientele began to demand that their grocery stores did not look like factories, those horrible sterile places with dirty white tile floors, dirty white tile ceilings, and flourescent lights.  Stores began to open up sections that were tastefully done with low halogen lighting, natural wood floors and shelving, and often featuring interesting natural lighting options.  Consumers demanded better environments, and when alternative stores with nice environments started doing well, mainstream chains noticed, and changed their policies.

Thus, I would argue that the hip and urban 25% of americans eats very well, another 25% is affected by this movement for the better, and the other 50% is probably just as happy to eat frozen fish fingers and catchup as ever.

Because the signs of this continuing older tradition are everywhere in the US, i.e., macdonalds, and most grocery stores, most europeans can go to the US and think that things there are just as bad as ever.  But that is to miss the whole urban subculture which now, I would argue, eats better than almost everyone in europe.

The dutch, as i have said in other posts, still eat like it’s the 1960s, and the belgians have some nice restaurants, but in many ways don’t fare much better – outside of their favoured traditional cuisine.  What is missing here is the 90s exotic food movement, and the nouvelle grocery stores.  Stores are still in the 60s and 70s, still lit by flourescent lights, and offer very little choice.  This is largely because there is such a strong monopoly in these sectors, that alternative stores and restaurants can’t open up, and so tastes don’t change.  While France has some very good cuisine, it is still all just french.  Same with italian, though italian food is so incredibly good, so often, that one can forgive them.  No one beats the italians.  England, due to proximity with canadian and american culture, has opened up to embrace many non-traditional types of food, and so is better.  Germany also is a bit better than the low countries or much of france.  Barcelona is very very good at experimenting, and has great restaurants, as does the basque region, but much of spain is still staunchly traditional and it is difficult to get good ingredients.

In short, as I have noted elsewhere, the more closed, more monopolistic nature of shopping and restaurants and book sales on the continent, means that innovation comes here much more slowly.  Also there is a stronger tendency to cling to ‘national’ cuisines as a part of national identity.  While this is cute in some ways, it also means that eating here when you are used to the world, is rather boring quickly.  Perhaps north americans can be faulted for ‘consumerizing’ exotic foods, just like everything else.  But I think that in this case freedom to choose, and to experiment, and really to be exuberant, spicy, and fun, is much more interesting than simple loyalty to ‘national’ cuisine (although this is perfectly fun and should be encouraged – but one can have one’s national cake and eat others too!).

And I must also add, that since the introduction of the Euro, continental european restaurants have become far far more expensive.  It used to be a few francs to eat at many nice French places, and dutch places were dirt cheap.  Now, it costs you minimum 20 Euros to eat out per person, and that’s not even with wine.  To have a decent meal, you need to drop 30 euros per person.  And minimum wage here is like 8 Euros per hour.  How anyone can afford this, I dunno.  Many people just order take out, which is a bit cheaper.  But there is no such thing in the low countries as getting a pizza even for less than 12 euros/person.  It’s highway robbery and disgraceful.  In germany you can get pizzas, good ones, much better than belgian or dutch ones, for only 7-8 euros, because they have less restrictive restauranting laws.  So that’s a start; but still, Europe has a long way to catch up to the american eating culture which has really revolutionized eating and food culture and environmentalism and multiculturalism in the u.s. and canada, for anyone who cares to participate, and who has an once of curiosity in their bones, just in the past 20 or 25 years.  And let’s mention design also:  most places in europe have stores which are far behind as far as looking cool and interesting… there is something, then, to laissez faire regulation…. to a degree!  (I am all for keeping green spaces, and for reigning in many labour abuses, and environmental abuses, etc – but my point is, there has to be middle ground that can shake things up here a little bit, no?).

Many of our most cherished modern myths, including Star Wars, LOTR, Harry Potter, Star Trek, and the like, are based around a fairly obvious confrontation of good vs. evil.  But is real life like that?  When it comes to actual human functioning, many people who will unswervingly root for the good guys find themselves swamped in a morass of relativism, which makes it very difficult to see what is good and what is evil.  It used to be, that the church and religion gave us fairly strict rules on good and evil, and while many of these were fairly useful, others provided a strong framework for abuse–most of the wiser parts of society have realized that this kind of ‘absolute’ guidance, because it necessitates a hierarchical social structure and encourages people to obey rather than to be critical minded, is not really the best path towards personal fulfillment, let alone some notion of what ‘good’ might be.

At the platonist, we assert that in fact, good and evil are every much as important in ‘real’ or ‘daily’ life as they are in our modern fairy tales:  this is why we cherish these fairy tales so much.  We all instinctually know what is good and what is evil (as Plato taught):  much of this is due to the fact that some rules of ‘good’ behaviour are better evolutionarily.  Other aspects of this are not so easily explained by behaviouralism (though as a scientist I can’t really commit to anything genuinely ‘platonic’ as a cause of this).

What then is the practical definition of good and evil?  We might start with the Satanic Bible, which unequivocally states that being selfish is the essence of evil.  Ayn Rand and the Satanic Bible both attempt to make a virtue out of selfishness, which quickly ends up creating a rather illogical moral code that no serious philosopher can endorse.   With this as a basic guide, we can quickly create a slate of questions that can test our personal goodness and evilness.

1)  Are you most driven by empathy for others, or by selfishness?

2)  Does your work involve duping or exploiting people for personal gain, is it mostly neutral,  or does it involve helping people?

3)  Do you think that it is OK to dupe or exploit people for your gain, because the ‘system’ justifies it?

4) Do you, essentially, have hope that the human condition can be bettered, or do you essentially despair?

5)  Do you follow a creed or lifestyle because it gives you personal power, or do you follow a belief system which is genuinely based on a desire to see more good done for more people, whatever may be your role in the process?

6)   It is ok to wish physical comfort for yourself:  you cannot do good things or be good without it.  But, do you desire money simply as a means to personal comfort and actualization, or do you desire it to gratify base desires, such as gluttony, or to dominate others in terms of ‘showing off’ your superior physical possessions, or to dominate others psychologically or physically (i.e., to be a head honcho, to hire and fire people, to be a landlord in the sense that this gives you power)?

7)  Is your political philosophy predicated on your desire to see your own ‘in group’ remain, or come into, power, at the expense of ‘the other’?  Or do you seek to ensure your ‘in group’s comfort and safety, while seeking to exploit and profit from ‘the other’ as little as possible?  (Too much altruism, i.e., extreme tree huggers who would eradicate humanity to save this or that other species,  is a form of despair and so is also, technically, evil.)

8)  Do you believe in humanism? or some form of authoritarianism?  If you believe in humanism, then you will try to maximize the happiness actualization of the maximum number of people.  Your only enemies then are those who wish to do ill under the guise of their despairing, egomaniacal, or authoritarian beliefs.  If you believe in authoritarianism, then, in some way or another, you believe that certain groups of people should be discriminated against, or exploited,

9)  Do you believe that love is essentially egalitarian/shared, or essentially hierarchical/authoritarian/exploitative?

10)  Do you believe that friendships are essentially egalitarian/voluntary, or essentially authoritarian/dominance-based?

11)  When you argue, can you admit that you are wrong?  Good people realize they are fallible.  Evil people are so concerned with appearing to be right, so worried about losing dominance, that they will even argue with their wives over the composition of waffles, when their wives are obviously right and they were wrong.  This is perhaps the greatest failing that otherwise good people have in real life:  it’s a true test, of whether you can be more like Qui-Gon Jinn, or more like Darth Maul.    

In all, I think, should describe most of the primary ways that a person can be good or evil on a day to day basis.  Most of the wiser part of humanity, for example, thinks that Donald Rumsfeld is evil, while most would agree that President Obama, Jimmy Carter, and Al Gore are good.  Let’s do the test for them.  First Rumsfeld:

1)  Selfishness.   1 evil point.

2) Sec of Defense:  with a highly anti-humanist viewpoint.  Another evil point.

3) His Mandate for a new U.S. century is highly Hobbesian.  3 evil points.

4)  Does he really believe in universal betterment?  Or selfish betterment?  4 evil points.

5)  What does he believe?  Dunno.  I think we can guess, but fine we’ll leave blank.

6)  Again, dunno, so we can leave it blank.

7)  Republicanism is these days entirely based on ‘in-group’ power:  1 evil point.

8)  I think we can call him fairly authoritarian.  1 evil point.

9)  Dunno about Rummy and love.  We can leave blank.

10)  Rummy and friendship?  Again, fine, let’s leave it blank.

11)  Haha.  Never admit he’s wrong.  1 evil point.

The end result is:  7 Evil points/0 Good points.  Rummy is overwhelmingly evil.  Shocker.

How ’bout Obama?

1)  Helping others.  1 good point.

2)  Helping others, 2 good points.

3)  Pretty much anti-exploitation.  3 good points.

4)  I think the audacity of hope gives him 4 good points.

5)  Tough to say:  he doesn’t have any obvious creed that he exploits; but we can leave blank.

6)  Does he do it for the money?  Pretty obviously no.  But we can leave blank if you want.

7)  Very much a democrat, into helping the planet and thus others.  1 good point.

8)  He is very keen to share the power (too keen?)  1 good point.

9)  I think we can say he’s a pretty keen family guy, in a sense of shared commitment, etc.  1 good point.

10)  Dont’ know about frienships and Obama.  We can prob. guess, but I’ll leave blank.

11)  Yep, he is quite capable of admitting he is wrong.  1 good point.

End result:  8 good points/0 evil points.  Pretty overwhelmingly good; and in fact we can figure that if you win a Nobel peace prize, you’re probably more good than evil.

So fine, we’ve done some ‘tests’ on public figues, whose images are highly cariacatured, (but nonethless their goodness/evilness is pretty obvious).  How about you, your spouse, your family?

What if we all started trying to be good, for real?  And not just in some way that our church says, or that the talk radio says, which is in fact a thinly veiled attempt for us to save face, and to maintain power and dominance.  What if we really started to live by the code above?  In fact, more of us would be like the wisest people of the past several centuries, most of whom were learned, as it turns out, in the humanities (which are a training ground for humanism).  Jefferson, Thoreau, Thomas Hardy, and our dear Tolkien himself, and today a whole host of writers who are not celebrated by pop culture – largely because those in control of that culture have gotten into control through means which make them uncomfortable with the truly good.  For the present, our system is just decentralized enough that these voices are out there, if you look, and if you listen (esp. in the Anglophone world).

I put this test here, because there have been, and still are, people who realize that this is the path to practical, and thus aggregate social, political and economic goodness.  If we could broadcast this programme, well, the world would be a better place.

So to quote John Lennon (who I think would also get quite a few good and very few evil points on the test), Imagine.  But after that, let’s do it.  Go watch LOTR, and breathe it in!  And then ‘just do it.’

Oh and P.S.,:  what about Nietzsche?  Can we get beyond good and evil?  I’m afraid that if we gave Nietzsche the test, he’d get at least 8 evil points, and no good points.  Thus, we can readily conclude, that if you think you’re going ‘beyond’ good and evil, it’s basically just a cover for a programme that gives you licence to act in an essentially Hobbesian fashion.  Thus:  you’re evil.

At any rate, one of the fundamental stumbling blocks to any would-be set of principles for improving the way things work (since surely there are quite a few problems we have yet to address as well as we could if only we worked it through) is the fact that we’re still pretty much hardwired for hierarchy as I have said in another post – i.e., we still carry strong tendencies to act according to pack and troop principles, which got us through our millions of years living as beasts.  These instincts aren’t however often so great for creating an egalitarian, maximum-opportunity society.  Psychologists and anthropologists have now identified a lot of these, but let’s spell them out here, so that we can get them out in the open, and grapple with them as we discuss and shape our economic and political wish list.

1)  The desire to be cool.  This used to be called ‘honor.’   It’s probably our first instinct, once we move beyond toddlerhood, and stays with us until senility.  You want to have the people immediately around you like you, and act positively towards you.  This is because in primate troop society, this meant you were  ’alpha.’  Everyone fawns over you, does stuff for you, laughs at your jokes.  This translates into personal power.  The Fonz snaps his fingers, and people do stuff for him.  (Jeff Winger in “Community” being an updated version of the same).

2)  The desire to be sexy.  This is second, rather than first, b/c the desire to be cool is almost continuous, while even the horniest of us sometimes takes a pause.  But still, this is equally up there, for obvious evolutionary reasons.

3)  The desire to dominate.  One tends to want to be ‘cool’ within one’s in-group.  Coolness is a non-confrontational way to get people in your in-group to do stuff for you.  So it is all of course about power, but coolness is what regulates it.  with regard to the out-group, people wish to build up physical power, usually through building social connections, which give them access to networks and institutions that will get stuff done for them, and provide them with the psychological satisfaction of knowing that they can lord it over most of the people they meet.   Dudes in suits know when they walk around that they are ‘cooler’ than almost everyone, the secretaries, the cleaning people, the workmen on the street, the students they meet, b/c their jobs are higher status.

4)  The desire for money.  Money of course gets people to do stuff for you.  No one will build me an oil tanker.  But if you had a billion dollars, they would build you one.  Thousands of people will labour for months on whatever whim you set your mind to.  I put money after the desire to dominate, because domination comes first, and money is the physical expression of this.  Money is power, it helps you to dominate your out-group, and smoothes your coolness with your in-group.

So yeah, it’s a real shame, that we’ve evolved like this.  Pretty much everything we do, combing our hair, putting on our clothes, walking out the door, choosing what to have for breakfast, the car we get into, the job and career we choose, is basically based on our desire for these dominances.  Some of us learn to minimize the desire for dominance, but at heart many of these aspects are still in play.

Can we escape from this?  We are inherently social beings.  Contact with others, conversation, interaction, is what confirms our own existence, and justifies us knowing words, and having language, which is our core identity-process as humans.  So, interaction with others is entirely essential to the good life.  And of course, sex is pretty inescapable, and provides so much fun in life, that it seems unthinkable to try and be rid of it.  What to do, then, what to do?

The best we can do is to recognize that it is fun to be cool, to be thought well of, and to be sexy, and to have status–but, at the same time, we have to realize that there is a dialectic here.  So much in the social sciences, it seems, is based on finding a medium.  Too much egalitarianism is stale here.  Too much competition, of course, is just cruel.  So yes, we want to keep society spicy, we have to keep the competition and meritocracy that has been at the heart of life (until we evolve into something higher — see my post on metaphysics), and at the heart of democracy.   (One thing that makes it way more exciting is that democracy encourages competition from everyone, not just amongst nobles – the old systems used to tell the common people that they were always-already losers.)  But we also want to acknowledge, as our society has indeed been making great strides in doing, that competition tinged with cruelty (i.e., the libertarian idea that “life is a bitch for those who fail”) is entirely unnecessary – this only appeals to those who are mentally ill, who have been abused by the system, and who have an unhealthy attitude towards existence.  This sort of cruelty can be done largely away with, can be discouraged, and bred out of the system, eventually.  And this should be our goal with regards to these aspects of our less than ideal behavioural inheritance.

In short, we are products of a functional, but not an ideal, process of evolution.  It is our duty to improve upon this, in the most humane and noble and respectful way that we can imagine.

Good day to you.

-trivium.

Speaking as a certifiable owl, one of the most horrible things about almost every job is that it forces you to get up far too early.   It has gotten a bit easier for me as I have gotten older and have required less sleep:  as a late teen (when most people require their peak amounts of sleep at up to 9 or even 10 hours) it was absolutely brutal to get up for high school, which the administrators had perversely set up so that it began earliest, while elementary school began latest.   Thus high school started at 7:20, meaning we all got up at 5am!!!, while elementary school didn’t start until 9.  I have also seen studies saying that they should reverse this order:  elementary kids tend to get up early (which I also did:  I was up at 5 and 6 when I was 6-10 years old), while high school kids really want, naturally, to stay up late and get up late (this whether you are a dove or owl – you still have tendencies to do more sleeping in and staying up at that point).

Even though I need a bit less sleep now (8 hours to be fully functional, rather than 9 as a teen), the hours that almost every job forces you to get up at are entirely inhumane.  It should definitely go into the global declaration of human rights that people have a right to enough sleep, and therefore the right not to get up at 4:30 if they want to.  These days, however, it seems that insanely early waking hours are almost entirely unavoidable.   Almost everyone I know who has a ‘real’ job suffers from chronic sleep deprivation.   For one thing, they are away from home at least 12 hours, often 14 hours, 5 or more days per week.  To do this, they get up at 5am, some even earlier, some as late as 5:30, and then they get home often at 6 or 7 in the evening.  Wow!  And then, as other studies show, people still feel the need to have some life, and so they do a set amount of things, no matter how little time they have in the evening, and so most of them end up going to bed after midnight anyway, thus setting themselves up for 5 hours of sleep max if they are lucky.  And it’s hard to sleep in on weekends because they are programmed to get up at an ungodly hour all week, every week, most of their lives, with no significant vacation to speak of.

So why do we do it?  As Terry Eagleton put it; our society worships work, esp the Anglo-Saxon North American (and Asian).  Eagleton says:  there should be no such thing as a pre-dawn power breakfast.

But then again, this couldn’t happen, if at least some people, those in power, didn’t mind it.  The problem is, there really are a minority of people who either a) don’t need much sleep in order to feel happy, or b) more commonly, who can caffeinate themselves into some semblance of go-gettimness in the morning – but the real issue it seems is c), which is that there are indeed some ‘doves’ out there, who really do like to go to bed earlyish, say , 10pm (I’ve seen it!), and then who can get up at 5 and actually feel totally refreshed and ready to go.

This is a serious problem.  Why is that?  Well, there seems to be some real correlation between getting up early and doing well in ‘the system.’  I mean, it’s totally set up by dove people, who are actually happy to get up early and be chipper by 6 or 7 am.   And since the system tends to promote these people, (first in high school, and then in the office), this means that the boss types are already those who are used to and can function early in the morning.   So the problem is, by the time us Owls are rolling out of bed, the doves have already done the best part of their workday.  This of cousre just makes us look ‘lazy.’  And so, the world is basically run by doves, for doves, and those of us who aren’t doves are screwed.

I would like to point out that this is a physiological thing.  In other words, if there are indeed two sub-species of human beings, then there is pretty serious discrimination against the ‘owl’ in our society.  Owls are economically majorly disadvantaged, because the system has long been run by doves, and there has long been this rather arbitrary idea that people who ‘get up late’ are missing out.  Well shit, we can’t really help it:  and yet, I would argue, that i’m every bit as capable of being just as productive a worker as any dove.  Only, I’m ready to get rolling about noon, rather than 7am.

Why should that be a problem?  If our society wants to maximize its labour productivity, as so many people who make a living out of this sort of thing suggest, then they should really be taking into account that, no matter what you do, some of your workers are going to be much more productive later in the day.   How hard would it be, in this day and age, to set up a system where half o your workers come in a few hours later than the other half?  Then, just as the doves are starting to nod off a little after noon, the owls come in fresh and start kicking butt.  They could then even keep things running much later, after the owls are comatose at 6pm.  I still think that, as has been shown (and as France has tried to adopt), people only work productively about 5 hours per day.  The work day should therefore be max 6 hours:  you go in, get settled, get your work in, and then, rather than wasting time and surfing the net, you go home, so you can recharge and do it again.  But, I also propose that things need to be staggered.  It would be possible for me to work at a normal  ’company’  if there was any chance that my work schedule could be arranged so that I could, yes, be avaialble when other people were, but also, so that I could maximize my personal production.  I am not a kid.  I am perfectly willing to do my part, and to work hard, if it is for a decent cause and or the remuneration is right.  But, I am not going to kill myself doing it.  I will have enough sleep to function, and I will work the amount of hours that a human being can comfortably work.  If everyone said this, if everyone demanded this as a precondition for work, the world would be much less nineteenth-century, and most of us would be far, far happier.

But there is also that issue, that there are some obsessive people who really like working 14 hour days, because they have turned off every other aspect of their lives.  The answer is:  we cannot allow the 90 percent of us who want to have variety in our lives, to be dictated to by that 5 or 10 percent of crazy obsessives, who not only are doves, but who are also unhealthy workaholics.  They get to be bossees, they make the rest of us ‘look bad’ in our bosses’ eyes.  But, they have to be seen for what they are.  They are not normal; they can do what they like, but they can’t be held up to us as examples of what we should be.  There has to be more room for motivated, skillful and professional people to make a contribution, and recognizing the innate sleep patterns, and respecting people’s right to sleep and work in a way that keeps them happy and fulfilled, is a big part of getting there.

So let’s get right to it.   The review of HPDH that I like the best so far is that of Salon’s andrew o’hehir, since he points out that Part 1 was a far better movie than part 2 (which is why we’re reviewing it now together with 2).   Many don’t seem to realize this, but the director and screenwriter made Part 1 as their ‘baby,’ their ideal of what would have happened in book 7, and they then, in a rather workmanlike fashion, stuck almost directly to the book plot in Part 2, delivering a rather standard but curiously morally and emotionally hollow boom-bang endup.  Predictably, the average audience and critic excoriated part 1, while they gushed about part 2.  This simply proves Plato’s notion that most of humanity remains in ‘the cave.’

Part 6 was already quite good; it’s my second favourite in the whole series.  The opening scene, and the magisterial music, with dumbledore’s hand on harry’s shoulder, just after the appearance of voldemort in the ministry finally signals to fudge that he’s been a chamberlainian dupe, sets a fabulously serious tone; slughorn functions as a fantastic exploration of ‘old boy’ hogwarts; his “all hands on deck, granger” as he spills butterbeer onto the table in front of hermione being one of the best lines in the series.  The elegaism is wonderful throughout, since it’s really the main theme of the series, and it is beautifully foiled by the theme of ‘young love’ which we really get to explore here.  The harry and hermione tower stairs scene being crucial.

So then onto Part 1; where suddenly, nothing is safe.  (And the score is also phenomenal throughout–the best music yet in the whole series).  Rowling’s plotting is very good here.  Notice as soon as dumbledore defeats V in the end of 5, by the beginning of 6 V has set in motion several plots to assassinate D.  This is the essence of part 6, and here rowling and the director/screenwriters agree.  In 7.1, as soon as D has died, it is only a matter of weeks or perhaps a few months until the ministry falls; and everyone knows it.  The opening scene of 7.1, with scrimegour intoning the words “Your ministry… is strong”  - with the focus on his narrow eyes – is an obvious allusion to George W. Bush intoning Your military… is strong” just after the 9/11 attacks.  No one really believed George W. then (that the US military could somehow save them from stealthy terrorists), and no one believed scrimgeour either.   This is a fantastic, powerful opening line.  Beautifully chosen.  Sets the tone, and the intelligence of the entirety of Part 1.

Then hermione obliviating her parents; again, incredibly powerful, beautiful writing – some of the best in any movie; really builds out hermione’s character in a powerful way as so many scenes since 6 have been doing.  Here, as in many other things, the screenwriters highlight things that Rowling does not (her reference to this is done in an offhanded ‘joke’ by hermione – which is really rather a lost opportunity by Rowling), thus making a much better story overall than Rowling’s blowsy prose (esp in the last 2 books) is able to do.  In fact, the movie is far more powerful than the book here in almost every score.  My lover, (i.e., the person I’m married to) has been reading the books again, and notes that most of the later ones are filled with bickering, and pettiness; most of the time in the tent, harry and hermione won’t even speak to each other.   In movies 5 through 7.1, the writers and directors clearly emphasized the epic, the good, the ideal, when Rowling was, when you look at it, writing a series of highly dysfunctional characters.  More on this in a minute.

Then we have the fabulous weasley wedding sequence; the arrival of the message that the ministry has fallen is absolutely archetype-making; seconds later, the death eaters arrive in black smoky style and start shooting up the place.  The kids then teleport to london, nearly being hit by a bus (great touch), and then nearly get offed in a diner, in what is an incredibly powerful piece of action writing, like something from the first terminator, except that we really care about the characters by this point.  Ron’s suggestion that they kill the defeated death eaters shows already that he is morally inferior to both harry and hermione, and also it’s dumb since it will reveal their presence; hermione is forced, poignantly, to obliviate their memories.  This opens the theme, that runs throughout part 1, that harry and hermione are totally in sync, and hermione and ron are hopelessly out of sync.   In fact, going back and re-watching the previous movies, it becomes obvious, that the writers since at least part 3 have been doing almost everything they could to play up the harry and hermione thing, and to downplay ginny and ron.  They don’t have harry and ginny go out at all in part 6, but rowling had them ‘going out,’ and then breaking up (harry breaking up with ginny), to protect her, quote unquote.   Note that ginny and harry almost never kiss, one minor one in part 6; always ginny initiating it; no kisses at all in part 7.  This is a huge part of why i like the movies way better than the books.

The ministry of magic infiltration is genuinely edgy; total edge of seat stuff; brilliantly done by the stand-in actors; brilliantly conceived, super comedic and suspenseful.  One of the best scenes ever.  The forest scene which begins after this is my favourite sequence in any movie for a very long time; perhaps my favourite piece of character acting in any movie.  Ron is immediately the ‘third wheel’ and the movie writers make him this, and keep him there at every turn.  They are obviously rooting for harry and hermione.  And what intelligent, thinking person couldn’t?  The two actors themselves, in interviews talk about how they have been great friends throughout, and how they and rupert grint hardly talk or hang out at all.  They obviously as actors and as characters are the centre, the adam and eve, of this whole resistence.  Dumbledore in 6 says “so, how about hermione, harry?”; dumbledore obviously thinks they are ideal as well.

So what I like about H and H, is their idealism; they are morally unwavering in their quest, they are brilliant, with harry providing much simple bravado and chosen-one-ness, and hermione providing the logistical support.  they are a perfect couple.  ron isn’t bad, but well, he’s a red herring.  When ron leaves, the very next scene is the dance, which is harry quite obviously realizing that he has has the hots for her, and initiating the ‘o children’ sequence (as o’hehir puts it), which is incredibly edgy – one of the best things of its kind that has ever been done.   It surpasses things on battlestar galactica – love in the time of cholera sort of scenarios, love in the trenches, etc; but it is done here so subtly, with such simple plausibility between characters who have been ‘best friends’ forever, and again who are central to the entire movement for good in the world, that how could one not root for them?  To be embarrassed at their awkward dancing (which even I was at first), is to be a teenager, to be juvenile, and not to ‘get it’ at all.  The choice of the nick cave song was another piece of absolute brilliance.  And let’s not forget the fabulous fragmented landscaping, which suggests the fragmentation of harry and hermione’s souls now — alluding to how voldemort’s fragmenting his own soul has led H and H to become partly fragmented as well – thus not realizing how they are meant to be, and refusing to greet the ideal love when it becomes obvious.

Thus begins the climax of the movie; the next morning harry has the revelation that he had kissed the snitch with his mouth (this is moved from the beginning of the book to emphasize the idea that harry, after hermione turned away–why did she?–was lying in bed, basically wanking it; and thus thinks to kiss the snitch).

Why did hermione turn away?  The movie suggests that she does it because she either is being loyal to ron and/or ginny, or because she is afraid that she will ruin harry’s equilibrium and mental poise which is all that’s keeping voldemort from taking over his mind.  it doesn’t make logistical sense for her to give in to him.  but it also suggests that hermione is here not being true to herself; she is ‘pulling a rowling’ and refusing to give in to happiness.  it’s maddening in the book; and the S/D (screenwriter/director) obviously felt so as well.  What’s more, harry doesn’t put the moves on hermione until after ron has literally and figuratively ‘walked away’ from both harry and hermione – he has given up his chance, and so harry now acts.  He’s totally been realizing, since the tower stairs scene in 6, in fact since slughorn’s xmas do when he gets jealous of Cormac (the ‘dragon balls’ sequence), that he and hermione would be perfect together.  If hermione had just said yes after the dance, or heck, even after hogwarts, they would have had a happy future; as it is, their future looks miserable and bleak, and businesslike, and potentially adulterous (see below).

So to return to our narrative, Goderic’s hollow thus portrays Harry and Hermione ‘going out’; hermione’s affection at the graveyard and leaning on his shoulder clinches it; they are now a couple.  Again, magisterially scary and atmosphere, Christmas eve, choir singing; the snake-woman done so perfectly; and then the Forest of Dean scene, which is so tender and perfect; have you ever seen a better couple more in tune portrayed on screen? and hermione’s line:  the closest they allow her to get to suggesting that they get together for good:  ”let’s just stay here, harry, grow old.”  Note that in the book they are not speaking at all.  What is rowling thinking?  How perverse is she?  Could anyone this good of friends who were both attractive, in this setting of perhaps immanent death, not shag in their tent like rabbits?  Good god, man!

The horcrux then shows ron quite clearly what has been going on (it isn’t lying, merely emphasizing the truths that ron wants to hear least); the directors take full advantage of this ‘fantasy’ (which was in the book), to have harry and hermione consummate their love, which is the literal and figurative climax; in a rare piece of artistic unity, not easy to pull off tastefully and beautifully when one’s characters are technically minors.   But it’s perhaps the best love scene ever precisely because it is all implication and art, and not heavy-handed and banal.  Ron’s ‘light through the heart’ thing is totally weak; his ‘I vote with hermione’ line which they both roll their eyes at shows that he is underconfident, and again only emphasizes the fact that even after his return he is a third wheel.

And then the end bit of part 1, which I think is fun and satisfying enough for a part 1.

So to sum:  part 1 is fabulous because it a) creates a fabulous apocalyptic environment, as good as any terminator or aliens movie, but you really care again about the characters far more, and b) it creates harry and hermione as an adam and eve, a focus of the entire good side of humanity (perhaps a noah and his wife after the flood pair); their romance and consummation form the climax of the story; but then reality comes back with ron returning.  How wonderfully, sentitively done, a camping scene reminding me of the very best, most delicious escapades of my romantic life?

So then we have to get to the crux of the matter, which is, why does rowling have hermione and ron get together?  Even the actors (emma watson) said, that she could kiss daniel just fine, but rupert, it was totally weird.  Everyone knows that H and H are the key, so why does she insist on Ginny and Harry?  Well:  the screenwriters and directors I think have had their revenge:  the “future’ scene at the end of part 7.2 shows no domestic bliss; the couples do not kiss, they do not show any affection at all, but act incredibly stiff.  Ron has a great beer belly, and you will notice that the camera’s final shot of the whole series zeroes on in H and H standing together, while ron and ginny are notably on the outside, looking really quite bored and unhappy and haggared.  That  is the “adultery cam,” the shot that tells us that all has not been going well in the official marriages.

Why else would their ‘future’ look so comical, do dull, so straightjacketed?  They look just like their ‘doubles’ from the ministry of magic in part 1?  They were such adventurous youths, why would they not have created an adventurous adulthood?  The directors are again saying that rowling’s ending is all wrong, but here they were railroaded:  they couldn’t obviously change the major plot finality of harry/ginny hermione/ron.  Even though it’s intentionally perverse.

And here we have to go to Rowling’s own psychology.  I think that the screenwriters and directors have made the last few books epic, shot them through with the stuff of “lord of the rings” the idealism, and the like, while rowling herself took every possible opportunity in teh books to make her characters mean, petty, quarreling and spiteful.  Sure, harry is still a christ figure, and hermione and ron are bound to help him; but rowling’s depiction of ‘friendship’ is really appallingly shabby.  Does anyone treat their best friends this consistently badly?

And what about how rowling handles all of her relationships?  No one, in her books, is able to feel passion.  The only ones who can are a) harry’s mom about harry, basically after she is dead, and b) snape, for lilly, who feels unrequited love his whole life.  Everyone else is always missing obvious opportunities for passion.  Cho can’t kiss harry b/c she is crying, harry doesn’t really like Cho; he fumbles it; Hermione and Victor are also kind of stilted; ron and lav are passionate, but only in an animalistic way.

I must speculate here that it’s because rowling herself is quite dysfunctional, emotionally.  She obviously is the sort of person who drives away friends, and finds it painful to be intimate with lovers, with those she should be closest to.  We do know that she had a ridiculous first marriage to a “latin lover” who did the classic leave her with a baby thing.  This all too human foible on rowling’s part (falling for a man who is obviously not proper husband material) is forgiveable, but it also shows that rowling herself is not exactly super duper at choosing and or maintaining intimate relationships; it seems she now has found how to do it, but her natural instincts, i suspect, are quite like those of her characters;  they instinctually recoil, precisely when they know that their happiness would be greatest.

This, i think, is key to the major perversity of the books:  that no one finds passion.  Ron and Lav would have been perfect for each other:  chemical, basic.  H and H obviously are as deep and wonderful a couple as has ever graced the screen; every other relationship was systematically torn from harry:  his parents; his aunt and uncle are perverse and hate him; sirius is taken from him, dumbledore taken from him; his owl, dobby, lupin, etc.  They are all taken.  Rowling has a serious psychological need, it seems, to show tearing away, and loss, but also to have her characters refuse what is obviously best for them, what is ideal in love.  She  can’t handle it.

So, in dealing with this rather glaring psychological flaw in an otherwise wonderful author’s creation, the moviemakers have emended her failings.  While rowling kind of unbelievably can’t make her characters happy, the moviepeople have realized that most poeple, in H and H’s place, would act qutie differently, and would act according to their common sense, and human nature, and passion.  They would do the right thing in love, as they did elsewhere in life.  Otherwise, there is a huge disconnect.  How could they function as a new adam and eve, if they were so obviously fragmented?  Well, it makes for bad writing, and the movie people in part 1 have corrected it.  In part 2, they were too railroaded by demands, and so just gave up the relationship, basically, except for their obvious subverting of the ‘future’ scene.  (Some critics have gone so far as to say “awww” about that, as though it was adorably cute.  I see it as terrifying).

But in part 1, we see what is perhaps the most ideal relationship ever put on film?  (Even better than those in most ‘classics’ where they spend time on character development – but still end up being way too sexist for modern idealism)  Any dissenters?

Now, most of us assume that the main, number one, numero uno reason why things in Europe are expensive is because those darn Europeans are so lazy. They take off six weeks of vacation per year, and often times they only work, gasp, 40 hour weeks, or even 36 hour weeks! They get generous terms for maternity and parental leave, and the list goes on. American workers would very much like to believe that this is why Europeans live in tiny houses, and pay tons for gas, food, electronics, clothing, and in short don’t have nearly as much ‘stuff’ as North Americans do.

And gee, it is in the interests of the American elite to have us continue to think this way: this way, they can expect Americans to work themselves into a frenzy, because they believe that unless they work 75 hour weeks, they will soon have next to nothing, like Europeans, and have to buy tiny fridges, and pay 10.00/gallon for gas, and all live in tiny apartments w/o yards. So in many ways the fear of ‘Europization’ is what keeps Americans’ noses to the grindstone–this is a major factor influencing Americans’ attitudes towards work.

But when we look a bit more closely at why European prices are high, it turns out that this has very little to do with work weeks, and labour productivity. I have heard that US workers are still the most productive, but I haven’t really studied the figures in detail. It might well be that per hour, Europeans are more productive, or at least the more productive Europeans are.  What I do know, is this:

1) In Switzerland, prices are xtra high, even more than in the rest of Europe. Why? B/c in a small market, business leaders have discovered that they can easily monopolize markets, and create cartels, which tend to benefit so many people, all down the supply chain, that very few people make a stink about it. In short, there is little competition, and the retailers, wholesalers, and producers like it this way. So the government that these dudes control, makes it so that things stay the same. It is a continuation of the medieval guild system–and that is really no exaggeration.

There is a lovely, incisive little article on it here:

http://www.isyours.com/E/GE/whyexp.htm

In the U.S., there is a huge market, and competition in many sectors is actually real, and a real factor in lowering price. So, the US has the cheapest stuff in the developed world.

2. Europe intentionally raises the prices of some commodities, so that it can subsidize equivalents for the poor. E.g., the public transport system. Gas at market price is perhaps 2 Euros per gallon, but they put 6 Euros per gallon tax on it, so that they can run a state of the art public stransport system, which the poor can ride for free. So, the middle class is screwed, and it is super expensive for anyone to drive cars, and really only the rich can afford to drive w/o worrying, wherever they want. The result: a 2 class society: those who can drive cars, and those, the majority, who almost never step foot inside a car. It’s pretty crazy. As a US citizen, I can’t imagine the claustrophobia of always being stuck in an inner city, and seldom leaving for the country–and in fact, the rich people in Europe live in the suburbs, and drive cars everywhere; but the bottom 65%, i’d say, just lose out (and/or make do and adjust – many are very used to it and like it; but still, if they were rich, or had been born rich, they would never give up their cars). So, this part of socialism also causes a major specific problem of making transport totally 2 tiered, and it’s basically like apartheid. The US system is better, I think. And sure, I’ve heard the but it’s better for the environment to have public transport: my answer, as I’ve said elsewhere in this blog: the rich don’t care about that, why should the middle classes have to sacrifice mobility and freedom in order to save the environment, while the rich do whatever they want? The simple answer is that if there were only 1 or 2 billion people on earth, we could all have whatever reasonable carbon footprint we wanted, and the environment would be just fine. So, yes, we have to lower population, to ensure quality of life for everyone. None of this middle class feel martyrial stuff.

3. Housing is the same way: it’s regulated here to be small, esp in holland, where laws make it more expensive to own and produce bigger houses. It’s kind of nuts.; They have plenty of space in holland, but they insist in packing eveyrone into these tiny boxes of homes. In the US, they don’t regulate this, adn people just make bigger houses. So again, it’s the specific housing regulation laws, and tax laws, which make housing in Europe more expensive. I like having good zoning laws, which makes sure that there is ample green space, but again: the solution should be: keep population down to decent levels, so that everyone who wants to can have a middle class home with a garden. That is entirely within reach of our economy, and the only reason we don’t have it now is b/c the world population, esp in the 3rd world, is going haywire, and we have to reign it in, or we’re all in for a pretty horrible matrix existence with major climate change, as I’ve argued in previous posts.

In conclusion, then, we can see that it is not ‘socialism’ in general which causes European prices to be high, and thus European standards of living to be lower. It is also not the shorter workweek which does this. It is

a) retail monopolies, and discouragement of competition (i.e., greedy capitalist european retailers and suppliers, in cahoots with the government, who have worked to preserve the medieval ‘guild’ form of monopoly supply and production)

b) socialized public transport. scrap it! mostly. open things up. it’ll make a freer population.

c) over-regulated housing. Yes, allow for green areas, but, let people build big, and let them have yards. Lower the population, instead of mindlessly pursuing GDP growth at the expense of quality of life of your people. We’re going to have to face this sooner or later, so why not start now? There is no way, in other words for population to keep on growing forever, sooner or later, we have to face a ‘zero growth economy.’

Finally: this means, that US workers could indeed work 36 hour weeks, and take six week vacations, and still have cheap transport, cheap housing, and cheap stuff!!! This is a major news flash, and people should really wake up and smell the coffee on this one. Hello, progressives–take note!!! The labour productivity thing is a very small factor in the prices of the most essential basic commodities, while the other factors mentioned are by far the greatest determinant of price. Part of the problem, as I’ve also said before, is that progressives are still coming out of this Marxist economic never never land, which didn’t have to obey any real economic rules, and which meant that progressives could ignore real economics altogether: this is tragic, b/c it means that we’ve left the economy to the right wingers, who have just mopped the floor with us as a result. Time to get smart, get scientific, get real, and also do some real comparisons between the US and European model, in more detail, getting beyond the basic labels, in order to find out how best to improve the quality of life for everyone: this, after all, should be our main mission, should it not?

Post edit:  I am of course being a bit facetious with regards to ‘scrapping’ the public transport system in europe:  of course, in the modern world, you should have public transport in cities, and to and from major cities.  Sure; but my point is, that everyone shoudl also have access to a car if they want.  And of course, cars should all be hybrid and super green:  there is no excuse not to have that.  Problem with that is, Europeans are pushing public transport rather than hybrid cars, and in the US, the oil companies have too much clout for there to be wholehearted attempts at green cars (though of course there is still progress being made, and it will be there that the green car is first perfected and mass marketed – I guess the prius is a start – but of course, we need green cars to be 100% of the fleet, or as close as possible, w/in a decade.  ).

-t.