Diamond Painting and the Demise of Society

Recently, I've noticed a new type of video in Facebook's Reels (their ripoff of Tiktok): repetitious images of small, colorful, plastic dots being sucked up by and handheld tool and plunked down, row after row, on an adhesive canvas.   The videos have a hypnotic appeal, especially with the sound effects. Today, having nothing else much to do (except laundry, dishes, bill paying, cleaning up after cats and dogs, and worrying about potential demise of democracy on Tuesday, etc.) I decided to learn more about the activity these videos represent called diamond painting. 

I began by Googling "diamond painting" and discovered that there were a large number of retailers from whom I could order diamond painting kits, but Google didn't hold too many hints about the nature of this activity. So it was off to YouTube. My husband always says if you want to find out how to do something, indeed anything, go to YouTube. I began with a video that was titled "Things I wish I'd know when starting diamond painting." The video which was about 12 minutes long was visually an uninterrupted flow of a woman's hands putting red diamonds, one by one, onto a complex, apparently abstract design that was already about one half completed.

The first thing I noticed about this video, and all the others that I watched this afternoon, was that these experienced diamond painters were almost always demonstrating placing the little plastic color chips on their canvas one-by-one, and not in groups of five to ten as shown in the Reels I'd seen on Facebook. Yet even this still had a nice repetitive, hypnotic effect on the viewer. Over this visual a woman with a pleasant voice talked steadily, and easily about the things she wished she'd known which included things like: round vs. square diamonds really didn't matter much, spending money on better tools than those that came with every kit did matter (for example broader sturdier "pens" led to less hand cramping, bigger sorting boxes led to less refills, etc.), the size of the design mattered a lot in terms of detail afforded, and several other points that I forget already. 

I watched at least a dozen different videos (from hundreds that were available on YouTube), produced by five different women. Which leads me to my first observation: diamond painting appears to be primarily a hobby of women. I'm sure there are men who do it, I just didn't see any videos by men in my brief foray into the subject.  I kept coming back to the woman who had produced the first video I saw, because I really enjoyed her voice, and she demonstrated the widest array of types of diamond paintings from quite simple and small, to large canvasses with 277 colors (from a company in Germany). 

My second observation is that diamond painting involves a lot of highly repetitive and actually soothing activity. It seems to be pretty low stress, repetitive, calming, requiring only modest skill levels, hand/eye coordination, and dexterity. I probably couldn't do it because I suffer from essential tremor in my hands and have both severe osteo- and rheumatoid-arthritis in my hands. The companies that produce diamond painting kits market them tout the hobby as restorative, calming, soothing, allows one to let ones mind wander, and still end up with a beautiful product without any artistic talent required. It is being marketed as a type of "art therapy", much the way that adult coloring books were marketed a decade ago. Of course with adult coloring books, the individual got to choose which colors they would use to color in the designs - so that the end product was highly individualized and far more creative than diamond painting. 

Companies selling diamond painting kits describe them as being much like "paint by numbers" kits. However, while paint-by-numbers kits told one where to put which color, the application of the color with an actual paint brush required substantially more skill, and led to much more variation in the final product than diamond painting does. 

So where does "the demise of society" come into this? Let me start by making it clear that there is nothing inherently wrong with engaging in activities that are repetitive, soothing and calming. Running, walking, yoga, meditation, even routine household chores (I find washing dishes soothing and mindless), raking leaves, mowing the lawn, all can have those effects. Although not as repetitive, activities like singing and dancing can also relieve stress and anxiety. However, the fact that there seems to be an ever greater need for activities to reduce stress and anxiety is concerning, and indicative of serious underlying fault lines in our society.   The widening disparity between rich and not just the poor but the "middle class" is just one among many of those fault lines. The on-going commodification of life, where more and more things (education, water, health) have dollar signs attached to them, and become less available to those with low incomes, is a second fault line. The erosion of our environment, with massive shifts in climate is another. 

I'm not trying to trash the individual people who enjoy engaging in diamond painting, it looks like a pleasurable activity and its hard to fault individuals for liking it. However, on a societal scale it represents two disturbing trends: commodification and environmental destruction. It sucks most of the skill and creativity out of an activity, requires substantial expenditure of cash (kits can cost upwards of $75 for large more complex artwork), and dramatically contributes to the very serious problem of plastic pollution, especially pollution by tiny particles of plastic. I learned from one of the videos I watched than depending upon the company one might have to reject or throw away a significant percentage of the diamonds one gets because they are flawed in some way. Also, the storage of diamonds involves the use of plastic containers (from very small to quite large). Then there is the long term future of all the art work produced covered as it is with all these tiny plastic chips. None of these are heirloom products, they won't be sold, collected, put in museums or even cherished by younger generations. They will ultimately from a few months to a few decades, end up in the trash. At a time when our oceans are being overcome by micro-plastic pollution, that is ending up inside wildlife and even humans. 

Return to Zombie America

image from Umair Haque's article
on the American Collapse

Outstanding article "Why We are Underestimating American Collapse" by Umair Haque in Eudaimonia  looks at some of the human costs such as the epidemic of school shootings, the "opioid epidemic," the declining life expectancy of rural, white Americans.

This all fits in with what I've started calling  "zombie America." Zombies are variously referred to as the "undead" and the "walking dead," phrases that I think can be applied to American economy, politics and society at large. The nation is still lurching and weaving about, animated but no longer truly alive, dead (or dying) on the inside but because still animated, so that many observers still imagine it to have life.

Not like science fiction: the decline of America

 I began reading science fiction when I was nine, and it remains even today sixty-two years later still my favorite flavor of fiction, but science fiction has taught us all to expect the end of civilization to come abruptly, dramatically and unmistakably. This has made us collectively blind to the real world slow, drip-drip erosion of our society. 

A good example of what I'm talking about is the novel (and now HBO series) Station Eleven, a story of an apocalyptic pandemic and its aftermath. The novel published in 2014, shows the disease a deadly "flu" killing something like 90 percent of the people infected, and its impact in disrupting society occurs within days. People die in the streets, in their cars, everywhere all at once, and almost instantly modern society as we know it is gone.  Some time in the last month or so, I ran across someone (on Twitter or in an interview) using Station Eleven as the rubric against which our real world COVID pandemic should be marked as not very serious. I wish I'd written it down, saved the Tweet or bookmarked the interview because it epitomizes the way we've ingrained science fiction as the arbitrator of what is and what is not the end of the world.

Make no mistake about it, we are already in the midst of the fall and decline of the great American democratic, post-industrial society. It has been going on for some time now, at least two decades, but probably longer than that. Let me make it clear, I am NOT a MAGA, I am not talking about trying to recover some fake golden age of the past. I see as good and positive trends the exact things that MAGA people hate: increasing diversity, greater political, social and economic power for women and people of color, increasing openness to alternatives to rigid gender boundaries and the celebration of all kinds of sexual orientations. I applaud marriage equality and support the Black Lives Matter movement. 

However, even if the MAGA crowd is wrong about what ails our society and who or what is responsible, they are on to something when they express anxiety about the decline of America. Extreme inequality in wealth, political power, and social opportunities are fundamentally distorting and destroying our society. A very small class of people benefit hugely, others benefit slightly and the vast majority find themselves living on the edge with little voice and less influence. 

The COVID pandemic did not cause any of this, but it exacerbates all the existing problems, continues tiny piece by tiny piece to help tear away at the fabric of society. The pandemic which has killed less than one percent of our population has nonetheless shredded our health care system, scratches at our supply lines, and creates a huge new class of disabled persons, and is far from over in terms of its impacts, regardless of our intentions to just "live with it." 

The United States Postal Service as a Symbol of the Nation

In 1985 scientist and science fiction writer David Brin published a post-apocalyptic novel entitled The Postman. If you are not a reader of science fiction you might be more likely to remember the movie directed and starred in by Kevin Costner in 1997. During the early weeks of the pandemic shutdown back in April, when Trump first started making noises about undermining the U. S. Postal Service, I decided to re-read the book. 

The key idea of The Postman is that the United States Postal Service is more than simply a service to deliver mail and packages, it is a powerful symbol of our united nation. So much so that in a fragmented post-apocalyptic world,  men wearing the uniform of the USPS and carrying mail from community to community can be enough to jump start the economic, social and political unification of a country. 

The U. S. Postal Service provides enormous practical benefit to Americans regardless of their economic or social standing. In fact the lower your economic and social status is the more you may benefit from the USPS. Every address and community, no matter how small or rural must be served by the USPS.  If you don't get home delivery and can't afford a post office box you can still get your mail general delivery at your local post office. We may not be big senders of cards and letters in this age of digital communications, but we still do business by mail, pay bills by mail, get checks by mail, get medications by mail. 

However, the real point here is that far above and beyond the practical benefits of the U. S. Postal Service is the symbolic role it plays in our sense of all being citizens in one nation.  There are several examples that highlight this. One is the degree to which Americans have mythologized the Pony Express, a service that lasted a mere 18 months (April 3, 1860, to October 24, 1861), that tied the eastern United States to the relatively new state of California.  For something that lasted such a very short time, the Pony Express lives in the American psyche as the epitome of nationhood - physically linking states together across a wilderness. Another is the beloved Christmas movie Miracle on 34th Street in which the U. S. Postal Service delivers bags and bags of mail addressed to Santa Claus to Kris Kringle in the court room. If the mighty U. S. Postal service, an official government agency  could recognize Kris Kringle as Santa Claus, then that was enough for the judge. 

All those people salivating with dollar signs in their eyes, over the prospect of carving up the business of the Post Office and distributing it to for-profit corporations, miss this very important fact about the U. S. Postal Service. It is far more than a set of services, it is part of the fabric of America, and it is a symbol of our national unity. 

If we lose the United States Postal Service we lose our national soul. 

Family not Business

Republicans and conservatives are always talking about how we need to run our country like a business; they also talk a lot about family values but never link the two together.

We would be far better served if we decided to run our country like a family - a good family not a dysfunctional one. Good families put their frailest and most vulnerable members first, making them a priority. Families sacrifice for their children and their elderly, giving their time, energy and resources to those who can least go out into the economy and world and fend for themselves. The adults in good families know they are protecting the future -- of themselves, their families, and society -- when they put their children first, and that they are acknowledging the sacrifices of their parents when they put their elderly first.  Good families do not abandon or kill their children and elderly when money gets tight, they look for new resources, a second job, government assistance, even illegal sources of income (not condoning the latter, just observing).

Businesses on the other hand, when money gets tight, put stockholders and top executives first and throw away the most vulnerable of their workers, forcing retirement on older workers, laying off workers, abandoning the very people who make the business work.

Our present government leadership (both Houses of Congress and the Presidency) are taking a business rather than a family approach to running the country, cutting off the vulnerable (cutting programs), rather than expanding resources (returning taxes to previous levels before the huge tax cut giveaway of 2018):

House GOP plan would cut Medicare, Medicaid to balance budget https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/house-gop-plan-would-cut-medicare-medicaid-to-balance-budget/ar-AAySglD?li=BBnb7Kz

This Congress has already cut the programs that care for children (food stamps, welfare, education, and many others), and now it's taking aim at our elderly. All to give those who already have enormous resources, more than they could possibly spend in their lifetime, even more. Let's start thinking of our society as a family and not a business.

Thoughts on the Senate Passage of the Tax Cut Bill

The mechanics of an advanced capitalist economy hold a number of important contradictions within them that make it likely that economic growth (in this country) will continue to slow down, that fewer workers will be desired (here) by capitalist enterprises, more mechanization, computerization will replace workers, that wages will continue to stagnate or even decline. These changes are embedded in the essential nature of unfettered capitalism, and can only be altered by choosing to modify capitalism, to make decisions based on human welfare and NOT on profit (the essence of capitalism). 

There is also an essential contradiction between the need for a capitalist enterprise to grow, expanding markets and demand, and the finite nature of material resources. Moreover, that growth and expansion coupled with short-term profitability decisions, increasing the level of waste and its attendant pollution. Growth is an inherent requirement of capitalism and it cannot continue forever in a finite reality. So, therefore, capitalism cannot continue forever in a finite reality. 

Somewhere in our countries future we will hit a series of "walls" - a point at which standards of living have eroded past what is tolerable to maintain a free society, where environmental degradation (including global warming) will begin taking an even greater toll than it already does (wildfires, floods, hurricanes, extreme weather events). 

If we were to moderate our economic system now, make progressive changes that provide more (rather than less) support for the poor, the middle class, improve health care access, improved educational access, put people to work doing things that need doing rather than just what is profitable for investors (like we did during the Great Depression), we might possibly create a people and a society that will have the resilience needed to survive the shocks that our economy and environment will inevitably throw at us. 

But instead we have a government today, that is engaging in firesale tactics. We're stripping away supports and safety nets, not enhancing them. What I fear is that even if years from now we do elect people with a better vision, it will be too late. We will hit those "walls" full speed, head on and be smashed to bits as a society. 

That, unfortunately, is my vision for this countries future.

Zombie America - Installment 7

It appears that economists have finally glommed on to something that sociologists have been talking about for 30 years: the middle class is disappearing and there is a great divide between haves and have-nots in America. 

MIT economist Peter Temin is getting rave reviews for his new book The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy. While Temin certainly has some updated data, the phenomenon he is describing- the hollowing out of the American middle class and the increasing divide between affluent and those scraping by - has been in progress for decades at least since the deindustrialization of American began in earnest in the late 1970's. Sociologist Katherine Newman aptly described the early stages of the decline of the middle class in Falling From Grace: Downward Mobility in the Age of Affluence in the 1980's.

Many social scientists, policy makers, and politicians have noted the decline of the "rust belt," but blithely assumed that new industries (especially in high tech fields) would replace the older manufacturing centers. They offered up condolences to industrial communities devasted by the closing of steel mills, automobile factories, and coal mines, but have done little of substance to change the decline of those communities.  The old economy workers who cannot be retrained for the new economy are members of the "unnecessariate" - disposable people who do not figure as workers in the new economy but become the fodder for the careers of law enforcement, prison guards, social workers, doctors, and therapists.  It is not terribly surprising that so many of them voted for the one politician that appeared to care about them, speak to them directly, and tell them they were worth something.

The cavalier abandonment of so many small cities and towns in America, who have not made the transition to the new economy is a major indicator of the rot in our society.  However, the real problem is that the new economy itself is divisive and destructive to American society.

Seattle with its booming tech/internet economy is an excellent example of how economic success contributes to the increasing divide in American society. Not all of the jobs of the new economy are "good" jobs - lots of lower paid, dead end warehouse and service sector jobs come out of the same economic developments that provide high paying tech jobs. Moreover, influxes of higher paying jobs can push up housing costs, tax rates, strain transportation, and other public services, increasing the cost of living on those who do not have the "good" jobs.  Nestor Ramos, a Boston Globe reporter describes the benefits and pitfalls of a booming high tech economy. An article intended as a cautionary tale to those communities that might be bidding for a new Amazon headquarters.

The Sky Is Falling: Beyond the Myth of Moral Decline

Recently several of my Christian Facebook friends shared and liked blog post The Christian Myth of America's Moral Decay by John Pavlovitz. Pavlovitz basic thesis is that in terms of individual behavior and action people are no more immoral and wicked than they have ever been;  inhumane, intolerant and hateful behavior is no more common than in the past, and corruption and injustice has been with us always. Pavlovitz suggests that what makes today different is that we now have the technological means (cell phones with cameras and video and an internet) to bring all the human nastiness to light and make everyone continuously (24/7) aware of the dark side of human behavior.

Moreover, there is substantial sociological evidence (real hard, historical data) to go even further and say that violence, crime, and physical brutality are actually on the decline in America. Although flawed in a number of ways (including being overly psychological), The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker provides ample data to show that this decline is a long term one world wide. So as I read Pavlovitz piece, I sat nodding my head in agreement with his argument:

"I’m out here every day and I see heroic, compassionate, reckless acts of beauty all the time. I see and speak to lots of inherently good people doing their best; slipping and then getting back up again. We’re all flying and failing simultaneously; gaining and losing ground and doing it again and again. I reject the myth of our downward spiral because I know how hard I and so many others are working to get this life right and to love well. I don’t believe I am in personal moral decay and I imagine the same is true for you, which is the point."

The problem is Pavlovitz prefaced the statement above with "I don’t believe we’re all slowing sliding off into the abyss, despite what some religious people say."  There I have to disagree, because we are all slowly sliding off into the abyss. At the very end of the piece Pavlovitz states: "Look up, the sky is not falling." And once again I disagree, because the sky is falling.

Where I  part ways with Pavlovitz is that while I agree that the notion of moral decay is a myth, as a sociologist I see potentially insurmountable problems facing American society that are not problems of individual morality, but rather problems of social structure. Those problems are many and wide ranging. We have an economic system (abetted by the political system) that often rewards businesses for using non-renewable resources over those that are renewable, and the increase of pollution over its minimization. By design our economy encourages businesses push the costs (in the form of health hazards and environmental degradation) out onto workers and communities, while retaining the benefits (profits) for themselves. Moreover, individuals as consumers are by design, encouraged  to use more, waste more, spend more and save less. 

We have an economic system in which there is a growing divide between the employment opportunities for those with and without an education. We have fewer and fewer employment opportunities that can sustain a person  much less a family for a lifetime without substantial educational investment. 

Our economic system is structured (with lots of help from the political system in the form of the tax structure, trade agreements, etc.)  in such a way that there are substantial rewards cost cutting - especially labor costs - and little reward for expanding employment domestically. 

Blogger Anne Amnesia of More Crows than Eagles coins a new term for all the people who are being left behind by our current economic system: the unnecessariat.  The unnecessariat are the jobless refuse of our economic system. They are the one who have been pushed out of the labor force because their labor is unnecessary to the pursuit of profit. However, as Anne Amnesia so aptly puts it "there’s certainly an abundance for plans to extract value from them." The unnecessariat become legs that make the drug distribution networks,  the incarcerated bodies that mean profit for private prisons, the communities where prisons or toxic waste facilities can be located. 

So we try to funnel more people into a higher educational system for which they are inadequately prepared and often unsuited. The educational system is unprepared and increasingly underfunded to deal with their deficiencies, their needs and their desires. Worse than that many people who are prepared and engaged educationally, who actually make the educational investment do not recognize economic or financial rewards - especially when they live in communities that have fallen by the wayside (I think everyone gains something from engaging in the learning process and gaining knowledge but that's a different article).   

Over the past 240 years Americans have built a society that makes some types of choices easier than other types of choices, that favors some actions over other actions, and makes some outcomes more likely than other outcomes.  

This does not mean that people lack free will. It does not mean that we are not responsible for our decisions. It does not mean that we cannot and should not make different choices. 

What it does mean is that each individual, each family, each business, each government decision-maker finds that some choices are easy both to see and to act upon. They are the choices pointed out to us over and over again by family, school, media, leaders, etc. These are the choices that our high school guidance counselors know about, the choices that are represented by the majors at our local community and state colleges, the choices offered in our local stores or easily accessible on-line, the choices presented by our local and state government.  Other choices always exist, but they are not visible, audible to us. Some alternatives are deliberately blocked by a multitude of obstacles. We may learn what other people in other countries do, but are told that it is unAmerican, anti-capitalist, immoral, and unthinkable. We risk ostracism, intimidation, threats, and worse if we make some choices. 

So not by moral decay, but by the pressures of social structures that shape our decisions, American society is not on the brink but rather has already slid over the precipice. We are sliding downward already. The unnecessariat is growing  - they have already gone over the cliff. As for the  "precariat" Guy Standing's term for the

" multitude of insecure people, living bits-and-pieces lives, in and out of short-term jobs, without a narrative of occupational development, including millions of frustrated educated youth who do not like what they see before them, millions of women abused in oppressive labour, growing numbers of criminalised tagged for life, millions being categorised as ‘disabled’ and migrants in their hundreds of millions around the world. They are denizens; they have a more restricted range of social, cultural, political and economic rights than citizens around them."

They are dangling by a thread ready to follow the unnecessariat over the edge. 

We are seeing whole communities, even whole regions that are losing or have already lost the battle. This shows in myriad ways: rising death rates for white rural men and women, the physical erosion of community physical infrastructure (think Michigan cities like Detroit and Flint which are merely the canaries in the coal mine), the political gridlock of Congress, and so much more. 

We are fraying at the bottom and the edges, and those in the middle know if even if unconsciously. They realize that they are vulnerable if not why. The causes are complex, multifaceted, involving multiple social systems, and cannot be solved by simple slogans or by a single new leader.

But wait, it gets worse. Because global warming is real. The earth's climate is actually changing. The consequences are already affecting us, and are going to become increasingly disruptive of our economic and social systems.  Just one little example to make my point - weather related power outages have been on the rise for the past twenty years. Some of the responsibility goes to increasingly extreme weather events (a consequence of climate change) and some of the responsibility to the fraying of community infrastructure (declines in public and private spending on shared infrastructure). The picture is pretty clear: 

There will come a point, when climate related changes will over-come our capacity to cope. That time is likely to come sooner rather than later, because we are also eroding the decision-making capacity of our governments, and creating larger and larger populations of people who do not have the resources to cope with catastrophe. 

Zombie America - Installment 6

Four years ago, while thinking about conditions in the U.S., the phrase "zombie America" popped into my head. What is a zombie? The original use of the word is for a dead body, devoid of real life and soul, that is reanimated and caused to walk around by witchcraft or dark magic. In the ever popular science fiction of recent years, the concept of zombie has evolved to mean a person who has as the result of infection or exposure to unspecified substances been robbed of their humanity - of their personality, intelligence, soul and will - and transformed to a monster that kills and feeds on uninfected humans (especially their brains). Those that are not killed are also infected and become zombies themselves.

Zombies are variously referred to as the "undead" and the "walking dead," phrases that I think can be applied to American economy, politics and society at large. The nation is still lurching and weaving about, animated but no longer truly alive, dead (or dying) but because still animated, so that many observers still imagine it to have life. 

New evidence that American society is "walking dead" is constantly presenting itself. Through out the month of August 2015 stories about teacher shortages have popped up almost daily as many states struggle to put teachers in front of classes with the beginning of a new school year (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/10/us/teacher-shortages-spur-a-nationwide-hiring-scramble-credentials-optional.html ). Thousands of veteran teachers are leaving the classroom every year and no where near enough new teachers are coming up through the pipeline to replace them.  Veteran teachers are deserting the profession due to low pay, lack of classroom resources, schools obsessions with testing, proliferation of regulations and paper work, and lack of real instruction time in the classroom.  This is just one of the ways in which the American educational system is being hollowed out. 

The former center of automotive manufacturing in America in Western Michigan has become the canary in the coal mine for the rest of American society.  Flint, Michigan has recently (December 14, 2015) declared a formal state of emergency as the result of a wholly man-made disaster: the dramatic increase in lead in the cities water supply. Substantially increased levels of lead are showing up in blood tests of the cities children.  The increase in lead poisoning came when the city switched to the Flint River as a water source. Lead exposure in children is irreversible and impacts intelligence and general mental functioning, creating long term educational issues for communities with declining educational resources, not to mention the human tragedy involved. 

confessions of a former optimist

I have always been an optimist. Or perhaps I should say I was always an optimist until the last few years. This has little or nothing to do with my personal life experiences. I maintained an optimistic outlook during unemployment, poverty, cancer, divorce, and many other personal trials, and recent years have been kind to my husband and I in many ways. 

Moreover, my optimism  was not based on ignorance of the worlds problems and issues. My parents brought me up to be highly aware of the dire circumstance of poverty, war, brutality, pain and suffering that others in the world suffered. I was brought up to care about and fight for equality, freedom, and opportunity for others. I was a realist optimist. 

I can remember reading Linda Goodman's Sun Signs in high school and she had this very apt description of Aquarius that fit me to a "T": 

"Lots of people like rainbows. Children make wishes on them, artists paint them, dreamers chase them, but the Aquarian is ahead of everybody. He lives on one. What’s more, he’s taken it apart and examined it, piece by piece, color by color, and he still believes in it. It isn’t easy to believe in something after you know what it’s really like, but the Aquarian is essentially a realist, even though his address is tomorrow, with a wild-blue-yonder zip code." 
Goodman, Linda (2011-02-23). Linda Goodman's Sun Signs: Aquarius (Linda Goodman's Sun Signs Set) (Kindle Locations 175-178). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition. 

Later few years later in college I read Yevegeny Yevtushenko's A Precocious Autobiography  and identified strongly with this passage: 

"My optimism which had been all pink, now had all the colours of the spectrum in it, including black, this is what made it valid and genuine." 

I made my career in sociology a discipline focused on understanding the realities of social life; and I focused on topics of inequality (wealth and poverty), economic and political power (its uses and misuses), and environmental problems. I became more and more versed in what was wrong with human societies, and still I retained optimism that if people properly understood the sources of those problems they could struggle together to make a better world. 

But some where in the past decade, perhaps just the past five years I lost my way. I have come to believe that many of the problems the world is facing can not be fixed, at least not in a way that allows human societies to move forward from where we are now. The inequalities have become so huge, the gaps in power so large, and the many of the environmental problems irreversible without immediate, dramatic reversals in energy, transportation, and food policies that I know will not happen because of those overwhelming inequalities and power differences. 

It feels to me on a daily basis as if those in control of the multinational corporations and the worlds' wealth are deliberately driving humanity towards the edge of destruction, because they believe that there is more profit and more power in creating impoverished and powerless masses, and that the accumulation of vast wealth will some how exempt them from the disasters to come....and who knows, enormous wealth provides a lot of cushion against catastrophe so perhaps they are right. Whether they are right or wrong they are acting as if they, and their children and grandchildren will be immune. 

I do not believe humans are headed to extinction - even as we drive many other species to extinction - but I do believe that we are headed to a lot of hunger, disease and death, and the break down of much of modern industrial society.  

I also believe that within that disaster lies the possibility for vibrant, localized, lower tech, sustainable communities to come out from the other side of the disaster - perhaps many decades on the other side. I also believe that there are people around the world who are doing enormously good things to build social capital, make connections, create local food webs, advance new forms of spirituality  and environmental awareness, and to create support networks that may be the tenuous bridges that we will need to reach that sustainable future on the other side of disaster. 

I know some of those people doing good work and dreaming good dreams. Most of them are far away from me and I only have contact with them through Facebook. It is this lack of direct connection that I think has given birth to my despair.  I want to be part of the bridge building, but no longer know how to make the connections.  I no longer feel it in my soul the way I once did. I feel weighted down by the presence of so many whose response to the uncertainty and fear that they feel in their bones is to cling to a mythical past that never existed and demand that nothing change or that changes should be to a more restrictive, narrower, meaner, less inclusive future. 

The Truths Hidden in Right Wing Survivalism

On a right wing web page, every other headline screams that Obama is responsible for impending disaster and doom to American society.  But hidden within the polarizing rhetoric is often startlingly accurate analysis of the real sources of the problems and the dangers facing America today: a capitalist economic system that enshrines greed and wanton wealth accumulation over economic and social stability and human needs. 

This short video is typical of the genre aimed at "patriots" and emphasizing individualism and family it provides a surprisingly fact based and astute analysis of coming food shortages around the world and their connection to social, economic and political collapse. 
 http://www.backyardliberty.com/vsl/index60.php

Of course this little video ignores important causal factors such as climate change, and the solution to social disintegration is a laughable attempt to by someone to make money within the capitalist mind set. Real solutions will have to be social, involving people in local communities where cooperation will be key.  But the video shows that many on the right, do have an accurate understanding of the very real fragility of our social and economic systems and recognize that food systems are the lynch pin.  Compare this to the discussion of food insecurity by major progressive environmentalists such as Lester Brown "Full Planet, Empty Plates" , and you see that the core analysis of the problem is the same. 

Zombie America - Installment 5 UPDATED!

America, the zombie nation that ONLY appears to be alive.  

Excellent article about how economic reality on the ground of everyday life for most Americans contradicts the economic fantasies theory of economic and political elites who argue for more tax cuts for "job creators," also known as voodoo "trickle down" economics.

See succinct article in Buzzflash  http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/trickle-down-economics-and-climate-deniers-face-an-insurmountable-challenge-reality

This is not debatable data: it is reality, like seeing rain gushing from the sky as proof that the sun is not shining. You can spin this reality, as The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times - among other pro-Wall Street media - do but you cannot deny the facts of what is occurring. The US has two economies: a soaring stock market and wealth for the plutocracy, and a declining standard of living, lower pay, increasing debt and long-term joblessness for the rest of the United States.

This disparate reality breeds anxiety and fear in the ordinary person, who recognizes the inherent instability of their lives, families and communities, but doesn't fully understand the source of that instability. 

Media messages, from advertising to pundits to pulpits, send a message that nothing is wrong with the basic system of industrial capitalism, it is merely the presence of some out-group - socialists, immigrants (legal and illegal), "takers" (translate: "people different from me"), non-Christians (especially Muslims), and the poor in general - who need to be eliminated, controlled, sent home, or simply disenfranchised so that capitalism can get back to doing what it was designed to do.  The problem however, is that capitalism was always designed to increase capital. It was never designed to create jobs or build communities. 

--
Update: June 2014

An excellent AlterNet article http://www.alternet.org/economy/overwhelming-evidence-half-america-or-near-poverty provides links to sound research and statistical data that show that half of all Americans - yes, HALF! - meet the criteria for being "low income;" almost half of American's have zero (zilch) wealth; half of Americans lack the resources to survive even three months without income. 

Alternatives to "Zombie America"

I was asked to come up with some additional material for the chapter of a textbook that I've been writing. The chapter is for an introductory sociology textbook and concerns the relationship between societies and their environments. This is something of a first in sociology; up until now the environment has been either ignored or given a few sections under some other topic (such as population or social change).
Sociology, unlike it's sister discipline anthropology, has not until recently paid much attention to how the environment affects culture and society.

I was so pessimistic in my last post, that I wanted to provide a little balance, particularly because I found the books I read for this additional material so interesting (list of references at bottom of post).  So here is the additional material written over the past week:

Where does this leave us? On the one hand, as long as our world economies are organized as they currently are failure to grow will have devastating economic and social consequences; on the other hand industrialization and economic growth have brought us to the point where the human ecological footprint has exceeded the carrying capacity of the earth. Are we doomed to either slide into economic recession with increasing unemployment and poverty while we protect the environment, or to prosper economically while we destroy our environment? No, we are not so doomed. The choice between economic growth and environmental sustainability is a false dichotomy. 

A growing number of environmentally aware economists (Daley and Farley 2003, Dietz and O’Neill 2013, Heinberg 2011) point out a crucial flaw in the economic growth versus environmental sustainability choice. That flaw is that environmental problems such as global warming, food and water scarcity, and the depletion of non-renewable resources like oil are fundamental roadblocks to economic growth. If human societies do not address the environmental problems we will have no choice at all, economic growth will grind to a halt because of intrinsic limits imposed by the natural environment. 

This is not a new idea; it was first systematically put forth in the classic The Limits to Growth a research study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists commissioned by the Club of Rome in 1972 (Meadows, Rander and Meadows 2004).  The conclusions of this study have been reinforced by careful analysis of the actual environmental and economic trends of the intervening forty years (Daley and Farley 2003, Dietz and O’Neill 2013, Heinberg 2011, Meadows, Randers and Meadows 2004). If the world’s nations persist in pursuing the goal of economic growth, the result will be both environmental destruction and the failure of economic growth. Once environmental limits bring economic growth to a halt, the economic system would most likely crash in catastrophic fashion (Heinberg 2011). 

This is not necessarily the doomsday scenario it might seem at first. Most people are “pro-” economic growth because they assume that prosperity and economic well-being are dependent upon economic growth. Using detailed social and economic data environmentally savvy economists have demonstrated that economic growth is not necessarily equated with economic prosperity and security, and that the increasing size of economies undermines the prosperity of the average person (Daley and Farley 2003, Dietz and O’Neill 2013, Heinberg 2011). 

Economic growth is a matter of size, of quantity not quality and is generally measured by the expansion of the gross domestic product of a nation (GDP).  Growth is about more but not always about better. GDP increases when we drill and sell more oil, but it also increases when we spend millions of dollars on cleaning up oil spills. If the number of people smoking decreases and sales of cigarettes fall then GDP goes down, while if the number of cancer cases increases and we spend more money as a society treating cancer patients than GDP goes up.

Measures of economic growth also pay no attention to how wealth and income are distributed (Heinberg 2011). Between 1975 and 2012 the Gross Domestic Product of the United States increased nearly nine times (from 1.8 trillion to 15.7 trillion). During that same period the amount of income and wealth inequality increased with the gap between the top wealthiest individuals and everyone else growing substantially. Median wages and household incomes in the United States stagnated and fell – even as corporate profits and gross domestic product rose (Packer 2013). There were other qualitative declines in standards of living in the United States that were not included in measures of economic growth: the percent of the workforce holding part-time and temporary jobs increased, as the percent receiving health care, sick leave, retirement and other benefits declined (Packer 2013). The conclusion: economic growth has not translated into economic prosperity or security for increasing numbers of people both in the United States and elsewhere. 

There is an alternative one that promises both economic prosperity and security and environmental sustainability. The alternative is the steady-state economy which maintains a stable level of resource consumption and a stable population, while providing sufficient resources for the sustenance and satisfaction of people. The goal of a steady-state economy is improving quality of life within ecological limits. 

What would a steady-state economy look like? The first defining characteristic of a steady-state economy is environmental sustainability. There would be strict limits on the use of materials and energy, and on the production of waste materials (Heinberg 2011). Built environments – roads, bridges, housing, factories – could not expand into new land; existing agricultural and natural lands (whether forests or deserts) would be protected from encroachment. Environmental sustainability includes an overall reduction in the scale of economies with a shift from far-flung global supply lines to localized production and exchange of both food and manufactured goods (Dietz and O’Neill 2013). Stabilization of world population numbers would be an essential element of environmental sustainability (Assadourian and Prugh 2013). In a steady-state economy humans create sustainable environments in which natural ecosystems and human development are blended to design healthy communities, economies, and ecosystems over the long term. 

The second defining characteristic of a steady-state economy is fair and equitable distribution of resources: food, housing, employment, health care, transportation, leisure time, educational opportunity and economic security (Daley and Farley 2003). Everyone would have access to meaningful jobs and full employment would be the norm (Dietz and O’Neill 2013). Fair distribution of resources would apply within and across societies and across generations (McDonough and Braungart 2013). The result is a world in which everyone is prosperous and extremes of wealth and poverty are muted. 

A steady-state economy is one in which the quality of life is measurably enhanced. People are healthier with fewer of the diseases of poverty (cholera, dysentery) and those of affluence (obesity, heart disease). They work less, have more leisure with time for creativity and hobbies, time to spend with family and engaged in their local community (Heinberg 2011, Dietz and O’Neill 2013). 

How is a steady-state economy achieved? The title of this section of your text suggests that the alternative to “growth” is “restraint,” but restraint is not how one completely transforms the world’s economies to avoid environmental and economic disaster. The project of creating steady-state, environmentally sustainable before environmental problems such as global warming and resource depletion become irreversible requires a mobilization effort similar to the one that helped the United States ready for war in 1942 (Assadourian and Prugh 2013). Major transformation of economic, political and social institutions and a substantive shift in individual and societal values is required. 

There will remain a role for markets in a steady-state economy, but markets must be balanced by the state and civil society (Dietz and O’Neill). The current ruler for market success is profit alone, which must be replaced by a triple metric in which people and the planet are placed in line ahead of profit (McDonough and Braungart 2013). New priorities that focus on long term outcomes measured in terms of sustainability, equity, employment and quality of life, rather than simply profit will have to be set for economies, and only governments can do that (Daley and Farley 2003, Heinberg 2011). But governments can only set new priorities if the people who elect and support them develop new, sustainable rather than growth oriented values. 

How do you, the student, meet this challenge?  The first thing is education. Understand why growth is problematic not only for a sustainable environment, but also for a sustainable society and human quality of life. Learn what it takes for a sustainable environment and a steady-state economy.  A good place to start is the books such as those cited in this section including: Enough is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources by Robert Dietz and Daniel W. O’Neill (2013); The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality by Richard Heinberg (2011); State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible? organized by Erik Assadourian and Tom Prugh for World Watch (2013); and The UpCycle: Beyond Sustainability – Designing for Abundance by William McDonough and Michael Braungart (2013). 

Finally it is important to use your knowledge by becoming involved with local and national organizations that promote change. Every geographic locality has a variety of local groups that concern themselves with sustainable development. The numbers are so great and the types of organizations so varied that one cannot even begin to list them.  You can begin by searching on the internet for both local and national groups using search terms like: sustainable communities, Transition, permaculture, renewable energy, and appropriate technology (Heinberg 2011). You can also talk to others around you—fellow students, instructors, neighbors, local government leaders—to find people who share concerns about the environment and the need for sustainable development.

References:

Assadourian, Erik and Tom Prugh, Project Directors. 2013. State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible? Washington, DC: Island Press. 

Daley, Herman and Joshua Farley. 2003. Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications. Washington, DC: Island Press. 

Dietz, Robert and Daniel W. O’Neill. 2013. Enough is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. 

Heinberg, Richard. 2011. The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality. Gabriola Island, BC, Canada: New Society Publishers. 

McDonough, William and Michael Braungart. 2013. The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability – Designing for Abundance. New York, NY: North Point Press, Division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 

Meadows, Donella, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows. 2004. Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company. 

Packer, George., 2013. The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America. London, England: Farrar, Staus and Giroux.

Zombie America - Installment 4

A year and a half ago, as I was thinking about the state of things economic, political and environmental in this country, the phrase "zombie America" popped into my head. What is a zombie? The original use of the word is for a dead body, devoid of real life and soul, that is reanimated and caused to walk around by witchcraft or dark magic. In the ever popular science fiction of recent years, the concept of zombie has evolved to mean a person who has as the result of infection or exposure to unspecified substances been robbed of their humanity - of their personality, intelligence, soul and will - and transformed to a monster that kills and feeds on uninfected humans (especially their brains). Those that are not killed also infected and become themselves zombies.

Zombies are variously referred to as the "undead" and the "walking dead," phrases that I think can be applied to American economy, politics and society at large. The nation is still lurching and weaving about, animated but no longer truly alive, dead (or dying) but because still animated, so that many observers still imagine it to have life. Pretty pessimistic stuff, right? 

Personally, right now, this week, this month, this past year, my life is pretty great. I have a job I really like (most of the time), enough income for current needs, and few debts (just my house). Since I have tenure I'm unlikely to lose my job any time soon, and I'm over 62 and not far from full-retirement age with (I hope) adequate retirement savings. So unless the entire U.S. economy and government break down completely, and civil disorder and anarchy overtake us I'm in pretty good shape personally.  The problem is that as a sociologist, I believe that such a break down with ensuing disorder and anarchy due to environmental problems, the inherent contradictions of capitalism and the cultural/political divisions of U.S. society, will occur before I die - or alternatively, attempts at repressive totalitarianism to maintain order will prevail in places for a while (think NBC TV's "Revolution") as an attempt (futile in the long run) to contain disorder.  

Most of the time I function happily and contentedly within my personal present. I enjoy the lovely woods and hills that surround my home, I enjoy my conversations with my husband, playing with my dogs and cats, interactions with friends, television and novels, and artistic activities. But, ugly reality intrudes through news stories, articles friends link on Facebook, and most of all through my work as a sociologist. Because it is my job to teach students about society and the environment, about social problems and about inequality. 

I do learn or discover many positive things as I do the research necessary to be an good instructor in these fields or just simply in interacting with the world. There are whole states, whole communities taking wonderful positive actions. There are many non-profit organizations and even more individuals engaging in positive actions towards an environmentally, economically, and politically sustainable future. Occasionally there are even political decisions at the national level that are positive (two from the Supreme Court in just the last few days - striking down the right of private companies to patent naturally occurring human genes, and striking down Arizona's discriminatory citizen test for voter registration). But the bad stuff just keeps coming as large corporations seem to be able to do whatever they please to make the profits they crave regardless of their human and environmental consequences. The rich get richer and the rest of us (not just the poor) and the earth get poorer, more beaten down and more broken. The good things seem like band aids placed here and there on a body gone septic throughout with drug-resistant infections. 

The sad thing is that in an absolute there are solutions. The problems with our economy, our political system and our environment are not written in stone. These are all humanly created institutions and they can be changed.  There are other countries that have made changes or are making changes that could cushion them from the worst of the fall-out from the United States spiral into chaos. But as a society we do not have the political will to change, largely because a huge percentage of voters and their representatives refuse to see our institutions as humanly created capable of being modified or even ditched for something better, insisting instead that they are "God" given, unalterable, sacred institutions. 

But there is something horribly wrong, horribly broken with a society and an economy that has more empty houses than it has homeless people (http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-we-cant-just-put-homeless-families-in-foreclosed-homes-2012-6), governors can sell off highways, colleges, prisons and other public resources rather than tax the rich (http://wepartypatriots.com/wp/2013/06/14/wi-gov-walker-to-sell-off-highways-prisons-and-university-buildings-paid-for-by-students-and-donors/), and people in eastern Kentucky where I live think that the way to save their community is to bow down to everything the coal companies want, even if it is leveling the mountain behind their home. 

Zombie America - Installment 3

"Where's the work that'll
set my hands, my soul free,
Where's the spirit that'll
reign over me.
Where's the promise from
sea to shining sea,
Where's the promise from
sea to shining sea."
by Bruce Springsteen
"We Take Care of Our Own"
Wrecking Ball 2012.

What is "Zombie America"? It's an America that has lost its spirit, its promise. It's a nation that is a hollow shell of itself, walking around going through the motions, but the spirit has flown. Zombie America is a place that no longer dreams, that has drawn in upon itself, and is retreating into the past as fast as it can.

In the first installment in this series, I wrote about the derelict and demolished towns and urban landscapes of America and Europe. That destruction is powerfully evoked in Bruce Springsteen's "Death to My Home Town" on Wrecking Ball (2012). A destruction not wrought by cannon balls, or bombs, but silently and stealthy by "robber barons" and "greedy thieves."

The second installment spoke of the unpaving of the roads, the retreat of water and sewer systems.

Today I speak of another retreat, the retreat from commitment to universal phone service. Today, in Frankfort, Kentucky, the Senate Committee on on Economic Development, Tourism and Labor approved Senate Bill 12, a bill drafted by AT&T, that if passed by the full legislature would further diminish state regulation of the telephone companies and allow them to end basic phone service in less profitable parts of its service areas.  AT&T also has been pushing similar measures in other state capitals this year. [Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/03/13/2108034/bill-that-could-end-basic-phone.html]

From the 1890's to the 1960's, the push in America has been to extend basic phone service to more and more people. To that end both federal, state and local governments have provided tax breaks, grants, and subsidies to telephone companies to make sure that the poor and elderly could have the basic life-line of a phone in their homes. Kentucky's SB12 is the smoking gun of our retreat from basic services, and our retreat into the past. Should SB12 pass the Kentucky Senate and House, it represents the wholesale abandonment of the communicate needs of poor and rural (poor or affluent) people.
In January of 2011, during the period of time (nearly 2 weeks because of incompetence by AT&T) when my AT&T land line service was disconnected from my old house, but not yet connected to my new house, we were dependent upon alternative voice communication options. Cell phone communication would not work in either of our houses (old or new).  The only spot I could pick up a signal was in the middle of the road  by our house. So I stood outside in 15 degree weather in two feet of snow, making cell phone call after cell phone call. Luckily due to the 2 feet of snow, I didn't have to worry about some one running me down in the middle of the road. On more than one occasion, during long complicated calls, where I'd been shunted from one department to another my cell phone battery would go dead.  I'd have to stop, go back in the house, and warm up while my cell phone completely recharged.  Except for the one day that we also had a power outage (due to that 2 feet of snow), and then all I could do was sit in the snow bank and cry over my dead cell phone.

The thought that this might be our future here in the Kentucky mountains is overwhelmingly depressing. And it makes me wonder...The electric utility company constantly chafes at the expense of maintaining electric lines in the mountains, chafes at the high costs of restoring power after storms bring down trees and electric lines. How long before they too decide that they no longer want to be obligated to provide power to widely scattered rural residents? How long before we stop being a Zombie nation and simply become a dead one?

Zombie America - installment 2

(Second in a series)

America is in decline. The signs are all around us.  These are the words with which I began this series, but I was wrong - it isn't just America, its the entire advanced industrialized world.

Advanced capitalist industrial societies are all zombies - we all died some time ago, we just didn't notice we'd become the walking dead.

The first indicator of this decline that I talked about in the first installment is the desertion of communities, first small towns, and now urban neighborhoods and cities.  All my examples were from the United States, because until today, I was unaware that the exact same trend is occurring in Europe.

Yesterday, I began reading a fascinating, almost lyrically written, work of non-fiction The Coming Population Crash And Our Planet's Surprising Future by Fred Pearce (Beacon Press 2010). There on page 87, at the beginning of chapter 10, were these words:

"Even at eight p.m. on a sunny summer's evening, the roads were empty in Chemnitz [Germany], an industrial center known for forty years as Karl-Marx-Stadt. The tiny summer houses on suburban allotments were deserted. I have seen the derelict, rust belt landscapes of former industrial towns before--not least in England, on trains from Sheffield to Doncaster or Birmingham to Wolverhampton.But this world seemed drained of people. In Bavaria, I had asked if anyone ever went to Dresden or beyond. Most shuddered at the idea. I could have been asking about Chernobyl. Of course there were people about, but far fewer than there once were."

Pearce goes on to give details of the abandonment of the industries, towns and cities of the eastern portions of Germany. In the eastern town of Hoyerswerda the main municipal activity is tearing down buildings and "giving street after street "back to nature;" a description that readily fits the conditions of Detroit in the U.S. as well.

The film below examines the dismantling of Detroit:

The second indicator that America is a zombie society, is the dismantling of basic public amenities such as roads, water systems, sewer systems that were once assumed to be part of modern community life. 

I live in one of the few areas of America that never achieved those things.  In the coal fields of eastern Kentucky where I live, municipal water systems have never reached more than 30 percent of the residents of this region. Municipal sewage service reaches only about 20 percent. The last significant expansion of water and sewer services in my county was 10 years ago (when my neighborhood got "city" water). Sewer was suppose to follow that within a few years, but never did. As I read reports about the retrenchment of such services in more urban communities, I begin to realize that sewer probably never is coming to my neighborhood.

Paved roads are being dismantled in America. Across the nation, smaller municipalities are finding that they can no longer afford the costs for the petroleum based components of paved roads.

In a Wall Street Journal article, "Roads to Ruin: Towns Rip Up the Pavement: Asphalt Is Replaced By Cheaper Gravel; 'Back to Stone Age'" reporter By Lauren Etter describes the process in widening phenomenon:

"Paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue. State money for local roads was cut in many places amid budget shortfalls.

The heavy machines at work in Jamestown, N.D., are grinding the asphalt off road beds, grading the bed and packing the material back down to create a new road surface.

In Michigan, at least 38 of the 83 counties have converted some asphalt roads to gravel in recent years. Last year, South Dakota turned at least 100 miles of asphalt road surfaces to gravel. Counties in Alabama and Pennsylvania have begun downgrading asphalt roads to cheaper chip-and-seal road, also known as "poor man's pavement." Some counties in Ohio are simply letting roads erode to gravel."

Roads aren't the only modern amenity to take a hit in recent years. In Jefferson County, Alabama malfeasance, fraud, construction problems, rampant political corruption and a series of debt and derivative deals that went sour have resulted in the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. Soaring costs have meant soaring rates for water and sewer, that the poor of Jefferson County cannot pay. The poor of Jefferson County have found themselves cut off from municipal water and make due with bottled water for drinking and bathing, and setting up portable toilets in their yards in place of sewer service. That the poor are doing with less is nothing new in America. The most fascinating element of the story of Jefferson County, is that the middle class and affluent in Jefferson Counties suburban communities are responding to the high rates for water and sewer by installing individual septic systems. ("Third world in the U.S." BBC World, 14 December 2011 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16172522

When affluent suburban communities start moving backwards, from municipal sewage service to private septic systems (and all the environmental problems those pose), something is very, very wrong in America. Something vital has died.

This morning I read a comment following an Internet news article by some anonymous reader of libertarian persuasion, who argued that there would be no loss of services like police, fire, and rescue workers, when (not if) libertarians were successful in cutting federal taxes and the size of federal government. This clueless commenter suggested that people would willingly start paying higher local governments taxes to provide all those services. As someone who has made a life study of community sociology, I know that tax austerity has its roots in local governments, and that the pressures for tax cuts, and the service cuts those tax losses make necessary are far more acute at the community and county level than at the federal level.

When towns are tearing up roads and cutting off water and sewer lines due to low tax mentality, how would communities ever compensate for the loss of federal funds for necessary services (like police, fire, rescue)?

Zombie America - installment 1

(First in a series)

I was awake most of the night last night (New Years Eve/New Years Morning) thinking about things over which I have no control.  The downward spiral of obsessive thought began with something very personal - my mother's mental decline into dementia - but I was quickly distracted into much more far reaching national, international, even species (human species) issues over which I have no control.

America is in decline. The signs are all around us.  I started thinking about those signs in the wee hours last night (and will discuss some of them in a few moments). For decades I have been waiting for the "beginning of the end," the moment when it all begins to unravel, the day that the "shit-hits-the-fan."  [I'm currently reading a right-wing paranoid post-apocalyptic sci-fi mystery that does a good job of imagining the consequences but not the causes of the day "The Shit Hits the Fan."] Last night, it came to me that that day, that moment came and went a long time ago. We're on the downward slide, not waiting to go over the crest.

We probably never will be able to fix a firm date on the beginning of the end of United States as a developed first world country. The causes are far too complex and are inevitable results of the multiplicity of contradictions buried within industrial capitalism. If you're the kind of person that wants to understand the whys and look for the beginnings, there are plenty of good books you can read, such as:

• Grant McConnell's Private Power and American Democracy (Vintage Books 1966)
• James O'Connor's The Corporations and the State: Essays in Theory of Capitalism and Imperialism (Harper and Row 1974) and The Fiscal Crisis of the State (St. Martins Press 1973). [The latter book goes to show that social theorists on the left understood about the dangers of deficit spending decades before the first Tea Partier took up the chant].
• Wendell Berry's The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (Avon Books 1977)
• Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison's The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (Basic Books 1982)
• Donella Randers, Jorgen Meadows, and Dennis Randers' Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Update (Chelsea Green Publishing 2004) [original Limits to Growth was 1971]

Most of these books have more recent editions, but I refer you to the originals so that you can see that causes of Americas decline was thoroughly analyzed and well understood thirty or more years ago; some people did bother to listen, they just lacked the numbers, the money or the political power to do anything about it.

What are these signs of decline in to third world status that I'm talking about? This isn't an exhaustive catalog, just a few telling indicators.

The first sign is the abandonment, boarding up and eventual leveling of American towns and urban and suburban neighborhoods.

It began in the rural areas.  The long term demographic transition of industrialization, that began in the 1880's in the United States, involves the shift in population from rural areas, small towns and villages In the 1950's the declining population of rural communities is viewed as progress. "How you gonna keep them down on the farm, after they've seen Paree?" asks a popular song of the 20th century, speaking of soldiers returning from World War I and World War II. Mechanization and science take over farming, fewer farm workers are needed, and industrial growth in the nations cities and suburbs beckon young people from farm to city. American government farm policy of the 1950's was to actively wring the people out of agriculture.

There was a brief exurban surge in the late 1960's and early 1970's, of "back to the land" folks, former hippies, disenchanted urbanites and the first trickle of elderly retirees taking advantage of improved social security benefits to return to their childhood home towns. I helped document this five or six year demographic reversal for sociologist and demographer Thomas Ford at the University of Kentucky in 1976.  But it was short lived and the larger population shift away from rural areas re-emerged in the late 1970's.

It's was then that we begin to realize that there's something wrong, and that people who wanted to be farmers and small town dwellers were being forced off their land and out of their communities.   By the early 1980's farmers started to organize nationally and regionally, and popular culture got on board with institutions like Farm Aid (first concert in 1985), to assist farmers and farming communities facing crushing debt from mechanization.

But rural farming communities were not the only ones hemorrhaging population, the mechanization of coal mining and timbering both, helped depopulate non-farming rural areas as well.

Today its become so common place that we've stopped noticing it, stopped being aware that far from stopping, it is getting worse than ever. You drive through small rural towns through out this nation and what you see are empty store fronts, boarded up windows, and empty lots where buildings have been torn down. Around those empty down towns, there are empty houses, in various stages of decay and demolition.

But it didn't stop in the small towns. The industrial cities that rural people flocked to from 1880 to 1970, are now experiencing abandonment, decay and desolation. We noticed it first in the inner city slums of east coast cities in the 1960's. Factories moved out, property values skyrocketed, middle class families moved out, and slum landlords turned once prime housing into substandard apartments for poor people who paid exorbitant rates for tiny pockets of ill-maintained space. Then along came urban renewal and gentrification in the 1960's and the 1970's. Convention centers and upscale shops got built, upper-middle class urban professionals renovated 100 year old row houses in "transitional" neighborhoods, and built rental apartments in their basements. Only the deterioration of the inner cities continued around the convention centers, and not all urban neighborhoods made the "transition".

In some cities whole neighborhoods became ghost towns, boarded over, condemned and in some cases razed. While portions of most of the large industrial cities of the east coast, and upper mid-west have been lost, there are some cities, like Detroit that are more striking than most http://zfein.com/photography/detroit/index.html.



Photo of Detroit skyline copyright by Z. Fein Photography



Only about half the population lives within Detroit city limits compared to the city's height in the 1960's. Gone are the automotive jobs, and so are the people, leaving behind empty skyscrapers, office buildings, schools, police stations, and thousands of empty homes, and empty lots where homes once stood.

We know these things, we see the pictures of the deteriorating urban landscape in our movies and television shows, as the back drop to gritty stories of crime and drug wars. We forget that those are not movie sets, but are real places that are no longer habitable neighborhoods and communities.

The second indicator of decline will be discussed in the next installment.