Life is Not Binary

I read an editorial yesterday, someone arguing that Biden was right to pooh-pooh the notion that we are going the way of Rome. After all, Rome was largely agrarian, was politically unstable, and could be overrun with barbarians, whereas our mighty army could keep all horrible foes at bay. He went on about the British Empire, but let's just focus on Rome for a second.

Now, I'm not going to say we're doomed. There are plenty of people out there saying it and, though there are some pretty scary things happening, I'm not ready to throw in the towel. But, I find the notion that we're untouchably at the top just as frightening.

And the arguments they're using are a case in point. The US is not strictly agrarian. It has a great deal of industry, though that dominates far less than it once did, and other countries are picking up. However, nearly 70% of the US GDP comes from the service industry. Stop and think about that. The service industry. The service sector is the part of the economy that doesn't grow/mine/raise/use natural resources. It's the part that doesn't make things from raw materials into something else (manufacturing). It's the part that sells a service to someone else.

Don't get me wrong. Service can be good. We all need services. Banks to manage money, internets to share info, doctors to fix us, and repairmen to come fix whatever manufactured items we have in our homes. But more than two thirds? 81% of those employed are employed in the service industry. I'd like to know how that is more comforting than having an economy based on growing anything. I mean, the service industry is all about moving the things we need, things grown/mined or manufactured, to everyone who didn't grow/find/build it. When no one's making/growing/mining anything, what will those service industry folks have to move around?

As for political instability, we have a government of the people, by the people, where those "running" it give every appearance of being sold at auction to whatever greedy sector of selfishness will pay highest, no matter the effect on the people. A government where vastly unpopular things are routinely passed and things that are vastly popular languish. While once a yearly thing to reach a stalement in government over this or that potential law, the past few years have made it a daily event. True, our government is not changing hands via assassination, as ancient Rome was doing for some appreciable time, but our lawmakers are as self-absorbed and isolated from the public as they were then. And that is troubling.

As for the last bit (army too strong to be threatened), don't make me laugh. Rome had one of the finest armies ever for the time. But barbarians don't fight like the Roman armies did. They don't stand out in the open in large groups and wait to be clobbered. They sneak in in the dark of night and sabotage you. They wait for you to venture out and pick you off one by one. They convince your allies you can't be trusted and leave you isolated. They give you the scorched earth treatment as they scurry off to fight another day. The US spends more than the entire REST OF THE WORLD on defense. That's everyone else in the world, allies and potential enemies, combined. Yet we failed to accomplish our mission in Vietnam, Korea, and Afghanistan, unless the intent was to leave a country shattered in a our wake. In Iraq, we accomplished the mission of taking down Saddam. I'm sure the average Iraqi is very grateful. Documented "unnecessary" violent civilian deaths number near 100,000 while the estimates of unnecessary death go over a million.

And what does can our fabulous defense do against today's barbarians? The kind that leave roadside bombs and take out civilian markets, the kind that turn planes into weapons of mass destruction? Not a damn thing. The people of this nation are safe from armies like ours. Except, who has one? That's not what we should be worried about.

The US has had a large number of advantages - mild climate, a wealth of natural resources, and, in my opinion, our strongest advantage, a plethora of original thinkers. Per capita, there aren't many, if any, countries in history that have moved us forward as quickly as US inventors. In fact, if there's anything that frightens me most, it's the trend that schools move to rote learning to pass tests instead of challenging the minds that could be building the future of tomorrow, sending those potential minds running from engineering and science into something less insulting. If we lose our originality, stagnation may be unavoidable.

I'm not saying all this because I hate America. Far from it. There's a great deal to love here. But I want the best for this country, for my children.

So, if I tear their argument apart, why don't I think we're doomed? Because there are still thinkers here. In amongst varying degrees of inanity, there are thinkers and questioners and dreamers and skeptics. Because there are people who still know how to remind their children to think. Because information and history is still available freely in this country, more available than in any time in history. People in this country, despite a few pockets of the unmitigated greedy, are still largely generous and hard-working and honest, willing to make sacrifices for the greater good.

I don't think there are any problems here that couldn't be fixed with a little humility, hard work (which we do like nobody's business), and clear thinking. Pretending nothing's wrong isn't going to do it. Throwing up our hands in despair isn't going to do it. It's not a binary problem. It's not an either/or. It's a complex convoluted issue and we aren't going to get there by sliding all the way one direction or the other or thinking there's one answer and only one. And we sure aren't going to solve it by playing point the finger.

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Saturday Quotations: History, Wisdom, Authority

Eh, why not?

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.
--Aldous Huxley

It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough.
--Adam Smith

It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in retrospect.
--Robert Louis Stevenson

Few things are harder to put up with than a good example.
--Mark Twain

As one reads history... one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted.
--Oscar Wilde

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die out, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
-- Max Planck

As long as we're going to reinvent the wheel again, we might as well try making it round this time.
-- Mike Dennison

Be ever questioning. Ignorance is not bliss. It is oblivion. You don't go to heaven if you die dumb. Become better informed. Learn from others' mistakes. You could not live long enough to make them all yourself.
-- Admiral Hyman Rickover

Collective judgment of new ideas is so often wrong that it is arguable that progress depends on individuals being free to back their own judgment despite collective disapproval.
-- W.A. Lewis

Despite its suffix, skepticism is not an "ism" in the sense of a belief or dogma. It is simply an approach to the problem of telling what is counterfeit and what is genuine. And a recognition of how costly it may be to fail to do so. To be a skeptic is to cultivate "street smarts" in the battle for control of one's own mind, one's own money, one's own allegiances. To be a skeptic, in short, is to refuse to be a victim.
-- Robert S. DeBear

Deviants are sacrificed to increase group solidarity
-- Jenny Holzer

"Experts," whose careers and celebrity status depend upon the existence of a problem, can write about the problem, consult about it, and speak about it on talk shows -- they can do everything but solve the problem.
-- Robert L. Woodson, Sr.

If we keep treating our most important values as meaningless relics, that's exactly what they'll become.
-- Michael Josephson

Information is just signs and numbers, while knowledge involves their meaning. What we want is knowledge, but what we get is information.
-- Heinz R. Pagels

Intellectual brilliance is no guarantee against being dead wrong.
-- David Fasold

I like to keep an open mind, but not so open my brains fall out.
-- Arthur Sulzberger

I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
-- Michael Crichton


Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.
-- Edward de Bono

Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.
-- James Robinson

Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.
-- James Baldwin

Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.
-- Demosthenes

Security can only be achieved through constant change, through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts.
-- William O. Douglas

What are the facts? Again and again and again — what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell," avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history" — what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!
-Robert Heinlein

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
-Albert Einstein

A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense. Power runs with ideas that only the crazy would draw into doubt. The "taken for granted" is the test of sanity; "what everyone knows" is the line between us and them.
This means that sometimes a society gets stuck. Sometimes these unquestioned ideas interfere, as the cost of questioning becomes too great. In these times, the hardest task for social or political activists is to find a way to get people to wonder again about what we all believe is true. The challenge is to sow doubt.
-Lawrence Lessig

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