Alas, Babylon

Front cover of the book, Alas Babylon, by Pat Frank.

I tried reading this book in high school, but stopped after 30 pages. I found a battered first edition paper back of it for 10 cents and am reading it now.

It was written in 1959 and tells of a group survivors after a nuclear war between the USSR and the USA. It has many interesting points on race, religion, humanity, and other issues. One quote I found very memorable is the one below. Randy, the protagonist is talking to a neighbor, a retired admiral, about how the USA could be in such ruin.

"There are odd similarities between the end of the Pax Romana and the end of the Pax Americana which inherited the Pax Britannica. For instance, the prices paid for high office. When it became common to spend a million dollars to elect senators from moderately populated states, I think that should have been a warning to us. For instance, free pap for the massess. Bread and circuses. Roman spectacles and our spectaculars. Largesse from concquering proconsuls and television giveaways from the successful lipstick kings. To understand the present, you must know the past, yet it is only part of the answer and I will never discover it all. I have not the years."

It is interesting that in 1959, the author was looking at the end of Pax Americana by comparing it to the end of Pax Romana. The mention of the cost of electing senators for $1,000,000 seemed absurd then. Think about how much the last set of elections cost. Over $60,000,000 combined was spent on both sides of the California PROP 8 ballot issue banning same-sex marriages.

Same-sex couple Amber Weiss hugs her partner Sharon Papo as they get married at San Francisco City Hall June 17, 2008, in San Francisco.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

I know I've preached on this before, but I feel it is a message needing to be heard again and again. Look at the crap, or pap, we are fed via tv and other media. We swallow with glee the seed of "Reality TV" thinking it is our life. We believe it is "real", or at least real important. When there was questioning over the validity in the recent American Idol voting, there was an uproar by the American swallowers that would overwhelm any squeak of discontent about recent supreme court decisions. "Roman spectacles and our spectaculars."

In the next few weeks, North Korea is probably going to launch a test missile toward Japan or Hawaii, oh wait, Michael Jackson died. That deserves 24 hour news coverage. We need Barbara Walters preempting all other evening programs with information on Jackson's early demise.
Our celebrity-obsessed culture takes another swallow. Jackson was influential in music. I understand radio stations suddenly playing a lot of his music. Did he deserve this much of our precious public attention at his death? He was not JFK or Abraham Lincoln.
If we are looking at the end of Pax Americana, there will be a vacuum to fill that space. Who will it be? Should we try to fight losing world dominance or is it our time to live in diminished importance?

I have one hope and he is our President. Obama is not a perfect president. He's pissed me off on a couple of his decisions. My hope stems from his greater candor and tranparency conpared to other administrations. He has already shared with us more information than Bush did in eight years.

Maybe we can learn that reality is not the show Top Model, but true things like: war, disease, economic ruin, humanitarian relief, nature, art, beauty, music, education, entertainment, pollution, sex, religioun, culture, violence, and what truly surrounds us. There is room for minor things like Hello Kitty and other fads. Fads should be a small side-show we mildly enjoy and not the all-consuming popular seed we swallow with a huge gratuitous smile, then wipe are lips and open our mouthes for the next.


NOTE: I do not have strong feeling about Michael Jackson. I liked some of his songs. I thought he was a bit of a freak at best. As for swallowing, I am using it as an analogy of our world's wanton consumption of gullability and pap. From a sexual point of view, swallowing is your personal preference. I think it is sexy, but if you don't like it, that is fine by me.

Us vs. Them... Too Much Information

Peace
Photo by SB

My finger is slowly mustering to write again after the injury last Friday. While my writing finger was on the injured list this weekend, I photographed a wedding. In principle, I don't like photographing weddings, but I will do it to help out.

A friend of mine, Claire, was asked to photograph her friend's wedding. This was Claire's first wedding and she was nervous. This was my fifth. Up front, I want to say the wedding couple were beautiful, their families were mostly nice to each other, and everyone thanked the photographers. I don't know why they thank the photographers before seeing the photos we captured.

Most of the groom's and a small part of the bride's families attend a non-denominational mega-church. The pastor of the church presided. His order of ceremony was different because he married the couple then gave a sermon. Usually the sermon is before the vows.

During his sermon, he read every passage from the Bible mentioning marriage between a man and a woman (or as the former Miss California called it, "Opposite marriage.") He did not outright say anything about the gay marriage issue, but it was floating in the air. I found out later the groom's uncle (dad's side) who attended is gay. I wonder how he felt.

I am not going to go off on some rant about their limited views. I was in their space. This was their event. I respect their free speech rights. I just snapped a few more pictures of the guests and tuned him out.

Over the rest of the weekend, I didn't think about it. This morning I read an interesting article at Slate.com. It was a review about the new book, Going to Extremes, by Cass Sunstein. This article made me think of the cultural divide developing in our country. Here are a few key points in the review.

"In the roughly three decades between the election of Ronald Reagan and last autumn's global financial collapse, social scientists and public-policy thinkers were obsessed with the way society seemed to grow more fragmented as it grew more prosperous. Almost everyone diagnosed a growing gap between rich and poor, but the polarization was not just economic."

"...people were sorting themselves by measured intelligence and scholastic achievement."

"... while daily newspapers confront people with all kinds of material they didn't ask for, the Web allows them to dodge what they disagree with." (emphasis by me)

"In theory, the Internet opens people up to new ways of looking at things. In practice, it lets people wall themselves off in informational micro-environments of their own design. It makes them not more cosmopolitan but more parochial."

Very interesting points. With all the information available to us, we should be more enlightened and cosmopolitan. Instead, we are insulating ourselves with an overabundance of like-minded thought and material. We are not exposing ourselves to other views because we can find so much concurring beliefs that we can avoid the me easily.

It is so easy to look at the people at the wedding and think of them as narrow-minded conservative Christians. They were in a sheltered place of like mined people sharing in their extremist ideas. Tsk tsk.

Wait a minute, as I look through my browsing history on my computer (ignoring my "research" of nude photos) I notice almost all my web travels are to left-leaning, artistic, erotic, anti-2257 sites and blogs. Slate.com is pretty liberal as is NPR and other news sites I read. My blog friends share a majority of my views. Most of my daily life friends do to. Am I insulating myself as much as the conservative Christians I just tsked?

So, is it bad that I insulate myself as much as the other groups? My answer, yes and no. I should learn more about their side. Maybe if I understand their motivation, I can find ways of addressing them and finding middle ground. On the other hand, we need the extremist beliefs on both sides to keep the middle in check.

I am naturally attracted to people who share similar passions, beliefs, desires, tastes, and motivations and so will people on the other side of the cultural divide. All of this is a bit disconcerting because I don't want to live in a fractured country.

At the end of the review, there are some interesting ideas from legal philosopher Heather Gerkin concerning the different levels of diversity.

Gerken distinguishes between first-order diversity (diversity within institutions) and second-order diversity (diversity among institutions). To simplify, the first involves insuring that the newsroom of the Los Angeles Times has a certain number of Latinos; the second involves ensuring that the public can choose between, say, the Los Angeles Times, the New Republic, and the Final Call. It is OK if certain institutions aren't diverse as long as society has a diversity of institutions.

It is unrealistic to expect me, or them, to willingly increase the diversity of our groups. We may have different flavors in my group, but we are all basically ice cream. The other side is jello, many flavors, but still jello. My point is not about race or religion, it is about how humans congregate together and what pulls us into like-minded groups.

I really hope the internet and other media sources can achieve the second-order diversity. Since I am not going to join a conservative Christian church to inject my liberal ideas and try to learn theirs, I doubt they will join mine. By having all of these sources of knowledge and ideas available to everyone, those seeking answers may find what they need. There is the problem again though, as stated by the article author. "...it lets people wall themselves off in informational micro-environments of their own design." With that, the cultural divide continues to grow.

Oh My God...

ZINC, Ark.—A child of members of the Knights Party, 2009

Photo by Bruce Gilden - Magnum Photos

...what people do in Your name.

I saw this photo essay. The first photo made me wonder where it was taken in the 1950s. It was taken in 2009.

This scares me more than 2257. I think 2257 and PROP8 are parts of the mentality shared by these "people" - intolerance, hate, and violence. There are shades of those characteristics all about in our culture and are growing like a slow malignancy, easy to ignore until you notice the lump.

Please view this Magnum Photo Essay - The Resurgence of Hate Groups in the United States.

Boycott My State, Or At Least Parts of It

County Vote Tallies - LA Times

As you probably heard, the California Supreme Court upheld the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages (PROP 8) that passed in the 2008 general election. They also ruled the ~18,000 gay marriages performed last year are valid.

I heard a lot of commentary on the decision. In ways the court was right because Prop 8 was passed and did not conflict, in its process, with the state's constitution. While the actual action of it is discriminatory, the way it was proposed and voted on was legal.

In the past few months, I wrote about my personal boycott of Utah because of the Mormon Church's heavy-handed influence on the PROP 8 issue. While I am still boycotting Utah, especially the Salt Lake City area, I must look inward to my own state.

I am going to boycott spending money (as much as possible) in any county that had a majority of "yes" votes for PROP 8. Here is how I plan to boycott it.

I will not do the following in these counties:

• Shop in stores or buy online from
  
• Buy gas
• Eat in restaurants
• Stay in hotels ( I will camp in them because the money goes to the state or the federal forest service. I will bring my own food.)

Since most of the food I eat comes from the central valley, I will have to buy eats from the "Yes" counties. My goal though will be to go to farmer's markets and buy from the farmers that produce in the "No" counties as much as possible.

In addition to my actions, I am going to write the appropriate chambers of commerce to tell them of my decisions. I doubt my few thousand dollars per year will mean much to them, but at least I can make sure my money is going into communities that did not support hate.

Here is a link from The LA Times that shows vote tallies for each county. If you support gay marriage and social liberty, please join me in my boycott. I would support your avoiding the "Yes" counties, or even avoiding the state. If you do participate in the boycott, please write to the appropriate chambers of commerce to tell them why.

I am thankful most of the great wine producing counties voted "NO."