Is "Wildness the preservation of the world"?

     One of the early tenets of Thoreau,  and then Muir,  and then the Sierra Club was that "Wildness is the preservation of the world".   There is some special experience that comes from being in Nature that is essential to human nature and survival.
     Today's NYT features a discussion on base jumping from Yosemite and other National Parks.  The discussion reflects the growing emphasis on extreme sports.   Once the province of the motorcycle daredevils and tightrope walkers,  it has spread to a wider community of enthusiasts.   All these activities seem understandable as personal challenges either for courage or skill,   but are they part of the “wilderness experience”?    Once there was no “wilderness”:  people lived in nature’s world and survived as best they could.  Gradually human culture developed methods of surviving more easily in the world around them,  and a distinction developed between the “world of man” and “Nature”.   Periodic floods,  tornadoes,  hurricanes,  etc remind us that this distinction is temporary and artificial,  but it is a useful fiction that helps people feel less anxious about their day to day survival. 
    Once people stop living daily in the world of predators,  exposure to extreme climate,  and the hunger of an inconsistent food supply,  a yearning for the challenges of that life seems to return.  For some this is simply a walk in a local park or on the beach.   For others it may involve camping outdoors,  or a backpacking trip into a “wilderness” area.   These challenges all have in common the desire to test one’s ability to live in the wild for a limited period of time.   NOLS and other adventure programs have all developed programs modeled on the Native American “vision quest” to give participants controlled experiences of this challenge.  This has become a profitable way of giving people this challenge.  For some,  there seems to be a natural duality between living a protected urban life and going outside of this safe space periodically to enjoy the experience of Nature more directly. 
    What does this have to do with outdoor thrill seeking?  Another group of people want to use an outdoor experience to prove something about themselves.   The obvious examples are the explorers who went to arctic and antarctic to be the first to lay claim to being at these places.  The records of their trips show no indication of a peaceful engagement with a harsh natural environment and everything about organizing an adventure to prove that the person can achieve some daunting accomplishment.  Often they were not the "first" to reach this location,  but the first "Europeans" to report about it.   Nature is only the challenge in this version of the story,  not a meaningful experience in its own right.  This distinction  is very clear in mountaineering.   Some people arrange complex trips into the mountains,  with extended training etc,  because they want to have the experience of being in these dramatic landscapes.  The trips are not rushed and achieving the summit is only part of the goal.   For others,  climbing mountains is simply a check box on the bucket list of personal aggrandizement:  “I skydived”,  “I bungee jumped”,  “I climbed this or that peak in one day”,  etc.  This is the “wham, bam, thank you mam”  version of experiencing Nature.  The trip preparation is usually brief and focused on personal endurance,  not the environment,  and tour leaders organize and coordinate the complex details needed to guide the inexperienced climber to a (hopefully) successful outcome.  Alpine skiers and snowboarders have also developed this pattern.  From the days of the selective joy of skiing down isolated slopes in distant mountains,  and staying over in modest quaint lodges,  skiing has grown to a world wide billion dollar real estate business in which the skiing is degraded by the crowds and automation of lifts, so that the wild and natural part of the experience is effectively eliminated.  Assuring snow conditions with “snow making” equipment is the ultimate denial of the natural experience!   Faced with the reality of how they have deteriorated the environment by their activities,  skiers rich enough now use helicopters to take them to more isolated places,  gradually extending the exploitation of the natural world for their own personal thrills.  I am not attacking skiing as an activity and I enjoyed it very much at one time in my life.   But skiing is the most clear example of how people start out enjoying some outdoor activity in a relatively natural place and transform it into a commercial activity that obliterates the natural element.  Skiers complain about the crowds and lift lines,  and poor conditions due to weather and never stop to realize that it is they who have compromised the experience for themselves!
    The National Park Service sits squarely in the center of this dilemma.  The parks create a boundary around and protect areas of natural beauty and important national historical importance.  The parks are the residual of what was, quite recently,  a wild expansive natural environment in which humans struggled daily to survive.  They are maintained by our taxes,  and we as the landholders are entitled to visit them.   Yet at the same time,  if enough of us visit and stay,  the places will be transformed and no longer provide the experience of that natural world!   This is most clear in the South Rim of the Grand Canyon where millions of visitors ride up for the day,  look out,  create parking problems and crowding and then go off leaving their trash etc behind.  The contrast to the less accessible North Rim is instructive,  because the two sides of the Canyon feel so utterly different,  one almost a theme park in places,  while the other retains most of its natural beauty.   The park service must find a way to restrict the use of these special places which maximizes their access to the public,  while minimizing the impact on these treasures.   This is not an easy task!  
    Two obvious principles come to mind:
1) The parks should accommodate the maximum number of visitors possible while arranging the visits to minimize the impact on the natural features of the parks.   This involves structuring lodging,  roads, trail access,  and key vantage points so they are not overwhelmed.  The differences between the north and south rims provide examples of both!
2) The parks should not encourage or permit any activities that exploit the parks for personal aggrandizement.  Base jumping off the cliffs seems an obvious example.   But more subtle are questions about rock climbing.  There is a long history of rock climbing the sheer walls of Yosemite.  Learning to climb the cliffs to appreciate the experience of these challenging walls IS a valid experience that Yosemite provides to those who will invest the time.  But it also creates a culture of personal aggrandizement of some climbers.   This has led to “free climbing”,  i.e. climbing ascents without protective gear.   Such ascents go beyond ordinary challenges of rock climbing, to prove the expertise of the individual climbers.   Why is this a function of the park?  Shouldn’t all users of the parks concentrate on experiencing and appreciating their beauty?  Shouldn't every visitor have the opportunity to enjoy the available natural challenges of the place?  Is proving how much risk you can take with your skill and athleticism is NOT about exploring the park,  but about exploring yourself,  and this can be achieved at less precious sites in other parts of the country.  Similarly for base jumping,  for acrobatic skiing,  etc.  There should be places for people who want to test their special skills and athleticism,  but not in the National Parks.

Is Wisconsin the future of US labor?

The situation in Wisconsin  A major confrontation between the governor and labor leaders in the state has generally gone the governor’s way,  as the legislature has passed several bills limiting the influence and power of organized labor.  How is this possible and does this reflect a growing national trend?  A subheading gives the following view:
‘It is only a question of who makes the money — the workers or the owners.’
But it is not that simple.  The companies are competing in a world market where workers make much less than in the US,  and in which outsourcing and offshoring production is increasingly important in the design of corporate functions. 
    The balance of workers and managers must be seen in the broader context of the changing nature of corporations,  and the changing values of management.   When managers actually managed the direct production of workers there was a mutual interdependence which still exists in some areas like the auto industry.   Here the production of a complex product with requirements for consumer reliability demands effective worker performance and managers must find a way to ensure worker performance,  including managing the complex robotic devices that assist the workers.   But in most industries,  the production responsibilities are outsourced and the managers are only responsible for seeing that the outsourced work is completed according to spec.   With a world full of potential employees,  foreign labor production companies are highly motivated to fulfill contracts effectively, (though in reality they don’t,  and product reliability usually suffers).  The consumer opts for the lowest price and then gets frustrated when the product is partially defective and has few options for remediation. 
    It is not so much an issue of upper management taking money from workers,  but  eliminating the direct role of workers in the company entirely!   And this has spread to accounting,  lawyers,  designers,  almost every facet of production but finance and marketing.  Nike pioneered the model in which companies are effectively shells in which the managers coordinate a series of complex outsourced functions,  pushing control of production costs,  while designing marketing strategies to increase “brand enhancement” and therefore commanding higher prices for cheaper goods!   From the corporate viewpoint this is a logical strategy and to the extent that marketing can convince consumers to buy products of marginal quality the company is successful.  The irony of the black market in “knock off” designer labeled products exactly captures the situation:  why should the consumer prefer the expensive “real brand” product to the “knock off” with false logo,  when there is little difference in the actual product (and may be secretly produced by the same offshore company!).  Workers and the quality of production have little role in such a business environment and therefore little leverage to command better share of the profits.  
    In the recent surge in unemployment,  a trend has accelerated that had already begun:  the solo worker with special skills who is contracted on a project basis for various technically skilled tasks.   This is called the “Hollywood model” in recognition of how films have been independently contracted since the collapse of the studio system in the 50s.   Networking,  personal skills,  reliability,  and ability to work well in groups with others all contribute to the value of such employees.   Lawyers and engineers have long experienced this sort of employment pattern and it has spread widely through the economy.   This pattern of employment is more efficient of the use of time of skilled workers,  and puts them on more personal demand to manage their finances and security independently.  The role of the large corporation as a lifetime job and basis for retirement is rapidly disappearing for all but a tiny group who reach the highest levels of the organization.  (In the discussions about pay differentials of senior executives,  little is said about the differential from middle managers,  but this is expanding also, and the pyramid to a secure upper level position has become steeper over time as well.)
    Seen in this context,  Walker is less of a creator of change, but rather someone who capitalized, for his own political agenda,  changes already underway.   It therefore seems likely that similar losses in the power of organized labor throughout the country will occur over the next administration,  whoever it is.   Behind the scenes,   a process of self career marketing,  and aggregating financial services for self employed persons are the  tends most likely to be new directions in labor.   And there will be a strong emphasis on entrepreneurial skills.   All these changes have been underway for some time.  
    What is not so clear is how these changes impact on the career development process of the individuals.   With less need for “middle managers” how do the future “producers = major executives” get trained?   What education prepares people to be independent entrepreneurial agents,   and do current universities with their giant enrollments and impersonal education foster these skills?   To be continued…

The future of globalization

Eduardo Porter(NYT 3/19/14) reviews the issues of globalization.  Viewed from the aggregate world perspective,  millions of poverty victims have risen to survival status in other countries by becoming marginal workers.   While millions of middle class workers in the developed countries have been driven down to lower class or poverty by the collapse of the value of their labor in comparable industries.  This is not hypothetical but data.   At the same time,   the capital wealth has become more concentrated in a fewer number throughout the world.  This should not surprise anyone since in a capitalist economy it is the control of capital that determines how things happen or develop.   This change was happening slowly after the 60s but accelerated rapidly in the Clinton-Rubin era when Democrats surprisingly aligned themselves with Wall St. (Wall St.  is the center for capital manipulation and management and is utterly agnostic about how it is used as long as the returns are good and secure!)   Clinton masked the acceleration of the labor market collapse by the “internet bubble”.  And after 911 challenged the role of American financial markets,  Bush/Greenspan masked the effects again with a “housing bubble” fueled by artificially low government interest rates.   The fiery intensity of this bubble and how expertly it was fueled by Wall St made it shorter and more desperate, and more global than probably any other bubble in history,  and also more focused on the developed countries and the middle class.   Ironically,  what was supposed to protect the middle class eroded its financial position even more rapidly.
    What is the prospect for the future of workers in the US?   It is important to recognize that local solutions may not generalize to the whole economy.   England experienced much of this economic collapse at the contraction of the “empire” after WW2 and attempted to become the “financial center” of expertise for Europe.   This has not protected the English economy from severe collapse,  as it is not possible to pay enough people working in the financial sector to support even a small country like Britain.  This is more true in the US economy despite the heyday in the 90’s when the financial industry was a major sector of the economy's growth (and again in the early oughts).  
    Tech and the internet cannot provide this broad economic support because tech hires too few workers,  who are too leveraged in their production impact,  and at least at present the industry depends for revenue almost entirely on marketing and advertising returns,  and is thus a generalization of the media sector and consumer sectors.   There is a potential for the tech-internet sector to provide new business creation solutions over time,  but these will not involve large work forces,  and as in the cellphone,  the hardware component quickly becomes of marginal value as competition sets in.   Tech companies,  like Apple,  follow a model originally developed by Nike,  in which the design and marketing expertise are maintained by the core company,  while production is outsourced to minimize the low return on material production compared to intellectual production.   It would seem that intellectual production is the new key to wealth,  but here the digital world provides an odd reversal:  digital media erode the ability to sustain unique intellectual products and the value of marketing intellectual property is undermined,  and pirated. 
    Viewed globally, the world economy is evolving toward a pattern in which there is relatively sustainable food,  shelter,  and clothing at just above a subsistence level for the majority of folks.  Agriculture, manufacturing,  and marketing-transportation are primary industries,  but of marginal value to the participants and only of value to a small handful of stakeholders.  (And the ownership through joint stock holding is becoming less and less reliable and more manipulated by large capital aggregates called “hedge funds”.)    Above this world wide layer of persons living on the edge of poverty and up toward marginal subsistence.  There is a thin layer of middle class service persons with additional skills that allow them a slight advantage over the lowest class,  but who are not in control of their work,  but part of large corporate aggregates with no job security or stability.  With the outsourcing of technical and medical skills,  these jobs now include lawyers,  doctors,  engineers etc.   While still middle class they are marginally so.   And they do not have the control over their economic stability originally viewed as characteristic of this class.    Rising from this group is a class of corporate players:  persons who work up through levels of corporate authority so that their compensation distantly reflects the returns of heads of corporations.   Such persons appear wealthy even by current standards,  but this is an illusion:   they have sacrificed many years at lower paying returns and will have only a few high paying years before they are replaced by the next wave.  Only a tiny few will retain their role as corporate leaders and earners for a sustained period.   This “corporate ladder” group earns above the minimal middle class level but the life style demands of their jobs and lives make them less wealthy than their income suggests,  especially as they often live in cities with high costs of living.
    There is only one class remaining who are potentially truly wealthy:  these are capital entrepreneurs:  those persons who risk their own money and time to build successful enterprises by planning and luck and get dramatic returns on their capital.  As is fitting in a capital economy,  their risk of capital is the controlling variable,  and the potential for failure is statistically high.  This is in essence,  a “lottery economy”  and all intelligent entrepreneurs attempt, as J P Morgan did,  to get as much control over the risk as possible by eliminating competition and other oligarchic or outright monopolistic practices.  The same instincts can be observed in modern tech companies with only minor interference by regulators.
    This draws a fundamentally undemocratic picture of society.   The control of vast low return workers by a small cadre of successful capitalists is the recipe for “banana republics” or “plantation economies” in the agricultural sphere.   The evidence that these financial entities are attempting to control democratic governments and influence their direction to favor this process is obvious in every detail of modern governmental policy in the developed countries,  especially the US,  and is relatively true in the developing ones.   Everyone is willing to give up most everything else for the hope of becoming rich.  Globalization did not cause this shift but it accelerated it.   (And one wonders how much of the Arab world’s turmoil is due to the frustration of their citizens who had not been able to participate in this transformation to the same extent.)
    What will the future look like from here?   There will be a vast subsistence consumer economy,  in which consumer goods become cheaper and cheaper until they are just barely more than trash.  We can see this evolution in the computer and the cell phone,  as well as many other basic products.   We can see this evolution in the development of “manufactured food” which has less and less complex nutritional value but is adequate for sustenance and cheap to produce,  and tasty enough to be consumable.  This mass public is entertained by an array of electronic information which fills in the non-working hours and is successful in diverting and managing urges for more complex life experiences.   This group of workers produce sufficient low cost consumer goods to sustain the world,  and a small amount of more expensive “middle class” and “wealthy” goods for the rest.   It is a world in which children are indoctrinated early to become mindless consumers, and as people age they provide economic energy to the “healthcare industry” until they perish at suitable points for recycling.  Basic satisfaction is encouraged to avoid rebellion or reaction to the status quo.  There is marginal opportunity for rising through the system to ensure that subsequent generations sustain the process.   The birth rate falls to sustain a stable population,  and education becomes privatized and is highly geared to integrate citizens to their “place” in society and discourage independent thinking.  It is,  in short,  a world very close to the current one.   Events like severe unemployment and housing finance manipulation must be controlled to minimize social unrest,  and these are the tasks of “hired” “political servants” (not “public servants”).    The analysis of Porter,  and his sources is essentially correct about the changes occurring in the world,  but they do not go far enough in seeing the long term changes in the social order that such a transformation predicts.
    This vision of the future is not inevitable.  No prediction of the future is.   If some other factor is identified as the key source of value:  the individual,  the capacity for self determination,  etc,  then the role of capital as the controlling factor in society can be regulated.   But if capital and its direction of economy and production is the determining control of the society,  and if it is allowed to control the development of civilization, then this looks like a pretty good prediction.

An evolutionary view of morality and religion

I prepared this summary for a discussing group in the next month.  Thought it might be interesting to others as well.  In the previous blog I mused about the incompatibilities between contemplation and structured morality.  Here I see a different relationship.

The fundamental guiding principle of life is evolution.  Whether it is thought of as the survival of the individual as Darwin proposed or the survival of the species,  as some more modern theorists propose,  this is the fundamental principle:  life operates to continue life.

 In animals,  evolutionary processes operate directly on neural pathways that control behavior patterns.   These patterns are termed "instincts" or "instinctual behaviors"  And this is a prime focus of evolutionary process for influencing survival in ambulatory creatures (in addition to other areas of operation). 

In higher animals,  these instincts can be modified to some extent through learning.
In the course of evolution,  the human brain has expanded the cortical regions and learning process to such an extent that the inhibitory controls of cortex effectively nullify instinctual control of most of human behavior.  ( I know there are a number of pop culture writers who point to violence and war as signs that humans are still instinctual,  and I would be happy to refute those views.)  Therefore:  evolutionary processes can no longer act directly on instinctual behavior patterns to ensure human survival!

Humans must therefore perceptually discern which human patterns of action are more likely to result in survival for the individual or the group. 

The state of open immediate awareness and contemplation which is often called a "spiritual state" or "spirituality" is none other than the state in which the human organism attempts to discern the path of best survival free of preconditioning.  (It must be free of preconditioning to some extent because the path of survival is always changing!) 

All persons have this ability,  but from time to time specific humans arise who are observed by their peers to be especially skilled or gifted in this perception.  Sometimes they arise in periods of crisis,  other times not.  They are hailed as "religious leaders"  or "prophets"  and their observations are observed,  recorded,  and transmitted in their society for guidance.

This wisdom becomes codified into morality by organized followers who create a  "religion" and observed by the followers of this prophet until such time as the wisdom is less applicable and a new prophet arises to challenge old views and develop a new spiritual path to survival.

Morality is the codified current version of the accepted spiritual path of a given human group.

Morality is attached to religion by virtue of how it is created,  and by how a group of followers form who embody the guidance.

Can there be a "scientific morality"?  ie can there be a path for survival which is determined by scientific analysis of previous life situations?   No.  Recall the warning in all Mutual fund promotions:  "previous results are no guarantee of future performance".   Since evolution is statistical,  it is impossible to scientifically guarantee that a certain path is the best for evolutionary survival.  But that does not stop people from doing research. 

Two contradictory beliefs, sitting by the ocean.

This is the time of year for change,  the Fall,  and in the Jewish tradition,  a new year begins at this time.   Over the years it has been a time of introspection for me.   A time for reviewing the past year and planning for the next.   It is no accident that this coincides with the traditional school year, after the Summer break, the return to school in the Fall.   Over the past few years,  I  have turned more and more to Nature to understand my spiritual side.  This year I walked down a path to a cove on the ocean and sat for a while just watching the sea and reading from a book by Krishnamurti.  It was cool in the morning,  the trail was virtually empty and the ocean calm.  There was a spearfisherman in the water, and a pair of paddle boarders,  and some birds.  

Krishnamurti was born in India, and identified as a child as a great spiritual leader for the Theosophical society.  He disavowed this role and led a life of a non-affiliated speaker and teacher throughout the world,  eventually settling in the Ojai valley.  I find his view of meditative spirituality particularly clear and unencumbered by any historical tradition.  (TO BE HUMAN).   All mind is present.  All thought is conditioned.   You must experience the world without conditioned responses to be free.   His view is very clear and his way of "pointing" effective.  

 Sitting by the ocean,  I try to understand how his view squares with the Middle Eastern religions that are the foundation of most modern religions:  the 10 commandments, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." etc.   How to reconcile this meditative tradition which seems to reject the importance of moral judgements and "historical" injunctions?   These religions include confessions of "sins" and an intensive focus on what one has done wrong and right in the past year.  For the most part,  this is mostly a confession of sins of self assertion against the values of the group!   The 10 commandments are almost entirely about honoring group values over the individual.  (It is interesting that incest is not one of the commandments,  nor anything to do with sexual misconduct but adultery.)  What does this tell us? Meditative spirituality seems to lack of a perspective on the balance of individual and group!

In Michener's HAWAII,  there is a passage about the formation of the leper colony on Kalaupapa, Molokai and how, in the initial phase, the colony reverted to a primitive "rule of the strongest" society,  but then the rest organized together and eventually created a more civil system,  managed by rules and order.   This is a microcosm of a recurrent human process.   We are a group centered "pack" species and live and hunt in "packs" or tribes.   It is our primary survival adaptation in lieu of claws,  talons,  etc.   Banishment from the tribe is the greatest punishment because it threatens survival and also the loss of the sense of interpersonal support.   We must learn to form packs in which the demands of the individual do not destroy the cohesion of the group.  So every child grows up "socialized" to fit first its family,  and then the group culture within which the family resides.   Most rules of morality within religion are rules of group cohesion.  Whether these are ordered by the "great patriarchal father"  or "our ancestors"  or just common sense,  they become the boundaries of tribal cohesion.  (Even those rules which involve honoring the patriarchal god figure can be seen as relating to group authority.)  The individual's desire for self satisfaction is always struggling against these boundaries.  Every political movement,  every political controversy is always about finding the balance between these two poles in a given group, including the Liberal/Conservative debate in our current election.

All these rules of appropriate participation are "thoughts" in the Krishnamurti sense, interfering with a truly free sense of life.  They are part of past learning,  and represent a boundary on living in the present.   To be an accepted member of the group,  one must monitor ones situation and obey these parameters.   This knowledge is just as necessary as how to drive a car,  or how to avoid stepping on rattlesnakes.   They contribute to the fear of loneliness and isolation,  just as he describes,  and cannot be ignored as "just psychological" because they are based on real requirements:  to live with others,  to hold a job,  to maintain a marriage,  etc.

K does not say that thought or conditioning is unnecessary.  Rather that the mind must always be on guard: "Therefore the brain is actively watching itself every minute to see that thought and time do not enter the realm where they are not necessary."…"This is real discipline"…So there is a skill to be developed by which the mind learns to differentiate situations which require thought and conditioning from those which do not. 

Historically,  the contemplative religions dealt with this contradiction in principles by being monastic.   The followers left the boundaries of ordinary society to become devotees and then survive on charity,  minimal self production,  and a culture of isolation within the community.   This is NOT the basis for a long term stable value system.   So such traditions,  Buddhism for example,  eventually included a secondary system of value:  in Buddhism this becomes Boddhisaatva: "not withdrawing from the cycles of Samsara until every sentient being is enlightened"  ie,  being willing to work with others to promote the same culture and set of beliefs.  And also the 8 principles of the noble path, which include specific lifestyle expectations. 

Throughout human history,  when different value systems interact at a boundary, conflict usually occurs.  This is mostly to maintain group cohesion,  because the failure of others to follow your belief system threatens that your adherence is not crucial to survival in this world,  or the next.  It represents a challenge to and disconfirmation of your belief system.  Such confrontations can be very violent, bloody,  and ongoing as in the 30 years war between Protestants and Catholics in Europe from 1618-1648.   What makes our current global world so challenging is that the dissemination of global communications expands this edge of culture contact everywhere.  There is virtually no region of the globe that does not experience this challenge of conflicting value systems thanks to the internet!

There is "sin".  It is actions which alienate one from one's community.   And these are constantly changing and depend to a significant degree on the judgement of the group.  And there is also living unbounded by conditioning in the present moment.  And these two are not easy to reconcile.  There is "absolute sin" in the sense of actions by the group or its members that destroy the group or lower its likelihood of survival.   Within this group boundary,  the individual struggles to find "freedom" from the conditioning and demands of history and experience to live in the present moment.  

How lives became "lifestyles".

Once upon a time, people's life choices were mostly determined by the traditions of one's place in the world and family.  People learned their father's and mother's work or trade.   People lived in parents houses or one's like them.   Architecture was about protection from the elements and enemies but for a very few who could make their dwelling an expression of their own interests and world view.   When did Americans begin to live "lifestyles" instead of "lives"?   Historians will debate this after the debate over the difference.   Living seems pretty simple and direct: you wake up,  get ready,  go to whatever you do for the day,  etc.   What makes living a "lifestyle"?  Choices.   Each moment of the day is filled with personal choices.   What to wear,  how to live,  what to eat,  what work to do,  etc.   How are these choices determined? What was the start of the "lifestyle"?

    Perhaps the first indications of change were in clothing,  personal appearance, and haircut.   It is likely that traditions of personal appearance have been a method of personal expression for nobles and courtiers through history.   But it is certainly sometime in the early 20th century before this became an option for more everyday people.   How did everyday people learn to become "stylish"?   The answer is the movies and tabloids.   For the first time,  in the 20s, there was a visual unifying experience for a broad range of the population to measure its style against that of a "higher standard".   The movie industry was augmented by fan magazines with very high quality promotional photography,  and style consciousness could be transmitted to a much broader range of the population.   Women and men began to adopt styles which they saw being worn by their favorite actors,  and this led to intense stimulation of sectors of the clothing industry.   Its true that individuals are still making choices about their lives,  but now the choices reflect "quoted experience" of others, instead of idiosyncratic personal commitment.   (This can be observed in watching old newsreels:  the people in the crowd do not seem to have an awareness that they are subject to being observed.  They are oblivious.   While modern news "man on the street" individually or in a crowd has carefully crafted a "look" for external review.  Indeed, the absence is often taken as a sign of mental illness.)

    WWII seemed to reverse much of this.   There is not much choice in a military uniform,  and those left behind appear to have been too busy and too constrained to innovate new styles.   But soon after the end of the war,  the process restarted with renewed intensity.   But now a new phenomenon also emerged.   Differences in personal and ethnic style,  which had been minimized and ignored in the "melting pot" process of the late 19th century,  suddenly re-emerged.   There were African American styles,  Chicano styles,  including the famous Zoot-suiters,  and there was also a return of a film inspired sense of "glamour".  

    The transition to recreation came next.   For most of our history,  people did what was available to do around them:  if they lived by the water,  they did things related to water,  if they lived in the mountains,  they did mountain things,  and etc.   Now stories,  films,  and other promotions made some of these activities:  skiing,  surfing,  backpacking, deep sea fishing, etc,  seem to be especially appealing,  and people began to envision themselves engaging in activities not very proximal to the location of home.   This came to the rich and upper middle class first,  because they could more easily afford the travel costs,  but eventually the craze to try these activities spread across the society.   People were deciding to make such activities the primary interest of their lives,  and their material support of secondary importance.  The ski-patrol (or ski-bum) lifestyle became the archetype for this change.   Yes,  men had always gone fishing or played golf (not quite always),  and women had sewed or knitted or quilted together,  but these were usually part of personal family and local traditions.  Now they became part of a country wide zeitgeist.   You could decide to become a skier.  Get "into" the lifestyle,  then move to a skiing region and make it the focus of your life.   Or even continue to live in the flatlands and take all your vacations skiing,  or even own a second apartment in a ski area to vacation.   All these could be valid personal choices,  but they invariably became associated with certain constraints of style:   there were the proper outfits to wear,  the proper places to go to vacation (within one's economic level),  the proper talk about what you were doing.   You became part of a community of interest,  a lifestyle.   And the structure of this lifestyle was driven by marketers and developers,  just as promotional experts had driven interest in style and clothing.  Why do all contemporary skiers (or recreation bike riders)  look similar?  Because marketers have convinced them that certain clothing,  equipment,  and locations are essential to be included in the selected lifestyle.  The magazines, movies,  and TV shows all contributed to marketing this way of living.

    To the person,  it appears that the individual is still selecting  his or her life choices,  but in aggregate it is clear that the range of choices have been significantly reduced in order to compel participation in the "lifestyle"  for mostly economic,  and social identity reasons.   In the process,  much of the original charm of the lifestyle is lost!   Surfers now fight over who is entitled to surf a given territory,  in contrast to the formerly "laid back" surfer image.   Skiing was once a way to "get away from civilization" into the mountains,  but is now so crowded with condos,  cars,  and choked lift lines that there is little difference from urban experience in major ski areas.   And the restaurant chains,  stores,  etc,  remind us immediately that skiing is about economic choices as much as about ski trails.

    The ultimate transformation of life to lifestyle is in housing.   For much of history,  the cost of housing was such a significant component of one's income that the driving forces were convenience and affordability,  along with adequate space for one's family.   Housing took the form dictated by the structure of the land on which it sat.  In Manhattan the limited space gave rise to dense vertical housing with incomprehensibly small spaces,   in order to have proximity to features of the city.   Outside of dense cities,  suburban development permitted larger lots,  bigger homes,  and the evolution of one and two story house plans.  Somewhere in the evolution of housing,  the transition from 2nd homes around resort areas,  to living around a resort as a primary residence emerged as a possibility.   The rich had always had multiple homes in different locations,  to exploit the opportunities of different activities.   Middle class people desired this option but could not afford multiple homes.   The first solution was condos and time shares at resort locations:  a smaller size of ownership,  perhaps rented part of the time,  or a smaller unit of time ownership would allow less wealthy people to feel like they had multiple homes,  but without the greater cost.  Now you could LIVE your ski resort lifestyle,  or coastal beach lifestyle,  or golf resort lifestyle,  if only for two weeks a year.  It was really just a vacation,  but developers were selling it as "your life" at the beach.  It was "your home", and your chance to enjoy this special place (if only for a week a year).  

    Of course,  each individual is choosing how to live his (her?) life,  but now the choice of clothing,  equipment,  activities,  and even shelter are all structured around ways to sell the individual on these activities,  as a package,  a "lifestyle".   And there could be a package for every economic level,  each person could envision the fantasy of how they were living the "golf resort"  or "ski resort" or "beach resort" life.  Meanwhile, of course,  these packaged lives were looking less and less like the idealized worlds their choosers had envisioned and more and more like prepackaged dreams manufactured by marketers and developers.   Where is the line between choosing to live your life,  and being structured to live your lifestyle within the defined parameters of a developers package?  And does anyone care?   As long as I get to go skiing  (golfing, beaching,  etc) (with everyone else) what does it matter how I chose it?

Charles Bronson (November 3, 1921 – August 30, 2003)

Where is Chas. Bronson when we need him?   The death of this actor years ago was a big story at the time.  In his peak years he created a screen persona which endeared him to many Americans.  This was the ordinary guy who is unfairly treated by the “higher ups” or the “bad guys” or the “evil terrorists” and virtually single handedly, he reverses the tide, comes out victorious, and saves the rest of us as well. 

We can think of other actors, like Clint Eastwood or Sylvester Stallone, who portray a similar screen persona.  But Bronson was unique in his ability to do this with an apparent absence of personal narcissism.  He was everyman, just the average guy, who confronts the evil of the world and triumphs, but without any fanfare or  attitude. (Compare the ridiculous persona of the James Bond character.)   The mythical American Hero is often seen as the lone avenger of the injustices of the world, but probably never so succinctly as Bronson managed it.  Whether it was violent criminals in the street or sleeper agents suddenly brought to life to cause WWIII,  he took care of the problem.

His characters helped overcome the fantasy fears of the average man, but also set a dangerous precedent.  Here finally was someone who “really could” terminate all the bad guys.  Here is the mental model for those in the current and previous administrations who visualized our most specialized forces as capable of charging into the heart of danger, and decisively vanquishing the foe.

The incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan, like all wars, give the lie to hero fantasies and the "lone ranger complex".  No matter how brave,  or well trained or equipped a cadre of warriors, the enemy when overwhelmed does not stand and fight but withdraws to find circumstances more favorable to him for the confrontation.  And no modern country has the human resources (except China ?) to commit a significant portion of its young adult population into the task of conquering and subduing another country.  It is not clear that any country ever survived this delusion.  Certainly Greece did not tolerate the expeditions of Alexander without deteriorating, nor Rome, Caesar, nor France, Napoleon.  The lesson of history is that any nation that tries to dominate others through the expression of dominant military force is endangering its fundamental resources.  

Bronson could single-handedly take on all comers,  because he was in a movie.  Americans in the battlefields of Asia are dealing with reality.   When the world's nations come together to vanquish a common enemy,  it so far has succeeded.   When a single nation proposes to overpower another,  most often it squanders its resources,  while the opponent awaits its moment of diminishing returns.

How many times must US leaders learn this basic lesson?