In contrast to this, we have the American public’s response to this disaster, which seems to focus almost entirely on one company, and in many cases, one man, the lost, lonely, and nearly utterly destroyed Tony Hayward, the wayward CEO of British Petroleum.

Of course, the massive angry response is not unreasonable. We want answers for this disaster, and we want someone to hold accountable for destroying the future viability of a safe ecosystem in the American Gulf. In our eyes, someone must answer to this situation, and who better than a CEO of the company who was drilling in the Gulf to begin with? Especially if he is obviously unable to handle this situation with grace and professional veneer, it makes him an even easier target. Every misstep he makes, even things that may not truly be missteps, the public is biting at his heels, perfectly content to psychologically hang him from the gallows.

Recently, he made the error of making the statement “There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. You know, I’d like my life back,” to which there was a public uproar. How could someone who is barely affected by this disaster be demanding his life back when he is responsible for destroying the livelihood of thousands?

It is curious to me that we would lash out so violently and angrily over such a statement, mainly because it is truly a very human statement. We are all inherently selfish and self-serving, so who wouldn’t want their life to return to normalcy when suddenly saddled with such a disaster under their control?

Of course, “control” is actually core issue at hand here. How much “control” does a man like Hayward really have?

In this instance, I would turn to Milton Friedman’s stipulations on the four ways money is spent in a capitalist society.

The first and most common way in the private sector is people spending their own money on themselves. In this case, the buyer is interested in both quality (the best product or service that he can afford) and value (getting it at the best price) because he is both the producer of the wealth being spent and the consumer of the good or service being procured.

The second way is when people spend their own money on others (such as gifts). Here they are still concerned about value (it’s their money), but less concerned about service quality as they are not the consumer.

The third way is spending other people’s money on yourself. Think of the rich man’s girlfriend who buys herself the nicest dresses in the store on his credit card without even looking at the tag. She wants quality, but value is irrelevant since she sacrifices nothing.

The fourth way is when people spend other people’s money on other people. In this case, the buyer has no rational interest in either value or quality. Government always and necessarily spends money in this fourth way. This guarantees inefficient public spending because the spenders have no vested interest in efficiently allocating those funds.

I believe this fourth way of spending money is directly relative to the way capital is spent within large corporations. In most cases in a large corporation, you are spending other peoples money on a project that doesn’t directly affect you. Many of the people employed by British Petroleum live nowhere near the area directly affected by this disaster. In fact, the likelihood that many of the people that work for BP are actually sub-contracted out by different companies is very high. Considering the oil rig in question was actually owned by Transocean, and the company that was cementing and sealing the wellhead right before the explosion was Halliburton, it raises the question of how much corporate bureaucracy produces inefficient capitalist spending because of a lack of vested interest in the individuals making the decisions.

Let us consider, ignoring companies outside of BP, the fact that BP alone employs 115,000 people. That is no small change. These people are daily working together all across the world, making arbitrary decisions with the sole intent of making the most profit for the company. It is unrealistic to assume Tony Hayward has direct and authoritative control over every single decision that is made by the company at large. In fact, it stands to reason that many of the decisions are largely ill-considered responses to how other departments of the business conduct their business, and how it affects other departments, thus creating a sort of endless-feedback-loop of bad decisions based on previous bad decisions, with no progress being made because no one department is fully willing to cow-tow to another department and change the way they run their personal business. This kind of situation alone is a prime environment to create accidents, mis-communications, and in general negative corporate behavior. Combine that with a deeply ingrained corporate bureaucracy in all of the companies involved in this disaster, and how they all do business in their own way, and their employees are likely to come in conflict with one another on many occasions when trying to work around these differences, and you have to be surprised that this kind of disaster isn’t more common.

Now, none of this is to say that blame shouldn’t be laid, and that we don’t need complete accountability for this disaster, but we have to consider the words of Castro. What we are presented with is the question of, is there even any way to viably censure the corporations involved? I have noticed many people have jumped on a bandwagon of the idea of the American Federal Government taking over BP operations (much like they did with some banks recently during the American fiscal crisis of late 2008). This, of course, is a ridiculous idea in reality when you consider the simple fact that BP is a British company, and is completely run out of the UK (of course, you would think the name “British Petroleum” might clue some Americans into this whole concept, but nobody said the public was exactly brilliant.).

How does one censure international capitalism? Isn’t the core issue here that Castro is indeed correct, that this is not simply a problem with an individual company named British Petroleum, but it is quite indicative how modern global capitalism functions, and that these corporations that do indeed dictate the public’s future are simply unaccountable due to their size, reach, and our near complete dependency on them.

Some would suggest a boycott, but how does that work in global capitalism? Massive industry isn’t just supported by the consumer, it is also supported by the global capitalist network of massive industries relying on each other. Even if every American consumer stopped buying BP products, corporate America likely would continue to buy their products, and as they have much more capital than the consumer/citizen, they have much more sway in keeping BP afloat than any smattering of people who think they can simply boycott their way out of a situation anymore.

Beyond this, but considering the serious employment crisis all over the world, there are people who will be more than desperate enough to continue working for companies like BP. If you need a job to feed your family and stay afloat and not become homeless and desperate, you will make a choice to work in a morally dubious position to accomplish what you need to do to take care of family. It is no different than stealing to survive, a morally bankrupt choice in a position of complete desperation.

So, where do we stand? Is there any way to react to and censure corporations like BP, who are not just destroying the environment and countless livelihoods that depend on it right now, but also the livelihoods of future generations who will not be able to rely on our planets natural ecosystem for survival as it will be nearly completely destroyed?

The solution certainly isn’t to blame it all on Tony Hayward. The solution certainly isn’t to assume that it is only a problem with one corporation, and that things will get better if BP disappears. The beginning of a solution is to accept that the problem is with global capitalism itself, and that unless there is a massive sea change, we can expect our future to be drenched in oil and marred with chemical burn.

Now, don’t mistake me. The show in question is utter fucking trash. V, as the title simply stands, is a science fiction drama about an alien race that comes to Earth purportedly in peace but in reality has dire intentions for mankind.

It has been talked about nigh-everywhere online at this point about the absolutely obvious parallels between the “evil aliens” and the presidency of Barack Obama. The aliens call spreading their message “spreading hope and change” calling upon the most recognized words of Obama’s campaign. By the end of the episode, the aliens have revealed they have advanced medical technology, and they plan to install “healing centers” in every city in the world, for free. Essentially, they want to offer Universal Healthcare. A group of conspiracy theorists who are “in the know” about the aliens, reveal that they plan to use this plan for healing everyone to take over the world.

I am dead serious. If this show doesn’t come off as some neo-con’s wet dream, I don’t know what does.

Now, leaving politics aside in relation to this show (which is difficult, considering television media’s response to Bush’s policies was to create 24, a show about how tearing the Constitution and Geneva Conventions to shreds was the best possible thing in the world.), I want to focus on the subject of conspiracy theorists and their role in non-linear history.

One of the biggest points we have to make about history’s essential non-linearity is that the future is completely unpredictable. This seems like a very basic idea, but it also often seems lost on many who would essentially agree.

“The future is unpredictable.”
“Yes, that is true.”
“However, you are absolutely sure that within 10 months the Bilderberg group is going to use financial powerhouses such as Goldman Sach’s to overthrow our government and institute a New World Order.”
“Well yeah! Don’t you see the writing on the wall etc etc etc…”

Why, especially in Western society, do we often perceive history as this ultimate endpoint that is being worked towards. That some event or cataclysm will be the solution and things will be okay and we won’t have to worry about the future anymore.

Where does this, shall we say, perseverance for the future come from? In political campaigns like Obama’s we see it. Selling the idea of working together for a “brighter future.” To what end? How does staying ahead technologically secure the future? Does the future of the planet change because we are the most powerful nation?

The answer is, of course: No.

So, where does conspiracy theory fit into all of this?

Well, I find conspiracy theorists very interesting because they are almost like self-negating prophecies. The fact that a conspiracy theory exists is a testament to individual thought. Billions of people all with individual thought will not be easily subjugated by an extremely small group of people. So, through conspiracy theory, we have a group of people who are convinced there are plots by shadowy forces to take over the world. However, by simply expressing such a theory, they are showing that such plots will have little luck in the real world because people already suspect such a thing from the outset and will have nothing to do with it. If such tactics were attempted to be used, such massive amounts of rioting would occur as to destabilize most of the civilized world. Prophecy negated.

This isn’t to say I don’t think there are people who are playing with power. As we know from Nietzsche and Foucault, power relations are some of the most basic tenets of human social interaction. On some level, we all seek to exert power over one another, in whatever capacity we have the ability to.

So, there are definitely groups who want to abuse their status and power.

The funny thing is, you can’t really call most of them conspiracies.

Consider Dick Cheney. Straight up evil motherfucker. He was heavily involved with PNAC (Project for the New American Century), which had no problem stating that they believed the best course of action in the modern world was for America to start World War 3 and take over the rest of the civilized world in one fell swoop.

Consider a recent memo from Citi that leaked online. In it, Citi theorists discussed how soon there is going to be much more plutocracy in the world. The world is quickly moving towards more plutocracy than ever, they described, and went on to describe how to survive financially in a heavily plutocratic world. They clearly defined practices to profit from plutocracy.

Consider something much older: from the bowels of the McCarthy hearings of the 1950’s, during investigations of the likes of the Ford Institute and the Carnegie Foundation, we learn that as early as 1910, such private educational institutions planned to move the country towards more socialism sympathetic policies by influencing the education system.

This isn’t conspiracy theory because we are being told exactly what they plan to do. How is that conspiracy? That is just plain being honest. The people involved also think its in the best interests of the people they hold interest in, so they think its not inherently evil.

Not only that, but in reference to the socialist ideals of groups like the Carnegie Foundation, when a new head of the foundation is chosen, most of the original ideology of such a foundation can (and definitely was) lost. Much of what was found in reference to their socialist agenda was minutes of meetings from 40 years before the investigative trial. Most of the staff of the foundations at that time were young, eager, and had no knowledge of such plans. As such, they let congressional investigators search the minutes of early foundation meetings without worry, because they had no idea whether or not such things existed in the minutes themselves.

Ah, 1910, a great year for socialism in America.

2009, and evil aliens are offering socialized medicine.

Somehow, I don’t think the “conspiracy” really panned out.

So not only do we have “conspiracies” with the inability to come to fruition over time (and an example of one that has proven that the exact opposite of what was planned has occurred), we also have the fact that these activities are far from conspiratorial because they are simply not hidden.

The super villains behind such machinations are much like a James Bond villain, divulging every juicy detail of their master plan to take over the world to our hero, Mr. Bond, right at the pinnacle of the film. Bond uses his savvy and know-how to destroy the plan.

However, in reality, the absolute menacing size of the population of the world makes it nearly impossible to pull off any such power grab, no heroes needed.

—

Quickly, back to Obama. I can almost see our villain now…

“Do you expect me to talk?”
“No Mr. Beck, I expect you to have socialized medicine pay for your Appendicitis treatment!”

“Beck. Glenn Beck. Martini, no salt. I salt it with my tears.”

A while back I watched the old animated version of Horton Hears a Who with Laurel. I remember being particularly moved by the story and Laurel even cried a little. The Whos’ struggle to be heard and Horton’s efforts to save them from a doom brought on by their obscurity really highlighted a myriad of social injustices. Homosexual civil rights, class warfare, healthcare tragedies, etc. are often ignored by the good while the evil people of the world tramp all over them. We should all strive to “hear a Who.”
Not long after watching it, though, I began to think that it could have been intended as an anti-abortion story especially with the oft-repeated line “A person is a person, no matter how small.” I began to wonder if one of the beloved Dr. Seuss classics was actually just a pro-life whining session. The book was written in 1954 but the “abortion debate” is a lot older than some of us realize.
No worries though, a little internet research cleared that shit right up. It seems that Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) was inspired by the mistreatment of Japanese-American citizens during WWII and the post WWII US occupation of Japan. He even dedicated the book to a Japanese friend of his. Given the original sentiments of the story I’m sure he intended to highlight the abuse and exploitation of all the world’s downtrodden minorities.
Of course, I wasn’t the only one to notice the apparent apt-ness of this story in relation to the abortion debate and pro-lifers everywhere have taken up the mantra “A person is a person, no matter how small.” to support their case. Even though I had settled the question of the original intention I still wondered how Seuss would react to this usage of his work. Alas, the internet has come to rescue once again. Philip Nel is a Seuss biographer and according to him Seuss threatened pro-life groups with a lawsuit for using his words on their stationery. Audrey Geisel, Seuss’ widow, even said that the good doctor did not approve of these groups using his words to support their point of view.

Well there, it’s ok with Dr. Seuss if you kill your fetus.

The relevant quote to our situation being:
“Being snobby about what music people like or what kind of bike they ride isn’t any better than caring about what jobs people have or where they went to college. What part of judging people by how much money they don’t make is morally superior to judging people by how much money they do?”

So, inherently our distaste for these fetish events stems from their shallow and deceptive representative form. While those involved are experiencing “fun” it is only an ideological form of the experience. It is a hierarchical structure that has more to do with status fetish than it has to do with experience feelings of joy or adulation in experiencing a work of art. They experience the “fun” because their ideological background allows them to believe that this is the right way to “have fun,” by building a false set of hierarchical relationships in which they can act more morally superior for having experienced that which others have not. “They do not know it, but they are doing it.”

My friend goes on:
“There are these old steel rings along the edge of the streets in Portland that people used to tie their horses to a long time ago. Then a couple kids a few years ago started tying little plastic toy horses to them and people started to talk about it and then when you saw one you were like “Oh hey there’s one of those horses, that is so cool that they do that.” I and was always like “Why is it so cool.” I mean it was kinda cute the first time I saw one, I guess but then other people started doing it and it just really angered me. I started carrying around a little bottle of lighter fluid and melting them.”

He is of course referencing the Portland Horse Project. We both of course agree that art can be an important force in the world, but we feel that while projects like this might be “cute” initially, their popularity is the result of a commodity fetishism for an inherently empty capitalist subject. What message is there in these horses tied to old steel rings? Are we to learn something about modern society in remembering it? No, apparently not. The deepest the Horse Project goes in defining the “why” to their art is the statement: “We’d like to make this project one of those quirky Portland things that people remember and talk about…”

While one can argue that art is only truly art when it has no functional utility, this does not mean that art in and of itself has to be meaningless. The meaninglessness of such artistic installations speaks of a grave helplessness in American artistic culture. A helplessness tied to the fetishization of the act. The act of creating a memetic theme such as tying toy horses to old horse ties will guarantee one a high place in the so-called “hipster” hierarchy. But the memetic theme does not speak to any problems nor does it care to solve any. In this way, while not being a bought and sold commodity, it has still been commodified and is now a fetish of the consumer. Obviously, the only way to reject this farce of an artistic outlet is the anarchy of flames or destruction. Smashing the veritable symbol of the empty capitalist artistic regime.

He goes further:
“One time somebody was talking about those god damned horses at the train station downtown and about how some of them are burned and melted and then claimed that he was the one doing it. Talking about how that was his form of expression and artistic remixing. I fucking screamed at him. That pissed me off so much. Not so much that he was taking credit for something I was doing but that he was making it into just another useless stupid art thing.”

And that quickly, the act of rejection has been recuperated, turned into its own “artistic expression.” An expression of what? How can this be considered artistic? At once it is a violent and political act, but so quickly it is torn asunder, turned once again into a meaningless commodity of fashion and fetish.

We will never know the names of the true heroes because they did not want their names to be known. They only wanted freedom. Freedom from this satirical elitist underground hierarchy of kitsch bands, hemp jewelry, and Ron Paul bumper stickers.

Authors Note: I am aware of “hipster” generally being a throw-away word, however it fits the purposes of generally describing people who are young, urban, and “hip.” It may evoke images of a particular subset that is totally unrelated to the whole group at large, but this most definitely is meant to represent a larger group of those who are young and urban. Here is a possibly relevant link.

in a way, this is a way for change.

the change that is an inevitable reaction to the failing of the international market created by the globalization of the last two decades may or may not be good for our ilk.

those who follow the these of illogical post operationalization.

perhaps, anyone who follows any ideals outside mainstream religion or politics.

the biggest question is: what kind era are we opening to?

—

this era is ending with rampant disillusionment. while it began with a few of us, who saw the crippling nature of our society long ago, ranting into the wind with no one paying attention, it is ending with us almost feeling smug and happy to finally watch it crumble.

we (in america especially) live in a society driven by entitlement and creature comfort. days after borrowing 85 billion from the Federal Reserve, AIG was found to be spending that money on golf retreats, facials, massages, and other things i will never have enough money to do in my entire life. while the stocks for companies like google, yahoo, and facebook were tanking, many of their respective members were too busy hanging out in a mansion on the Turkish coastline making drunk and stupid online videos to realize that all the people in their companies were going to be extremely fucking pissed when they got back into the good old u. s. of a.

—

so my question is this:

how do we direct the conversation of this change to focus on what labor is really worth. it seems that while many of these people made their fortunes with hard work, once the fortune was in their hands, they spent their days piddling around wasting money and expecting people who were being paid fuck-all to keep making money for them (surprisingly, Kevin Rose doesn’t spring to mind as he actually seems to still work on his website a good bit on a personal level.).

how do we really make people understand, that even with a great person running a company/corporation/what-have-you, who had great ideas and their ideas spurred this massive profit-producing behemoth; that these people, in their capacity to keep the company afloat, are only worth as much as those who work for them. would any one of these individuals be able to have built their financial empires completely on their own without ever having anyone elses help?

of course not.

in a way, it brings to mind Marx’s critical history of technology. it seems at this point, we need another Marx. what we need is simply a man, who can make us realize that none of us is inherently “better” than anyone else, nor are we inherently “worse.” we all have our strengths, our weaknesses, our successes, our failures, some are big, some are small, and some are things only we as individuals will ever know about but will treasure until our deaths.

—

as i pen this, drowsily, lazily, not even really sure what or why im writing, all i know is that things are changing, there is a shift.
i know that maybe its time for our ideas to truly come to fruition, but how to expound upon such ideas so they will be understood and digested amongst the regular populace?

regardless.

the shift is happening. whether it will result in a new society founded on reason or it will become our worst nightmare of a police state created by the rich and powerful and corrupt, we can only wait to find out.

we can only spend our time waiting lucratively. speaking out, being daring, crazy, and unpredictable. above all else, we must be able to question our own beliefs and change ourselves accordingly.

if we cannot do that, i fear the worst.

—

by the way,
i finished playing Arcanum.

“Desire causes the current to flow, itself flows in turn, and breaks the flows.” — Page 5, The Anti-Œdipus

Suppose instead that you had already made up your mind that the intellectual is an impostor, and you just wanted to demonstrate that he or she had nothing important to say. Would you quote a difficult passage out of context? Would you find a short, jargon-laden passage and then leave it up to the reader to make sense of it? Well you could, but that would be intellectually lazy and disingenuous.

That’s exactly what Richard Dawkins did in this ten year old review of Fashionable Nonsense, a book that supposedly “outed” French intellectuals for abusing scientific terminology. You can think of Dawkins’ review as a condensed version of the book. In it he focuses on Felix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan, Luce Irigary, and Jean Baudrillard.

Dawkins apparently takes issue with the Deleuze and Guattari, not for their ideas, because he’s hardly tried to understand them, but for their writing style. In a strange turn, he then decides to quote scientist Peter Medawar, because apparently his style is something to be emulated:

“This calls to mind Peter Medawar’s earlier characterization of a certain type of French intellectual style (note, in passing, the contrast offered by Medawar’s own elegant and clear prose): Style has become an object of first importance, and what a style it is! For me it has a prancing, high-stepping quality, full of self-importance; elevated indeed, but in the balletic manner, and stopping from time to time in studied attitudes, as if awaiting an outburst of applause. It has had a deplorable influence on the quality of modern thought… ”

That’s elegant and clear? Really? I’m going to have to respectfully disagree. But, that’s the thing about style. It’s like taste. Who cares what you like? It has little to do with intellectual rigor. As for the charge that the ideas of Deleuze and Guattari are meaningless unless they can be phrased in an easier to understand language, I would recommend reading Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy and A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History by Manuel DeLanda.

There you go. There’s your magic bullet, Mr. Dawkins. The same applies to Noam Chomsky (whom I just noticed is erroneously placed in the philosophy section of Wikipedia). Chomsky says here that, “The proponents of ‘theory’ and ‘philosophy’ have a very easy task if they want to make their case. Simply make known to me what was and remains a ’secret’ to me: I’ll be happy to look.” How intellectually lazy can one be? Here, I’ll provide a link to the MIT Library, just for you.

Slavoj Zizek makes a strong case against the over-celebration of Chomsky’s political writings and rejection of theory and philosophy,

Chomsky and people like him seem to think that if we just got the facts out there, things would almost take care of themselves. Why is this wrong? Why aren’t “the facts” enough?

Let me give you a very naive answer. I think that basically the facts are already known. This is what I’ve referred to as “postmodern cynicism.” Let’s take Chomsky’s analyses of how the CIA intervened in Nicaragua. Ok, a lot of details, yes, but did I learn anything fundamentally new? It’s exactly what I’d expected: the CIA was playing a very dirty game. Of course it’s more convincing if you learn the dirty details. But I don’t think that we really learned anything dramatically new there. I don’t think that merely “knowing the facts” can really change people’s perceptions.

But, let’s get back to Richard Dawkins. He makes a few good points in his review. I agree to a point that some “postmodern” writers are full of bull. But that’s no reason to lump them all together. The most audacious accusation that he makes against Deleuze and Guattari is that they abuse scientific concepts. I would argue that it is more accurate to say that they use scientific concepts speculatively, in new contexts, in the hope that they might later become useful. And we all know that a pure scientist like Dawkins would never do anything like that. Oh wait…

I almost forgot about memes.

Pre-dating this tumultuous period following 9/11, the Democrats had seemed like a group who actually had strategic plans against the Republicans. Post-9/11, however, things changed quickly and a lot of decisions were made without questioning the long-term outcomes of the ramifications of war in Afghanistan and later, Iraq.

The Democrats suddenly fully backed entering into these wars, fully privatizing them, surely with hopes of this being a profitable windfall for the American people. Not only would American companies be revitalized and producing weaponry, armor, and medicine for these new wars, but we would walk away with a huge stake in the dwindling world oil market.

When folks like myself sit and wonder how the government and many American companies would bankrupt the American people on such a whim, I catch myself wondering what it really must feel like to be in their shoes.

So, I must take Dunbar’s Number into consideration. If I am a rich mogul, or perhaps a US Senator, my outlook on the world is definitively shaped by the world I exist in. There are a finite number of human beings who are “real” to me. If I am in such a position of power, likely all those people who are important to me are also rich, powerful, and have stake in this war. Most of the people involved could stand to profit directly or indirectly, thus I would begin to think “Ah, if this war is profitable for me and everyone I know, then this war must be profitable for America and the world at large.” This is the underlying ideology that is unspoken but speaks greatly of our reliance on Reaganomics even today.

Business and government with only short-term profit goals and a perverse view of “trickle down economics” come from residing in a society where the controlling powers never actually interact with the majority of the American population, let alone experience their way of life or know what it means to live in poverty. Because everyone in their reality is rich and profiting from what they are doing, it seems completely unreasonable to them that people could be doing badly. Those people must just be “lazy” or “unskilled.” Not a surprising view to take considering recent studies showing that, while the rich express more happiness with their lives, they generally take much less time enjoying life with leisure activities. More time spent working and making things happen, scheduling and networking.

The frightening thing is that so many Americans bought into this way of thinking against their own interests. Only now are more people beginning to realize that everything they thought is a sham. While they thought American hegemony was on the increase, it’s been on the decline, with policies like war, privatization, deregulation, etc. have been at once attempts to remain powerful and at the same time partial causes of, or at least accelerators of, the decline.

But these attempts to remain powerful themselves are driven by a delusional ideology produced by Dunbar’s Number. They cannot see past the people they themselves know, and cannot see how many of the new laws they enact make it more and more difficult for the average middle-class American citizen. They feel like they are making huge concessions to the public giving the citizens as much leeway as they do. This twisted sense of entitlement most often comes from this complete lack of understanding the social situations of the middle-class, or the “Other.”

How the middle class came to believe in these same ideas is more confusing. It was likely the consolidation of media with the military industrial complex, with many national media outlets now owned in whole or in part by companies who profit from war. With the media as a veritable propaganda machine for the interests of short-term profit, the fanfare leading up to war makes sense. As television has been (up until more recently) the most relied upon source for Americans to get their information, it is understandable that it had a heavy influence on the anti-intellectualized masses.

Now, as the short-term profits of The War Against Terror lag, we see more media outlets becoming “suspicious” of the war and decrying its social consequences. This only comes as the short-term profits are migrating to a new sector as we find out we got into more of a mess than our military could handle. While we have secured a future of “Oil Partnership” with Iraq, the instability of the region makes it difficult to profit quickly from such investments. As always with Reaganomics, business then turns to a new short-term goal, with intent on making windfall profits as quickly as possible.

—

Now, considering Dunbar’s Number, we also have to stop and realize its influence on the way we view this situation. As struggling middle class Americans, are we jaded against the culture of the rich and powerful because they are things we lack? I tend to think not. The reason I do not consider myself jaded is because I do not want the rich, powerful, elite and highly educated to give up that which they have. What I want is to live in a world where those things are more evenly distributed and we give more people the opportunity to excell in many fields of education and work. Equal opportunity education is probably most important, for while many great minds exist, many of them never achieve a great education due to the impoverished status of their parents. Reliance upon family instead of a greater reliance on society to help itself as a whole renders a caste society where it is more and more unlikely for us to be able to break the bonds of our social class.