This is one of the continuing series of reports from the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, Tennessee. The conference is sponsored by Free Press. This post concerns a presentation entitled "Children and Media Policy." Unfortunately, I was not able to hear this entire presentation. When I arrived, however,…
I have a confession.
If the general consensus is that I should never do this again, I will seriously consider stopping (not that I had ever done this before–see below). I know that the story I am about to relate will disgust and confound some readers. Beware that I am thin-skinned, but don’t hold back.
Here’s the short version. While in Chicago, my family and I (my wife and I have two daughters, aged six and eight) went to a trendy chocolatier (a store that sells high-priced chocolate). While at said store, I ate some of the high-priced chocolate left by a customer who had left the store just as we were sitting down.
As I relate this, I am haunted by the Seinfeld episode where George Costanza is caught rummaging through the trash can in the kitchen of a house eating a pastry that someone had thrown away. My adventure also brings to mind an idea put forth by “Tim,” a friend of mine, who has long argued that all morality starts with what one puts into one’s mouth.
Here’s what happened. We went to a chocolatier, where my wife ordered a high-priced cup of hot chocolate. The chocolatier was located on the first floor of an upscale mall that sells lots and lots of things that nobody really needs. It just so happened that the Lego store was on the second floor of that mall. That was our true destination when we were distracted by chocolatier’s prominent location.…
Not after reading this article about pig-farming in Rolling Stone. This is the teaser at the top of the article: America's top pork producer churns out a sea of waste that has destroyed rivers, killed millions of fish and generated one of the largest fines in EPA history. Welcome to…
Dangerous idea, that.
If you were in charge–if you were King–what would do? What would fix? What would you ignore?
The Socratic ideal is the philosopher king, whose first act upon accession to the throne is to abdicate. The idea being that a truly ethical thinker would refuse to accept the responsibility to rule a nation.
Pity the world doesn’t work that way.
The problem with such systems–and there are many, including those proposed by certain self-proclaimed Libertarians–is that human nature refuses to cooperate. There’s a kind of Malthusian coefficient involved–population growth always outstrips the potential for ideal behavior. All such utopian systems are based on one fallacy that keeps gumming up all the works of any system anyone cares to name.
The fallacy is that We’re All Alike.
It’s a widely touted formula–the things that we have in common outnumber those that divide us; underneath we’re all the same; people are people. The Libertarians believe as an article of faith that if government got out of everybody’s way, we’d all be fine because people basically know what’s best for themselves and their immediate circle of intimates. Socialists believe (mostly) that without class structures, everyone would get along quite nicely. Communists like to assume avarice is an aberration that can somehow be bred out of the species.
If only.
It’s not so much that we’re so very different–but that we’re alike in such individualized ways.
The fact is, we come in all shapes, sizes, talents, capacities, points of view, …
See them floundering after their cherished possessions, like fish flopping in a river starved of water.
Sutta Nipata 777 (From What Would Buddha Do? (1999)).
A friend of mine recently returned from an extended trip to Egypt. He found it striking that the 18 million residents of Cairo lived in tightly packed conditions and that they owned so very few possessions. Based on his own observations, the average resident of Cairo owned about 10% of the property owned by the average American family. My friend’s estimate was about on the mark. Most Americans would certainly describe most residents of Cairo to be “poor.”
Amidst this material “poverty,” though, my friend noticed numerous signs of family togetherness and harmony that he doesn’t often see in the U.S. Parents and children were spending time with each other, smiling at each other, playing together and apparently enjoying each others’ company. How could this be, that people appeared to be so happy when they owned so little? As my friend described what he saw, I couldn’t imagine Americans getting along that well if someone took away 90% of our possessions. In fact, we’d become embittered and we’d be at each other’s throats.
My friend’s comments caused me to think of the enormous amount of material possessions that Americans have and crave. We have shameful amounts of material possessions. We have many times more stuff than we need. Yet we work very hard to have ever more.
We are afflicted with the all-consuming epidemic “affluenza,” …