Editorials

In today’s globalized market, where things, or ideas that can eventually produce things, are the only real global currency, the ancient Greek concepts of episteme (systematic knowledge) and sophia (wisdom) hold little value. In the US, both conservatives and liberals alike increasingly view education as merely a means to an end and not as an end in itself, i.e., as the way to deepen, enhance, and “heighten” life through the passionate and life-long pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty—regardless of their market value. In other words, education, as we have known it in the West now for over 2500 years (called “the liberal arts”), has been reduced from wisdom and the joy of discovery (including self-discovery) to mere job-training and job-seeking. Wisdom has been set aside for the single-minded pursuit of profit and (therefore) power. And in the process, humanity has forsaken its true home in the realm of the sublime, which alone makes life worth living, in order to embrace instead the intellectual vacuity of vocational education. And along with this fundamental change in the purpose and conduct of education goes any chance of forging an ordered, well-regulated, rational society and government: For a people without rationality can never govern itself wisely.

Ever since Socrates, education was meant to counter the nihilism of a person wrongly valuing riches, fame, sensuality, and power in order to rightly value the passionate and life-long search for truth, goodness, and beauty, a quest begun here in this life but continued into the next. From Socrates and the great Greek tragedians (among many others) have come that wisdom which is cathartic in expelling vice and ignorance, and which has been handed down in unbroken succession in the West—until now—for over two and a half millennia.

But with conservatives, foundations, think-tanks, and CEOs stressing education simply for jobs; universities stressing increasing profits; and liberals stressing education merely for the glorification or indulgence of self; the passionate and life-long search for Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, which has given western civilization its Homer and its Sophocles, its Shakespeare and its Dante, its Goethe, Newton and Tolstoy, among others too numerous to mention—these monuments to intellect, goodness and beauty are no longer forming, or informing, our youngest minds. And the result, if finalized, can only be a permanent desiccation of their intellect and soul that cannot but make life even more difficult and more troubling both for them and for society than it already is.

A Liberal Arts education is the one true oasis in the desert of specialization and job-training. It is literally what men live and die for—what makes life worth living. Without it, we become merely obedient and clever dogs—we can (for either government or employer) run on cue, chase our tails, and bark at shadows…but most assuredly we cannot think—not as human beings should think, and were created to think. Humans alone share this ability to think, this capability, with God (“man was created in the imago Dei,” in God’s image), and it is this, the thinking of “divine” thoughts, that separates us humans from all other creatures on earth. For only we can aspire to and sacrifice for truth, give of ourselves to others out of goodness, and create works of indescribable and lasting beauty—that can wring tears from our souls, expressive of life’s deepest and most profound meanings.

But so little does this view of education obtain today that one is tempted to say that it is dead—moribund it most certainly is, but in many places, alas, also dead… and buried. And if this is true in the US, with its long and storied history of liberal arts, that once turned our European barbarian ancestors of earlier ages into more civilized human beings, and along the way gave to humanity (and not just to the West) democracy, the rule of law, justice tempered with mercy, constitutions, the separation of powers, universities, hospitals, the arts, philosophy, the theater, opera, mathematics, literature, science, inter alia—one must expect it to be true a fortiori in Asia where there is no millennia-long history of liberal arts to draw upon, and where technology, and the use of technology, now passes for “culture.” But lap-tops, cell phones, and TV are not, nor can they ever become, the equal of a Shakespeare, a Plato, a Bach, or a Michelangelo.

In Korea, e.g., where I now live and teach, and where the traditions and wisdom of a Confucius or a Buddha seem largely forgotten (or where remembered, so watered down as to be virtually of no help for living), education, as in so many other Asian countries, is merely for the sake of obtaining a well-paying job, period: And test-taking is the sole means to that end. Education in Korea, put in classical Greek terms, is mere, and only, techne (Gk. skill), not a broader search for truth, understanding, or general principles with which to guide one’s life by, let alone a passionate love of and devotion to truth and wisdom in order to bring joy and peace to one’s soul, and to make a contribution to one’s family, community, nation, or the world. As we know from Socrates, education was to reach through the individual to the larger community in which he lived. It was never intended to be an idiosyncratic (private) pursuit which could not help, directly or indirectly, one’s fellow citizens on the path and pilgrimage of Life.

So strong is the idea in Asia in general, and Korea in particular, that education is simply for jobs; and so willing and eager are Koreans to pay high fees in order to achieve this positive job-result, that offering to teach education for free, as I have done, simply for the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty for their own sakes, is taken to be either a sign of madness or incompetence or else a subterfuge for baser motives. No one here takes the western liberal arts view of education seriously. The life of the mind here (as our great teacher Socrates instructed us as to how it should be) in Korea is a “dangerous idea”, just as it was in Greece for Socrates himself (who was accused of “corrupting the young” and “introducing new gods” and was executed by Athens as a result—he, Socrates, the wisest and best man of his time according to Plato).

There is indeed nothing so dangerous, so revolutionary, so upsetting, both to families and to governments, than an individual’s life-long, single-minded devotion to the pursuit of truth, and the living out, as best one can, of a life of goodness, supported by deep and passionate attachment to beauty (in its various guises of poetry, piety, art, architecture, empathy, self-giving love, literature, etc). Forget the dangers of revolutionaries like Marx. Nothing in history has proven to be more dangerous to the status quo than a person who can think—truly think—for himself. As tyrants like Kim Jong-Il of North Korea know only too well, you can kill the body but you cannot kill an idea—and so it is with ideas—especially ideas of justice, goodness, and righteousness—that make every tyrant’s soul tremble the most. (This trembling, of course, being but a foretaste of divine judgment.)

The whole revolutionary idea of Western culture, of the liberal arts, may be conveniently summed up in the extraordinary words of Jesus: “The truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32) Alas, there are many among us who choose to continue to live in prisons of their own making. And when they do so, they thereby encourage tyrants, like Kim Jong-Il, to make prisons for their bodies as well. For prisons of the mind inevitably and necessarily lead to shackles for the body. Only the Truth can set man free.

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A group of neuroscientists, as reported in a New York Times article, went on a vacation in Glen Canyon Recreation Area, Utah, in order to see for themselves if, and possibly how, Nature might affect their brains, long accustomed (if not addicted) to electronic stimulation via cell phones, emails, computers, etc.

They already know (what most don’t) that too much stimulation has a negative affect on the brain. Dr. Strayer of the University of Utah says that “too much digital stimulation can take people who would be functioning O.K. and put them in a range where they’re not psychologically healthy.’” Another scientist who has studied teenagers’ compulsive use of cellphones argues that “heavy technology use can inhibit deep thinking and cause anxiety.” They know, further, that “(b)ehavioral studies have shown that performance suffers when people multitask.” And all are mindful of a seminal Univ. of Michigan study “that showed people can learn better after walking in the woods than after walking a busy street.” Hence their trip to Glen Canyon and away from the city and the university with all its pervasive electronic stimulation. They want to see for themselves what kind of power Nature possesses in counteracting our modern-day over-stimulated lives.

After three days in the wilderness a state of relaxation called “third-day syndrome” sets in, in which time “slows,” one is more in tune with nature, has more energy, including mental energy, and with clearer thoughts as a result.

Now let me share my experiences, which mirror what these neuroscientists have discovered on their trip “back to nature.”

For three years, from 4^th through 6^th grade, our family moved to a farm outside of Cincinnati, where my father worked. He chose to drive to work, over an hour each way (when doing so was uncommon) in order to enjoy the benefits of living close to nature. For us it wasn’t a great adjustment, however, since my parents’ best friends already lived on a farm and growing up we spent many weekends, and many holidays, visiting them. After class in my rural school was over, and after a three-mile walk home, I spent before-supper and after-supper time roaming in our fields, or riding our horses, or exploring our little streams and banks, or swimming in, or ice-skating on, our ponds, or playing all sorts of outdoor games with my sisters and our friends. Life on our farm truly was never boring: and “nature never did betray the heart that loved her.”

When we moved back to Cincinnati, I lost part of myself which, all these years later, I still mourn, so wonderful was that experience. A decade later, during spring break from college, a friend and I went on a 10-day canoeing trip on a big lake in Canada. We paddled all day, slept on little islands in the lake at night, and ate (inter alia) fresh sturgeon with eggs, which was indescribably delicious. We brought no electronics with us. We lovingly took in nature and her beauty, talked, read, thought, contemplated, drank from the lake (so pure and utterly delicious and refreshing was its water), admired the sparkling stars at night, and felt a one-ness with nature which was almost a mystical experience. When our trip was over and we returned to our car, by reflex I turned on the radio—and such a jarring, unnatural, unwelcome “noise” assaulted our ears that I had to turn it off immediately. We then drove the long way home (10 hours) without music. Years later, when I was studying German in Freiburg, Germany, I would hike in the Schwarzwald (The Black Forest) every day after class, through all seasons, fall through summer, for a minimum of three hours. It was then, and has remained for me since, one of life’s most wonderful experiences. However harried I may have been after class, or however lonely for my family and friends, I was always renewed after my nature-hike, and could then return, refreshed, to Freiburg and to class.

I mention these personal experiences because the neuroscientists’ surprise at being “re-made” in nature is only a surprise to those who have never experienced her beauty and grace before. One need only read (eg) poems of Keats or Wordsworth or Coleridge to find out how much they themselves were restored by nature and healed of the negatives effects of living too long “in (a) city pent.” But the same restorative powers of nature I feel sure apply to electronic stimulation/addiction too: Nature brings us back to our real selves, and provides a healing which cannot otherwise be had.

In my English classes in Korea, an ultra-wired country with addiction to technology being a real problem among young people, I daily see the negative effects of the omnipresence of cell-phones and texting, and of hours daily spent playing computer games after (or before) school and how this saps the minds of so many of my students, leaving them distracted and unable to think, making learning for them almost impossible—which harmful effects, by the way, are clear to all of us teachers. A return to nature would certainly be one way to restore, insofar as possible, a sense of normality to these students’ lives. But one doesn’t need to be a neuroscientist to discover this. Just take a walk out into nature yourself sometime, sans cell, laptop, iPod, etc, and Mother Nature will awaken depths long-forgotten and unused. And life will have restored to it much of its lost beauty and grace—and the joie de vivre which seems to be absent among so many young people today.

“To one who has been long in city pent,

‘Tis very sweet too look into the fair

And open face of heaven,–to breathe a prayer

Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

Who is more happy, when, with heart’s content,

Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair

Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair

And gentle tale of love and languishment?

Returning home at evening, with an ear

Catching the notes of Philomel,–an eye

Watching the sailing cloudlet’s bright career,

He mourns that day so soon has glided by:

E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear

That falls through the clear ether silently.

–John Keats, To One Who Has Been Long In City Pent

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• Effect of wilderness vs. tech-world on the brain (mindblog.dericbownds.net)
• “Outdoors and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain (New York Times)” and related posts (integral-options.blogspot.com)
• NYT: Scientists probe effects of technology on brain (msnbc.msn.com)

Paul Krugman, a Nobel prize-winning liberal economist, believes that with America’s disgraceful and dangerous lack of investment in infrastructure, in renewable sources of energy, and in small entrepreneurial job creation; added to a dangerous non-Keynesian approach to solving our current economic crisis (a Keynesian approach, by the way, which has now lifted Germany out of its near-depression and in only two years has made her the economic engine of Europe!); and coupled with the lack of essentials for the common man such as affordable health care and first-rate education, America, he believes, is on a dark highway to Nowhere. Krugman is of course correct on all points.

But let me be even bolder and state what absolutely no one wants to hear: America has lost her greatness, as well as her raison d’être. She is now but a shell of her former self, all the life having been sucked out of her by ruthless, egoistical, and corrupt conservatives (virtually all Republicans but also many Democrats), amoral corporations with their pervasive influence in society, and the absurdly large and corrupt military-industrial complex, all of which have transformed America into the New Rome—but Rome at the end of her empire, a Rome in the death throes. As in Rome where only a few hundred (senatorial) families ruled, so now the wealthy few (1%) alone govern America—and do so as if she were simply a means to increase their own immediate wealth and power with not a thought given to the rest of the country. Corporations, and corporate culture, let me state, are the chief, though not the only, cause of this decline in America.

We Americans think that the often cruel and harsh lessons of history are always for “other nations”, that somehow we in the US are exempt from history’s inexorable laws, so that no matter what America does, no matter who we elect or how corrupt and ignorant they are, no matter which policies we pursue, regardless of how stupid or evil they may be, that somehow we Americans will always come out on top—nay, even stronger than before. This is pure nonsense. History obeys no man—or nation. Its laws apply equally to the very poorest and the very richest countries, to the most powerful and to the most abjectly powerless. We have transgressed the laws of history—its lessons—once too often. And now the book of history is recording our inevitable descent into mediocrity, aimlessness, amorality, ignorance, and stupidity, not to mention long-term economic decline. And there is no one to blame but ourselves. We have listened to the rough and lying voices of the treacherous rich and powerful and have pretended to hear only the lovely and harmonious music of the songbird. But it is we who have allowed ourselves to be deceived. We have forsaken the religion of the Bible for the religion of the pocketbook; and we have ignored the Bible’s call to care for one another and instead have cared simply for ourselves. We have shunned the passionate search for Truth that alone is the foundation of true culture and the only solid and enduring basis for humane civilization, and have given our hearts away to greed and self-interest and ignorance. The civilizing Greek virtues of passionate and single-minded devotion to Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, we have despised as of little worth, and in our hubris and sin have replaced them with self-centeredness, boorishness, incivility, stupidity, ignorance, and greed.

America once was a magnet for the ingenious, the creative, and the forward-looking. Or we ourselves raised up on our own soil a Jefferson, a Franklin, a Lincoln—among many others, who cared more for country than for self, more for the welfare of the community than for party. Where are our Jeffersons now? our Franklins? and our Lincolns?

Once America stood for something: Bring me your poor, we said to the world, your oppressed, your hungry, and your ignorant, and we can raise them up to provide not only for themselves, but in charity and self-giving to give to others, so that life for all assumes a minimum level of dignity and grace, intelligence and charm.

But now the American dream has been reduced simply to becoming a billionaire, period. Our CEOs care for nothing else. Let the rich rule, they say, and the devil take the hindmost. The corporation and its culture has destroyed the warp and woof of American life. And we ourselves have sanctioned it: just like the Israelites who destroyed the commandments of God, and substituted in their stead a deity of gold. We are they.

There is hope once again stirring among Republicans, with the economy still struggling, that they can regain some of their power, at least in the house, and there try to overturn what modest reforms Obama has managed to pass—and block any further reforms. Let me be clear: If we should suffer once again under the party of the 1% (Republicans) which has brought us, and the whole world (!), to this unprecedented economic catastrophe that we are now experiencing (begun by Reagan, through deregulation, and advanced by the two Bushes), then no amount of help can save America. She will die an ignominious death: and all our hallowed memories, all our beautiful and world-inspiring memories, from our unlikely founding, to our divided nation reunified by our great and humane Lincoln (who always cared more for the common man than for the rich), to FDR who saved us from yet another Republican economic disaster in the Great Depression, to the idealism of J.F. Kennedy, who strove to free us from the clutches of a self-regarding corporate culture with its evil and rapacious ways, and who paid the ultimate price for his genuine love of America, all this will turn to dust and be as of little use.

The end approaches. Wake up, America! Return to your ideals! Live honoring Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, at whatever cost (and they always cost dearly)—spurn mere self-interest; care for the poor and the needy; live modest, disciplined, and self-giving lives; become as educated as you can, never stopping the personal search for Truth; and turn away from TV and computer games, the Internet, and other technological diversions, which merely distract us from our duty to become better and wiser people—and so live more spiritually authentic, deeper, and purer lives. Only this—nothing less—can save America. For once the deciding gavel at the bar of Justice strikes, it echoes for all time down the corridors of history, and none may change it.

In July, Italy’s foremost daily, Corriere della Sera, published a short Op-Ed by the distinguished contributor, Sergio Romano, whose reputation comes from his historical essays rather than from having been an ambassador. The title was strong: “The rebirth of a great country. Ethical values of the Germans”. Romano emphasized that in 1870 the immense victory of Prussia in just two great battles of a war with France that Berlin exploited but did not start, launched a well-deserved primacy of Germany in Europe. The Reich which was born in the German space out of many kingdoms and principalities soon asserted itself as the Continent’s most important country, also its moral leader.

Italy for one took Germany as her model in several fields- industrial development, science, socio-political developments. Hitler and WW2, writes Romano, devastated the noble profile of that nation, “so for many years it was difficult to tell Italians about the vast patrimony of cultural excellence, industriousness, economic dynamism, scientific intelligence, philosophical depth, artistic and literary creativity, which Germany accumulated in less than two centuries. An extraordinary Renaissance”. This was so because the whole history of the German nation was marked by the specifically German virtues of seriousness, loyalty, and ethical strength.

Of course, Sergio Romano does not dodge the tragic questions raised by twelve years of Adolf Hitler -he rather underlines that the very moral and spiritual excellence of the national character saved Germany from her crimes, restoring her sanity.

One remark might be added, however: the qualities which make the endowment of the German race are not necessarily the positive ones. Germany is great because of her sins, too. Germans, while possessing the best of inheritances, also possess the worst ones. Luther’s rebellion to the papacy was the triumph of truth over expediency, the heroism of faith against evil. But Martin Luther was incapable of compassion when the German peasants tried to free themselves from subservience to their feudal masters.

The events of Hitler’s last years make it too clear that in specified conditions Germans could behave diabolically. Satan made deep inroads into the German soul. Germans have sinned more than other races, possibly because their minds and hearts were deeper. J.S.Bach concentrated more on higher religious thought in his music than all composers lumped together. Nietzsche, the prophet of new Gods, the last disciple of Dionysus, derided Christ but Tolstoj, the Christian socialist, described Nietzsche as his teacher. Schopenhauer too, even if the latter in his will donated a sum to the German soldiers who had put down the revolution in Berlin.

Germans nearer to our feelings taught us to penetrate the tragedies of modernity. Wrote Alfred Doeblin, born in Stettin 1878: “we must help God”. R.M.Rilke invoked the garden “wo Gott beginnt” (where God begins). Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the noble philosopher and patriot, claimed in 1808 that his people were “the interpreters of the world spirit, the only uncorrupted one”. For Thomas Carlyle, the English historian of the heroes, “pious Germany rose as Queen of Europe”.

Some of the virtues that Sergio Romano assigns to the Germans are shared by other nations. Swedes, for example, are serious, laborious, well organized: but lacking the greatness and the evil of Germans, they are  rather disregarded by history of man. In a way it might be said that Germans would be a humbler stock, if they had not generated mythical figures as opposed as Parsifal and Hitler, Wagner and Rilke.

There was a time when the intellectuals of France, Germany’s hereditary enemy, were deeply impressed, even fascinated, by the glory of the German thought. M.me de Stael had called Germany ‘the heart of Europe’. Notwithstanding the diplomatic crisis of 1840, the French philosopher and minister Victor Cousin kept praising everything spiritual of Goethe’s fatherland. For a period Ernest Renan believed that the real goal of his life had to be working to unite spiritually France and Germany. For Montesquieu  the spirit of freedom was born in the forests where the Germans, ‘our fathers’, lived in the distant past. Everything changed in France after 1870, when Germany triumphed. The French nationalism exploded, two world wars followed.

Nobody will ever be able to belittle the rational component of the German mind. But its irrational component is imposing. Romanticism, one of the greatest phases in the Western civilization, began in Heidelberg when Achim von Arnim launched the small review “Troest Einsamkeit”, “a journal for anchorites”.  Was a great reactionary thinker of France, Charles Maurras, wrong when he concluded “Nationalsocialism is the Islam of the North?

In conclusion, every single word that Sergio Romano wrote on Germany is right. In a very short article he could not possibly elaborate more. But the credits he assigns to such a nation are the bland, sedate ones. The German heritage is neither bland nor overly reasonable. Thomas Mann, before becoming in WW2  a propagandist of the Allied, plutodemocratic crusade, had meditated on the torment and tragedy of the German nature. He argued: “He who would like to transform Germany into a middle-class democracy, would deprive her of the best she is. Germany means abyss”.

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Like many pro-market economists, Prof. Paul Krugman has inveighed against the present attitude of the German political-economic school, which advocates austerity and fiscal sanity as the right way to confront the international crisis. Krugman too believes that budget cuts are  dangerous, that they can suffocate the infant recovery. In the United States, President Obama should do the opposite of what President Hoover did: when, at the beginnings of the Thirties, the Great Depression appeared on the verge of recovery, the White House and the leaders of the financial and banking community thought it wise to stop supporting the economy through federal incentives. The disastrous result, according to Krugman, was that in the U.S. the Depression went on for the whole of the Thirties. Only the Second World War, calling to arms 10 million Americans and requiring weapons on a giant scale, solved the problem of American unemployment. Facts went that way indeed. Pearl Harbor rather than F.D.Roosevelt’s New Deal ended the Great Depression.

If the economy is the science of wealth, the ill-boding of Prof. Krugman may possibly prove right. But is the perennial quest of wealth the supreme goal of the society of man? Growth is not the Absolute Good. In the West today we know much better than in the past. We have experienced a half century of affluence, and we have learned the misery of affluence: so many millions are very poor. We now understand the advantages of the simple life. We suffer the remorse and barbarous inhumanity of wealth. We know many achievements, beyond becoming richer, which would make us happier.

So we should not share the logic of the vast legion of market economists. We should refuse it. We should say no to perennial growth. Just one goal is mandatory -guaranteeing with heavier taxes on the rich a vital minimum to the deserving poor.  Globalization will multiply unemployment, so the market dogmas  must give way to social justice.

Those who produce should have, but we know that those who produce the most—that is, those who work hardest, and at the most difficult and menial tasks, have the least. Eugene V. Debs

History repeats itself. That’s one of the things wrong with history.

Clarence Darrow

There is a startlingly similar pattern in the Pullman Strike of 1894 and what is currently spreading throughout China among its young factory workers. But for this editorial I wish to refocus on a single Chinese male, Ma Xiangqian, who at the tender age of  18 was found dead at the base of a Foxconn Technology dorm, an apparent suicide—and his relationship to Foxconn Technology. The similarities between Ma Xiangqian’s life and his relationship to Foxconn Technology and a worker for Pullman and his relationship to the Pullman Co. are revealing, and testify to the inherent evil of corporations, whether they be those of 19^th century America or of 21^st century China.

The Pullman Strike occurred as a consequence of a down-turned economy and the intractable greed and hard-heartedness of George Pullman, the owner of Pullman Palace Car Company, a railroad car manufacturing business. The economic downturn of 1893 caused George Pullman to cut wages. The problem, however, was that workers still had to work the same long 12-hour days and still had to pay the same rents on their company-owned homes in the town of Pullman, which was built and run by the Pullman company. This led to a strike by Pullman Company workers, which careened into an national railway strike, the first industry-wide strike in our nation’s history. During the long strike a few workers (as is often the case) resorted to violence, which only added to the pressure on President Grover Cleveland to quell the strike. Cleveland finally called in 12,000 army troops. In the process of supressing the strike, thirteen workers died and fifty-seven were injured. Property damage (in today’s value) was around 8 million dollars. Eugene V. Debs, the leader of the American Railway Union, was arrested on both civil and criminal charges , and was tried in a spectacular trial featuring (a later famous) Clarence Darrow, a former railroad lawyer himself who “switched sides” in order to represent Debs. Debs was eventually found guilty  of a much lesser charge of violating a court injunction, and spent six months in jail. While in prison he read Karl Marx. Upon his release, he became the leading socialist in America, running for president 5 times, beginning in 1900.  He attracted many ardent followers, including the famous blind and deaf activist Helen Keller.

What is revealing about the Pullman Strike is the corporation’s opinion that the worker is always in the wrong, that the worker possesses no rights, and that the worker can even be jailed (or killed) if he stops work or persuades others to go on strike; and conversely, that the corporation is  always in the right, and can use whatever force is necessary to keep its factories or supply lines open.

As I wrote in my editorial, “Rotten To The Core”, there have been numerous suicides at Foxconn Technology, both male and female, and numerous suicide attempts as well. (Foxconn Technology has contracts with Apple, Dell, H-P, and many other Silicon Valley firms.) Life at Foxconn, however, appears now to be even more sinister than it first seemed. According to an article in Der Spiegel, Ma Xiangqian’s family  believes his death not to be a suicide at all but rather a premeditated murder by Foxconn Technology.

Ma’s sister, Liqun, said that Ma had resigned from Foxconn six days earlier and had appeared “upbeat”. For some time at work previously he had been severely abused by a Foxconn supervisor simply for breaking a drill fixture on the assembly line, and was forced to clean toilets as a consequence. His family does not believe Foxconn’s story that Ma’s death was a suicide. According to Der Spiegel, “His sister Liqun tells (of) wounds she found on ( Ma Xiangqian’s)  head…which looked like they had been made by a drill fixture. She also found strange injuries on his upper body, wounds which would not suggest suicide.  Sections of Foxconn’s surveillance video are (also) missing from around the time of (his) death.” What makes this suspicion of murder even more believable is that there was recently released on the Chinese Internet a video clip allegedly showing Foxconn’s security guards at a Beijing factory “kicking and hitting workers.”

For the sake of getting that last ounce of profit, corporations will do anything—whether now in 2010 or then in 1894; it is, quite simply, the nature of the beast. The corporation is completely amoral; its only concern is for more profit by whatever means possible, fair or foul. And anyone who stands in their way, like Eugene Debs, or Ma Xiangqian, is a marked man.
A national commission, set up to investigate the Pullman Strike, later found Pullman’s “paternalism” to be partly at fault, and Pullman’s town “un-American”; the Illinois Supreme Court later forced Pullman to divest himself of his town, which annexed itself to Chicago.

Owners, now or then, will do anything to ensure more profit, including the building of “company towns”, thereby ensuring totalitarian control over its workers. Today Foxconn has done exactly the same thing that Pullman did, and for the same reasons—only this one has 300,000 workers in one company town.

A typical Foxconn employee works a minimum 12-hour day (usually longer, with mandatory overtime), and their residence is a dormitory in which 10 people are crowded into a single dorm room, with no hot water. Life for them has thus been reduced to repetitive  assembly-line work and sleep, nothing more. To the corporation these workers are not even human beings, merely a means to an end: humans sacrificed to the all-powerful profit-god Moloch.

Why do corporations do this? CEOs believe, quite simply,  that their workers are a company’s own possession, and therefore they can exploit them howsoever they please. For a corporation, the pursuit of profit trumps a worker being a human being, with the right to lead a happy, healthy, and independent life apart from work. Steve Jobs and the other CEOs of Silicon Valley firms which are contracted  with Foxconn (or other equally venal companies around the world) know this,  but choose to “look the other way”, preferring to contemplate their profit margins rather than inquiring into  inhumane working and living conditions they all know exist but which makes their profit margins possible.

After the railroad strike, George Pullman was so hated  for the rest of his life that when he died he had to be buried in the dead of night, in a more secure lead-lined coffin, put into a reinforced steel-and-concrete vault over which was then poured several additional tons of concrete—just to ensure that no angry worker would stealthily exhume and desecrate his body! The Eumenides (the entities the ancient Greeks believed wrecked vengeance on an evil man’s life) pursued Pullman not just to the grave, but into the grave as well!

And so it is. Even if we mortals can not see these divine furies ourselves, nevertheless they are at work wrecking their vengeance on those who defy God’s law to love and care for one another—with no exceptions, and certainly none for the sake of mere profit. While on earth evil does indeed often seem to triumph,  yet we may take a lesson, and a measure of spiritual comfort (or warning!), from the life of George Pullman himself: None but the good find peace.

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• China labor strains reflect a countryside in flux (reuters.com)
• After Foxconn Suicides, Scrutiny for Chinese Plants (nytimes.com)

Corporations are today the dominant institution in life, both at home and abroad. Their reach and influence and power are unexcelled, and perhaps unexampled in history. They enjoy the kind of omnipresence and omnipotence that made the Christian Church the dominant institution of the Middle Ages—only more so. In the Middle Ages there were two realms: the earthly and the spiritual. The Church was exalted above the earthly realm, which by and large went its way content with this hierarchical ordering of life that put a premium on spiritual things, and made the princes of this realm subject to the princes of the next. But for the corporation there is one, and only one, realm and rule: the Kingdom of Profit here and now.

The major differences between these two world-dominant institutions, the Church and the Corporation, are these: The Church exists for the sake of the individual,  while the individual, first and last, exists for the sake of the Corporation. The former strives to enhance life: the latter cares only  for profit, even at the expense of life. The former is mindful of the earthly battle between good and evil: the latter is mindful only of the battle for increasing profits. The one enhances and deepens life, to create a caring, loving community based on self-giving love: the other pursues profit, even to the point of destroying life and community. One strives to make men fit to meet their Maker : the other destroys men’s souls when engaged in the single-minded pursuit of profit at any cost. One is liberating: the other enslaving. One seeks Truth, Goodness, and Beauty: the other only Gain. One develops and fosters a person’s independence: the other demands radical dependencey. One is adjured to care for all of creation no matter the cost: the other cares only for the bottom line. One strives to incarnate radical goodness and love:  the other, legally, is bidden to be, and is in fact, radically  selfish and amoral.

Let us now praise famous men.

Jack Welch retired from General Electric in 2001, having been its CEO since 1981. Under his leadership, GE developed from a $13 billion dollar corporation into one worth hundreds of billions of dollars, becoming in the process the second largest corporation in the world. And along the way Welch became famous. As one biography says, “…Jack Welch’s management skills became almost legendary. His no nonsense leadership style gave him a reputation of being hard, even ruthless but also fair when making business decisions.” He urged his managers to follow the “GE ethic of constant change and striving to do better.” The biography goes on to state that under Welch’s tenure each business under the GE (conglomerate) umbrella “was one of the best in its field.” Since retiring (amidst much praise and adulation from his peers and the media), Welch has penned a best-selling memoir “Jack, Straight From The Gut,” and now advises other Fortune 500 companies as well.

But this is only part of his biography: the other, seamier side is carefully hidden from view by both GE, Jack Welch, and the media.

In 2002, United For A Fair Economy, a corporate watch-dog, gave GE its “special lifetime achievement award” “for scoring the highest average rank across 10 bad (corporate) habits”, outdistancing second-place Enron (!) by an astounding 45%. Canadian law professor and expert on the corporation, Joel Bakan, writes that in only 11 years, from 1990-2001, GE had been charged with 47 “major legal breeches.” What kinds of things has GE done?

Between 1990-1994 GE was charged with 15 cases of fraud in Department of Defence contracts. In 1995 GE paid a $7.1 million dollar fine in a fraud suit for having sold thousands of jet engines to the military without complying with the military’s testing requirements. In 1997 GE pled guilty to defrauding the military out of  $10 million dollars for a battlefield computer system. In 1985 GE pled guilty to fraud and falsifying 108 claims on a missile contract. GE-designed nuclear reactors around the world have now been shown to have serious design flaws that imperil surrounding populations; this is also true of its boiling water reactors both here and abroad, with its threat of radioactive fuel rod contamination. GE has also been a “serial polluter” of PCBs and other chemicals at its many plant sites, contaminating both soil , gound-water, and rivers. GE was found to have built defective wiring and cables into 754 NYC subway cars. GE has had to pay a $100 million dollar fine for “unfair debt collection practices.” GE was found guilty of fraud and money-laundering in an unauthorized sale of jets to Israel. The list goes on and on. Clearly “striving to do better” and “being the best in one’s field” mean one thing to Welch and GE and quite another to the rest of us.

This is what makes corporations so dangerous and so evil. There is no ultimate accountability. They are in essence a law unto themselves, backed (and white-washed) by a media which it largely controls (eg, GE owns NBC) or influences through its power of advertising, and politicians to whom they have contributed money and so now “have great influence” with, and a largely pro-business judicial system.  So the buck literally stops Nowhere. Since the corporation legally has been defined as a “person,” only it—this non-existent “person”—by and large suffers the force of the law…and that almost always ends in fines. Which to a wealthy corporation like GE means exactly nothing.

Jack Welch has spent not a single day in prison—likely not even a single day in court. But if  you or I had repeatedly defrauded the federal government, engaged in serial, damaging pollution, not to mention money-laundering (inter alia), we surely would have suffered fully for it—and not only just seen the inside of a courtroom but also spent many years in federal prison!

With there being no real deterrence to crime, a corporation just adds up the “externalities”, as it calls them. If I break the law (it says), how much will I profit by it as against how much will it cost (if I get caught). A corporation’s modus operandi, or manner of operation, is done strictly on a “cost-benefit” analysis, leaving aside all concern for ethics, the environment, the worker, safety, etc.

What one ought to do is quite simply never considered,  only what will bring in the greatest profit.

So today we have this frightening specter of the most powerful institution in the world being a law unto itself, with the spiritual realm, and its imperatives for goodness and truth, not so much as even influencing, let alone determining, its policies , practices, or goals.

And unfortunately, society always pays in the end, exactly as we are now doing in the Gulf of Mexico— but the CEO nearly always retains his honor, his respect, and his good name—no matter what.

Let us now praise famous men.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke

It should come as no surprise that America’s Republican Supreme Court, which through its pro-business and pro-plutocracy decisions, should once again lay bare their “everything for the rich, nothing for the poor” philosophy. Recently the Supreme Court cut off matching public funds for three candidates in the Arizona gubernatorial race, leaving them to face a far richer opponent with meager resources of their own now that public financing has been struck down.  The Roberts Court continues its plutocratic ways, and in the process our very model of democracy is not just threatened, it is now an endangered species.

The Republican mantra (strictly  for “pr” purposes, mind you) of small government, and of  local (v. federal) government, took another hit from the Roberts Court, which completely disregarded Arizona’s wishes for a fairer and more democratic state election process through matching funds. Instead, the Roberts Court  imposed its own Republican plutocratic philosophy, which enables rich opponents now to have a decisive edge in the electorial process. Thanks to this  (on-going)  Republican demolition of our historical democracy, the rich, with tens of millions to spend in running for public office, will now be enabled to rule the US , as they have been attempting to do since the 1930’s, as if it were their little fiefdom, to be used for their own welfare, their own interests, in furtherance of their own power. This spells the end of true democracy, which was envisioned to be a “rule of the people,” as Lincoln so famously expressed it.

We can catch a glimpse of how this is going to play out nationally by turning to the recent California Republican gubernatorial primary election. Meg Whitman,  a former eBay CEO, used 71 million of her own money (!)  to win the primary election, and has said that, if necessary, she will spend a total of 150 million to win the governership of California.  Just think of it: over one-tenth of a billion dollars just to run for governor. That excludes all but the very wealthiest among us and makes a mockery of the word “democracy.” This is truly an extraordinary event.

What does this mean in practical terms but that we will now have “Rome revisited,” where only the wealthy ‘”senatorial families” (ie, the richest, most powerful families in the country) can run for office. And by and large whose interests do we expect these elitist plutocrats to serve? The common man’s? Whose interests have they historically served?

That this has received so little national attention, let alone talk-show interest, is further proof, if there need be any, of the decline of America. The admonition that we must be “eternally vigilant” if we are to safeguard liberty (and democracy) has now been completely disregarded. The last thing the rich and the Corporations  want is our national “vigilance.” And they now have their wish.

One further thought. Do we really want rich business people to run our country when they can’t even run their own businesses? The greatest myth of the last 150 years is that business people are capable leaders. To the contrary. How many of the nation’s (and world’s) top banks, investment houses, insurance companies, real estate firms, automobile manufacturers, inter alia, have, since Reagan, been repeatedly bailed out with public money? or have been charged with illegal business practices and corruption? And how many corporations have repeatedly lost American jobs—millions of them!— by moving their manufacturing overseas—to poorer countries where they can, and have, set up nearly slavery-like conditions? For example, in China recently, at Foxconn Technology, which does manufacturing for Apple, Dell, and Hewlit-Packard, there have been numerous suicides and suicide attempts, both male and female, because the working and living conditions there were so unbearable! Nike has also been accused repeatedly over the years of notoriously bad working conditions and wages for their  “sweatshop” employees, along with GAP, Wal-Mart, and other Fortune 500 companies. Are these the kind of people we want running our country: they repeatedly need public funds to stay solvent, they break labor laws, they hurt the environment, they are involved in illegal activities, show no moral conscience whatsoever, and strive single-mindedly for more profit  no matter the national, human, or environmental cost? And these are “leaders”? Leaders of what? Yet these are the people who now increasingly, should the Arizona legal precedent take hold nationally, will be the only ones financially able to run for high-profile offices in state and federal government.

Why do we honor and elect these men and women, I want to know, instead of vilifying them? America has been on the wrong path since JFK. We know this, we feel it in our bones, we see it every day, but come election time we elect exactly the same kind of people each time around. The only thing that changes is the rhetoric. In a matter of days “outsider” reveals itself to be “insider”—who care only for the rich and the corporations, and who betray  the common man and his interests, who show no foresight, and who care little or nothing for the earth and its safety.

The Tea Party and their ilk are no exception to this. Indeed, they are a perfect manifestation of how deception and lying is used to brainwash susceptible, non-thinking Americans. But their ideology is a perfect fit  for “insider” Republicans and their rich patrons, and will allow their adherents to plunder and ruin America freed from all constraints of government regulation, common sense, and religious values. The Tea Party, in fact,  is the perfect political Trojan Horse.

For those who read and study and ponder world history, and the life of man, the truth of things is plain to see. The rich have always ruled—or always tried to rule, and everyone else be damned.

Now, when election time comes around, and you think that you just might have something to contribute to your fellow man through political office, just remember: only a King Midas need apply.

Image via Wikipedia

In the decade before Pearl Harbor the political process of the Rising Sun was dominated both by the competition for influence of the great ‘zaibatsu’, the giant business conglomerates, and by the infighting among activist military groups. Most  men in the armed forces were demanding wars, especially against China, so that Japan, Asia’s most dynamic player, would acquire territories and resources. In 1931, the high command of the Japanese divisions in Manchuria acted on his own and conquered most of the Manchu region, belonging to China.

When, on May 15 1932, a group of officers killed the prime minister who had not approved the conquest, it became clear that the military were now dominant, that the upper echelons of the civil service supported the insubordinate officers, that the parliamentary parties had lost whatever clout they had slowly acquired. From that moment to the catastrophic end of the war against the United States, the military (not only generals, also forceful lieutenants who were willing to use their weapons against political adversaries) did control the government. A few additional killings confirmed the trend.

Today, some observers love to explain the unusual vulnerability of the Japanese cabinets with the aggressiveness of the press, the modern successor to the officer corps. Not many days ago prime minister Yukio Hatoyama resigned, eight months after an historic victory over the Liberals. Hatoyama’s Democratic party was expected to change the erratic ways of the national politics. Now Hatoyama is just another head of government who was ousted from office by press attacks. Exactly as several of his disgraced peers, he has been the target of allegations of financial misdeeds -accepting money from business people or groups. However, Hatoyama confessed an additional fault: he had won the general elections, in part, on the promise of getting back the air base of Okinawa from the US; he was unable to win the American assent. So, Hatoyama accepted the charge of having obtained votes on an empty promise. Possibly ethics still matters.

A number of observers conclude that Japan’s political scene is unduly perturbed by emotions on scandals. They argue, in particular, that corruption is so common in rich nations that the latter don’t usually topple presidents and ministers because of allegations concerning money. The Japanese opinion, they add, takes scandals too seriously. Top politicians should be judged on their management, not on their moral behaviours.

Possibly said observers have a point. But the opposite may be true -that a large enough section of the Japanese society do not accept unethical actions as a normal feature of public life. Once upon a time Japanese samurai took their life for not serving well enough their feudal masters, so violating their code of honor. How can we assert that the disgust at the venality of party politicians is excessive, when such venality is the malignant evil of most political systems of the world? Perhaps we should imitate Japan in not forgiving robber politicians.

Of course only one method is available to delete career politicians -putting an end to a representative democracy which perpetuates the prone-to-corruption professionals of politics.

Image via CrunchBase

June 16th was a great  day for Apple: orders for iPhone 4 topped 600,000, and that figure, according to a NY Times article, excluded orders which, because of a technical glitch, didn’t go through. “The company, “ said the Times, “ apologized to its customers who were frustrated by the computer hiccups…which affected the ordering system…,” and customers were urged to try to order their iPhone again. Apple said that “it was the largest number of preorders” in its history. Everyone seemed pleased (and none more so than Steve Jobs, presumably), including Wall Street, which saw Apple’s shares rise 3% to $267.25. AT&T was also pleased, since now they can extend their client’s new iPhone contracts for another year or more. Total iPhone sales estimates for this quarter have risen  from 8.5  to 9.5 million. Hey, what’s not to like?

On June 6, just a little over a week ago, Ma Xiangqian, a 19 -year -old Chinese male, committed suicide at a manufacturing plant owned by Foxconn Technology, one of whose clients is Apple.  Ma jumped from a high-rise dormitory which houses Foxconn’s  employees: since Ma’s  death, there have been 12 other suicides  or suicide attempts too (8 men and 4 women).  Foxconn Technology, founded by Terry Gou, has four-hundred thousand employees in Shenzhen, the electronics manufacturing center in China and is a $60 billion dollar corporation.

According to the NY Times, Ma Xiangquan had worked 286 hours (including 112 hours of mandatory overtime) during the month before he died. And what great salary, you may well wonder, with all that overtime, did he take home?  With his regular wages plus 70% overtime,  he averaged a mere one dollar an hour.

So, what is life like working at a plant making Apple’s high tech  products? Well, aside from the pathetic pittance of a salary, and grueling mandatory overtime, according to the NY Times, there are “military-style drills,” “verbal abuse  by superiors,” and “self-criticisms” which one must read aloud.

Foxconn workers sleep ten to a room; cold showers are the norm (there’s little hot water); on the assembly line one’s every movement is “mapped” and timed with a stop-watch down to milliseconds. Employees eat in the company cafeteria, sleep in company  dorms, have few or no friends, and are even forbidden to have snacks! As Ma told his sister, at Foxconn you only work and sleep. And if you should object to being so degraded, you might end up like Ma, forced to clean toilets. This is a plant that has contracts with Apple, Dell, and Hewlitt-Packard.

What is singular about all this is not the work regimen:  long ago that received an apt name—“slavery.”  No, what is singular is the blindness caused by a corporation’s insatiable appetite for profit at all costs, including all human costs. Steve Jobs, when told of the suicides at Foxconn, became defensive and said  only,“It isn’t a sweatshop.”

There was no spark of human compassion awakened, nor a determination to root out evil at its core, the rottenness which makes one human being enslave another. Just a lone defensive reply—“It isn’t a sweatshop.”

As long as Apple keeps the orders for iPhone coming; as long as the profits at the bottom-line keep bulging; as long as Apple’s stock price  keeps rising, then Steve Jobs is happy—and frankly, so are we, who buy these high-tech products stained by the tears, sweat, and blood of our fellow human beings—and exalt at the rise in our stock portfolio.

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• Foxconn Blames Suicides on Personal Problems, Compensation (businessweek.com)
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