Threads

Dangling threads command your attention.

They wait for you to weave them,
first inward,
then outward
on your spiraling strands.

It never will be done;
the weaving goes on forever.

Hard work,
even tedious;
But what you weave is a garden,
the garden of your soul,
in which you grow yourself,
and the places you’ll go
will glow
with all the colors of your dreams.

So, let those threads command!
The Kosmos awaits your reply:
what are you waiting for?
Weave, weave; for God’s sake, weave!

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Reflections on Social Networking by Computer: Living From Our Smallness

If you have not read it, I highly commend to you an article (in the November 2010 issue of the New York Review of Books) by Zadie Smith, entitled Generation Why? 


The article offers some review and commentary on the much discussed film The Social Network, and also includes some bit of review and context from You are not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jerome Lanier.

Zadie Smith amazed me by putting into print a lot of the discussion I have been having (with myself in my mind, and with peers) about being part of the "Facebook Generation". The title grabbed me, first of all: why? Is all really about networking? What do we get from sharing what is often most banal of our daily existence with our list of friends?

Not much in the way of substance seems to be my answer and Smith's.

I don't ultimately think this lack of substance is horrible, but I do think that if one seeks deeper and more integral relationship with family, friends and other travelers on this grand journey of ours, the first place one can count on not finding that is on Facebook.

Once again, I can feel the outcry "Luddite! Luddite!"

Not at all, not at all. No, not so.

Here are the things I really like about Facebook: I have been able to reconnect with people I knew in High School and elsewhere. There are people that I really wanted to keep in touch with, and it was a shame that we all lost track of one another when we went off to university, got married, moved away, such and so on, etc. I love being able to see what people have done in their lives. It is marvelous to be able to "chat" with people in other parts of the world. To share recipes and jokes. Possibly the biggest plus is to get the earliest report of some critical national or international news happening from someone closest to the scene.

But, as Ms. Smith points out in her article, all this had been possible before Facebook, and is possible now through various other computer options. While Facebook is touted as being all about networking, it is really all about taking our "personal information," mostly in the form of our likes and dislikes, and forwarding this to various parsing agencies that will, over time, bombard us with offers based on them. In other words, it is not about promoting brotherhood and sisterhood, but about promoting sales.

If you are a member of Facebook, you don't have as many choices as you might think you have for controlling the your personal information, and what is available reaches a wider audience than you would imagine. You might not want to have everyone be your friend, first of all. And you might not want to have some of the quips you share with pals be shared with absolutely everyone you know and all the people they and their friends and family know. But that happens, and we have no control over it. We are at the mercy of our most unguarded moments on the internet. And it is can be hilariously laughable, such as this very funny BBC satire of Queen Elizabeth as Facebook member.

Hilarious. Laughable. Okay, now what?

The internet was invented to be a tool for the free exchange of information, but, to some extent there is nothing free about it, and what is being exchanged is our personal dignity. Why? Because all of our cute (or not so cute) little quips and quirks live on and on, even after we have departed from the internet or, indeed, the world. Zadie Smith recounts that the FB "wall" of a murdered British teen had notices from people to the deceased, as if she was still alive or would be checking her FB account from the grave.

I have not seen The Social Network, yet, and I am not sure that I particularly want to. Yes, I am sure that the portrait of Mark Zuckerberg is slanted in a particularly vile way, and I am equally sure that Zuckerberg is the kind of geek that lives from and through his computer.

There is a smallness about boiling the human brain and heart down to binary code in "if-then-else" language parsing. I have not read You Are Not A Gadget, by Lanier--but I plan to, based on what Zadie Smith has shared in her NY Review article, and what I see in an excerpt made available by the publisher through the New York Times. It is clear the book is a reminder that being is much more than the sum of parts. Here is a quote from Lanier's book: "Information systems need to have information in order to run, but information underrepresents reality."

Facebook can only ever show an extremely limited portion of our reality. It boils us down to the smallest we can be, for as many people as want to view that. This is not where revolutions will be fostered, or world peace, or very much, indeed, in the way of achievement. Marketing and sales are likely all we can expect of Facebook. And what we share there, discreet or indiscreet, will be "carried forward" into whatever fad the next computer generation cooks up, networking or otherwise.

We'll never be able to live large or deeply on Facebook. And, thankfully, we don't have to live on Facebook at all.

Rain in the Desert

Drops fall from the sky;
infinite views of life that glitter
as small globes of resonance,
while they land and find place,
pooling in community to be
common with one another,
one in another,
ad infinitum.

Each a message,
together a manifesto,
a movement gradual
that gathers swift momentum,
swirling from puddle to pool to rivulet,
thence on to stream and river,
then rolling on into ocean.

This is love;
without this wet and wild kiss,
there is no life.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Mandoline

Plectrum moves across the strings,
finding melodies
in imitation
of songs ancient and modern.

She does not sing the words
--that would be superfluous:
life is the music,
the words are the life;
unbidden, they float on the melodies
of their own concordant accord,
weaving the world into being.

The player smiles,
knowing this.

There is even no need to make music:

We are the instruments,
all of life is the music,
if we would but listen
to one another;
within and without,
we should be able to hear it
playing our hearts.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Dreaming

The desert has been so wide,
no thought has been able to take root.

At once, a passing thought did tread,
only to die for lack of food and water;
relegated to delusion by way of miraging masquerade
for lack of moisture that might explore a truer shape.

Loneliness and wondering;
Loneliness and wandering.

The sun carves deep shadows and dries them
into the shape the arroyos take.

Thirst—
drought—
death…

Lightening—
storm—
flood—

Motions of notions,
so thick the whole earth could not contain them,
and caught, as I am, in this flash flooded desert,
I can barely grasp a single thread,
much less find my feet long enough
to follow any path that might be drawn.

Follow!  Follow us!  Follow us all!
taunt the silken strands of thought,
but I cannot stem their tide and bide,
and so caught in their merry pranking pools,
I drown.

© 2010 Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Fear and Trembling, Sold and Purchased

More and more, I think we live in what Frances Moore Lappé calls “a thin Democracy.” In her 2007 book, Getting A Grip, she demonstrates that one of the major thinning aspect of democracy is the existence of, not to mention the over-riding interest of, capitalism and free market economy. Lappé suggests that we are sold on the idea of scarcity, and that the complicit, if not leading, marketplace drives consumption by promoting fear. Lappé is not the only person to have made this observation.

In an interview with Amy Goodman on the radio program Democracy Now!, Naomi Klein, author of Shock Doctrine; the Rise of Disaster Capitalism and other books, said. 

[Milton] Friedman believed in a radical vision of society in which profit and the market drive every aspect of life, from schools to healthcare, even the army. He called for abolishing all trade protections, deregulating all prices and eviscerating government services.

These ideas have always been tremendously unpopular, and understandably so. They cause waves of unemployment, send prices soaring, and make life more precarious for millions. Unable to advance their agenda democratically, Friedman and his disciples were drawn to the power of shock… Friedman understood that just as prisoners are softened up for interrogation by the shock of their capture, massive disasters could serve to soften us up for his radical free-market crusade. He advised politicians that immediately after a crisis, they should push through all the painful policies at once, before people could regain their footing. He called this method "economic shock treatment." I call it "the shock doctrine."

Take a second look at the iconic events of our era, and behind many you will find its logic at work. This is the secret history of the free market. It wasn’t born in freedom and democracy; it was born in shock.

To return to Frances Moore Lappe:

… Private power supersedes public power—as FDR warned us seven decades ago… To pick just a few frightening examples:

* for almost six years after 9/11, the chemical industry lobby was able to resist measures needed to secure fifteen thousand chemical plants against attack.

* While five thousand Americans die annually from food-borne illnesses, the food industry is able to block mandatory recalls.

* Ex-oil lobbyist Philip Cooney was so tight with the Bush White House that he edited official reports to downplay climate change.

* Pharmaceutical lobbyists helped craft a healthcare law that forbids Medicare to negotiate drug prices—while we pay double what Europeans do for identical drugs.

The biggest product on the market today is fear. We purchase fear every day, in the form of some product marketed to protect us. Overstatement?

Think about the recent H1N1 pandemic that was forecast and, supposedly, averted by means of a vaccine. Do you remember how there was a scarcity of the vaccine? Then, suddenly, a huge flood of the vaccine hit the marketplace, but mostly right after the containment of the outbreaks. This did not stop people from purchasing the vaccine. Interesting that we had to purchase it, if we wanted it and didn't have a health plan that provided it. When I was a child, inoculations against Rubella were given to every school child by the county health department, for free. People purchased the H1N1 vaccine based on their fear, not because there was an outbreak, or even just a few reported cases, in their area.

Now, think about the new TSA (Transportation Security Administration) airport security pat downs. The fear being marketed here is terrorism. The price of your airline ticket entitles you to the indignities of an extremely invasive full-body search, that by law you must submit yourself to. The public outcry has been loud. But Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and TSA Administrator John Pistole Monday claim the new practices are necessary to protect the flying public.

Now, recall the last visit you made to your local pharmacy. Have you looked around the shelves immediately adjacent to the pharmacist’s window? What are the primary products lining those shelves? I’ll tell: hand sanitizer. The fear being marketed here is germs, viruses and bacteria that lead to sickness and possibly death. The sanitizers that are alcohol based are probably fine, unless over-used, but those that are marketed as being anti-bacterial are probably overkill. Why? Because, as a friend of mine who is an emergency room physician said, “oh, these products are good. They are so good that they take away the good stuff as well as the bad stuff.”  The human body naturally contains bacteria, yeast fungi,  and bunches of other things like protists and archaea. Details from www.wisegeek.com: 

Bacteria help digest complex carbohydrates which would be indigestible otherwise, promote growth of intestinal cells, repress pathogenic microbes, prevent allergies, inflammatory bowel disease, and play crucial roles in the immune system. Body flora and the body it occupies have been co-evolving for tens of millions of years. 

Is it possible that we are fiddling with the delicate balance of our immune systems when we over-use some of these products, rather than rely on soap and water as our first line of hygiene? I know octogenarians who have never received flu shots and have never used hand sanitizers. They are some of the healthiest people I have ever met.

On a website called Medical News Today, there is a “fact” page about hand sanitizer. The information for this “fact” page has been provided by Johnson & Johnson Consumer Companies the makers of Purell ®. I quote from it: 

Do you have enough PURELL(R) products available to consumers? 

We are committed to providing optimal distribution of the product to meet the increasing need and demand, particularly in areas where cases of illness outbreaks have been reported.

I find that an interesting statement, from a marketing perspective. It speaks to the issue of scarcity,  relieving potential consumer fear of not being able to obtain the product.

I do not suggest that an alcohol based hand product is a necessarily a bad thing for people, but that we have been advised to use a lot of it, and in situations where washing the hands with soap and water might be quite sufficient. This USA Today article from 2007 talks about the kind of money these products generate for their producers: 

U.S. hand sanitizer sales have grown in double digits since 2003, according to marketing data company ACNielsen. Through late 2006, sales in supermarkets and drugstores alone were up 14.4% from 2005 to $70 million, with Purell the market leader at $36.6 million. That growth built on a huge 53.5% rise in 2005, according to ACNielsen.

 What I suggest is that we need to think about what is being marketed and by whom. I think that we are steered into paying out big money to buy fear, and that there are no regulations to protect us from the fear peddlers, many of whom are big business lobbyist in Washington, D.C.

If you have not read Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, I highly recommend the book.

// 

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/9/17/the_shock_doctrine_naomi_klein_on

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/148203.php

http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/2007-01-03-santizers_x.htm

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-some-types-of-body-flora.htm

Moore Lappé, Frances. Getting A Grip. Small Planet Media Group, 2007. Pp. 13, 17.

Book of Hours

As if in manuscript,

our days and hours
drift, as they will,
like autumn leaves
falling from a tree.

Pages turn,
although some marginalia
tries to overcome errata
by means of a tenuous grip
on aging parchment,
so to further one conversation
over another.

Pages turn,
witnessing the passing
of time and place,
and people.

As the pages turn,
we remember
the counterpoint
of joy and woe
as a fuller music,
more strident,
even more poignant,
though now we sense it
as a gentler melody.

As the pages turn,
a time will come
when we are there no longer
to witness or feel the change,
and no witness left to us.

Pages turn;
for now, awareness and being
are grounded in being fully here,
of mind and spirit,
while we can be,
to greet the subtle music
of sun and moon,
even as the body
drifts away, towards
a different kind of voyage.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen