All wealth stems from Labor:

Contrary to the oft bantered slogans today, that Capital is the source of wealth, we ought to consider: who are the agents of wealth creation?  The workers of course have a direct input on the wealth gained by capital.  This is especially and obviously true in the manufacturing sector of the economy.  But it should be also noted that capital is required to provide the conditions for the possibility of labor or the creation of wealth.  It might seem that the farmer generated wealth through his crops, by borrowing capital to buy seed, fertilizer, etc, (conditions for the possibility of wealth creation), but something more has to happen at a primordial level.  The farmer has to do something with those conditions for the possibility of wealth, by doing.  That is to say the farmer produces or cultivates.  The seed and fertilizer don’t create wealth in themselves, the farmer is an agent of wealth creation. The manufacturer must use capital to provide space, tools and machinery to accomplish the manufacture, but the laborer must do the work.

Now of course the farmer might speculate on the price of the seed, fertilizer, etc, that he has purchased and wait sufficient time for the price of such to rise and then selling those things.  But this speculation is not real wealth, it is artificial, determined merely by market and inflationary forces.  This is precisely why speculation can generate wealth, but it does not generate anything beyond market and inflation without labor. It is not growth but merely wealth. To truly generate wealth the farmer must work, i.e. labor in the field.

Even those who exploit natural resources for profit, do not gain wealth from capital.  Capital provides the machinery and other conditions for the possibility of wealth, for the extraction of those natural resources.  But there must be some extractor, some labor involved to extract the resource and some labor to sell the resource to a secondary user.  In other words wealth doesn’t simply come from the extraction it must be sold to someone who will use it to manufacture, or fertilize, or otherwise employ the resource.  It is not simply a wealth generation on its own.  Note the word ‘use’ here, because this implies another level of labor beyond the extraction to the generation of wealth.  Note my words here, use, create, employ, generate, extract, produce, buy, sell etc., all of these words imply some kind of labor, some sort of work.

The Boogie Man

Many of us can recall a time as children when we were gripped by unexplainable fears. Those fears controlled many aspects of our young lives. One such fear was our belief in the ‘Boogie Man.’ While we never actually saw the Boogie Man, we instinctively knew that he lurked in the dark recesses of our room and meant to do us harm. His evil presence was palpably felt and had a profound effect upon our mood, and our behavior.

Sometimes when my brothers and I were especially rowdy—presumably in a vain attempt to frighten us into submission—our parents warned us that the Boogie Man was coming to take us away. Only our good behavior, our compliance to our parent’s wishes, could keep him at bay.

Then when we became older we feared the encroachment of all sorts of evil people who would do us harm.  We began to identify them one by one.  There was the milkman who came in and put fresh milk in our refrigerator.  He was dark skinned and usually unshaven he had coal black hair and I thought that sometime he might unleash his evil doings on us children, so I longed for someone who would keep me and my family safe. There was Hobo Joe who came around once in a while and asked mom for a sandwich.  My Mom I’m sure was scared of him, because she fixed him his sandwich and forced him to go eat it somewhere where we wouldn’t see him.  There was that house on the hill they called Rosefield where the nuns held their secret rituals and dressed all in black.  We knew they were in league with the boogie man because they would chant and pray counting their black beads in front of a cross with a half naked man hanging on it. One day Billy Bob, who has just moved with his parents from Alabama, snuck out at night and with some gasoline set the cross afire.  He had seen it done in Alabama and was sure that that would frighten the boogie man enough that he would stay away.   There were them evil Russians who were going to drop Nuclear Weapons on our heads and so our teachers taught us to duck under our desks and cover our heads with our arms, if we didn’t want to get incinerated.  I asked my teacher what good it did to duck and cover if the bomb was going to incinerate us anyway.  The teacher got mad and told me to not question just obey the rules, so I learned to duck and cover, but I always feared I would be burned alive in a crouching position.   Then there was that black man who wasn’t an African American but a fireman on the Pennsylvania Railroad.  He was blacker than any of my friends they called “Negroes”.  One day when he got off the train, when his shift was done, he took a shovel with him and chased us kids out of the yard cussing at us in some language we were sure was the language of the boogie man.  There was that strange church in an old store downtown where Africans would sing and dance and say "Amen" all the time.  They were a frightening lot, because we thought they were doing some strange dance to bring the boogie man out of the closet, where we were sure he lived during the day.

Then, when we became adults, we feared even more evil people. Then there was my boss, who constantly yelled at us and demanded that we work harder, because after all he was paying us and paying us for every minute we were on the job.  He cussed and swore like a trooper.  Speaking of a trooper, there was that evil looking guy who forced us off the highway that one day for driving 57mph in a 55mph zone and discovered that our license  (tags) were due on July 31 and it now was August 1.  Boy did he give me a talking-to.  He shouted at me and demanded that I learn the traffic laws and obey them to the letter and if I didn’t stop complaining, he would run me in. I longed for a knight in shining armor to rescue me from the injustice of it all.  There was that big boozer of a fella who robbed the liquor store next to where I worked and shot the owner.  He was frightening because he was always drunk and yelled at us anytime we would pass by the alley where he slept at night.  There was that preacher man from Alabama who had a dream and kept marching with his people around the country causing riots in places like Watts and Detroit.  There were those crazed and disloyal cowards of college students who kept burning their draft cards and made the Governors of 3 states send in the National Guard to drive them off the University campuses, and to shoot some of them in Ohio to put a stop to it.

Fear not the Boogie man my friends, he is only a phantom of our imagination put there by others to control us and make us be obedient to them.

Upstairs-Downstairs morality

Many readers will remember the British TV series Upstairs-Downstairs a kind of soap opera for intellectuals set in Edwardian and Georgian (George V) England with its strict rules of the aristocracy and the downstairs servant classes, where the morality of the servants was imposed on them by traditions laid down by the upper classes and the church, but that same morality did not apply to the upper class Aristocrats.

We seem to be living in an Upstairs-Downstairs world today.  Our Political leaders rail against all sorts of immoral behavior of their opposing parties, and it appears as if all these aristocratic leaders commit the same moral indiscretions no matter which political party or class from which they come.  In fact there might be made a good case that once a person become an aristocratic political leader, the rules of morality and common decency which they wish to apply to lower classes of society no longer apply to them.  In a sense one of the major reasons for becoming a political aristocrat is that one no longer has to obey the rules of morality, but only the rules of apparent decency with regard to one’s conduct.  If it has the appearance of impropriety, no expense in too much to cover it up or blame another party for one’s moral indiscretions.  Morality no longer becomes a matter of values and obedience to the principles in general imposed on lower classes, but rather the values of “how it appears” is uppermost in the aristocratic mind such that a good living can be made acting as cover for the aristocrat’s missteps. 

In fact one could also make a good case that this is on a sliding scale.  The professional class has rules of behavior which applies to them, but does not apply to the worker class.  For instance sexual dalliances and outright theft by professionals is tolerated to a large extent, while considered criminal or sinful if done by working class folks.  Thus if one commits these sins or crimes upon members of a class lower than oneself it seems out-rightly excusable, but if one does these same things to a member of one’s own class or a class above one’s own, then it is considered criminal or sinful.  Consider the sexual dalliances of our representatives and the outright theft of monies not belonging to them, but to their clients as examples of the above.  As of late many lower class individuals have become aware of the situation and there is a great political anger that their 401Ks have been looted by aristocrats living “high on the hog” so to speak, while they bear the pain of economic recovery both personal and national in the form of lost employment and employment opportunities and even cuts in pay or higher taxation in order that the economy of the government (and governments the world around) have the ability to sustain themselves.  The rules apply to lower classes only, it seems, prompting some preachers to declare: “if you want to steal, don’t steal from a convenience business or liquor store, and for heaven’s sake don’t bring a gun, but steal a little from each person that way you will easily get away with it or at most get a prison sentence in a luxury estate, but if you commit theft in the former fashion you will surely go to jail for a long time.”

The same applies to sexual dalliances.  If one commits a sexual indiscretion with someone who is a member of one’s own class it is scandalous, and if one commits the same indiscretion with someone of a class above, it is out-rightly sinful if not criminal; but if one commits the same with someone of a class lower than one’s own it is often excused or the other party is blamed for trying to “rise up” on the social ladder. 

Perhaps it is my working class roots, perhaps my education or my awareness of the times, but I have become dismayed that morality is more a matter of class than universal rules of behavior.  Immanuel Kant must be rolling over in his grave.  Since I am at root in the lower class, I cannot understand the current situation as my “betters” do.  Perhaps I’m downstairs and ought not to question what goes on upstairs or I will become less apt to think of upstairs folk as my “betters”.

Rights - An Independence Day Meditation

We often think we get our rights from Government.  Governments do not grant rights, rights belong to persons because they are persons; Governments grant privileges.   We, the people grant the Government its powers by our consent, not the other way around. Read the preamble to our Constitution.

Today we seem to equate freedom with the right to conduct business without government interference.  But that is a total misunderstanding brought about by a Neo-Conservative ideology. We think we can be the righteous policemen for the world.  We think we have an inalienable right to “spread democracy around the world”.  But is it Democracy or a Neo-Conservative Oligarchy.  We can best honor our forefathers by trying to understand the very principles they fought and died for-- “Individual Rights”.  I realize 9-11 changed everything, but should it, or more properly, ought it to have changed anything.  The greatest defense we have against tyranny and terrorists is our freedom, or should I say, our liberty. And some of us will inevitably die for that principle of Liberty, perhaps I will.   I don’t want anyone to seize and search my papers without cause and that does not mean just my financial records, as neo-conservatives would have it.  I don’t want to be required to be a witness against myself or my property seized without compensation which is just and for a just reason, not just so that someone can make a profit from my property.  It’s mine I don’t rent it from the government, I purchased it from the previous owner.   I don’t want my phone-calls or e-mails monitored or my thoughts scrutinized for heresy or because it disagrees with the prevailing political view. 

There is and ought to be no thought police. And most of all if the Constitution doesn’t specify a power of the Government I RESERVE IT FOR MYSELF.  (See amendment #9)

If we allow terrorists and terrorist actions like 9-11 to create a society of fear, we have allowed them to win.   As the disco group from Sweden ABBA said:

“My my, at Waterloo Napoleon did surrender
Oh yeah, and I have met my destiny in quite a similar way
The history book on the shelf
Is always repeating itself”

I know the song is about something else, but the beginning applies.  The tyranny we live under today from our fear of terrorists is nothing better than the tyranny my ancestors lived under in Holland under Napoleon.  They came to this country for economic betterment and the liberty of politics and their pietistic Religion.   I can best honor their memory by being against terror and tyranny.  “The only thing we really need to fear is fear itself.” –Franklin Roosevelt. 

You see:  I will not give up Liberty for Security, because there is more security in my liberty than there ever can be liberty in security.

“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” --Thomas Jefferson  (It’s written on his tombstone).

 My best efforts and my allegiance I swear to give to that principle which is the fundamental principle of the Enlightenment and Libertarianism.  I am “an End unto Myself”

So NOW you know where I stand. 

I stand for my liberty of thought!

But…

I also stand for your Liberty to disagree. (YOUR Liberty of Thought)

My Niece's Day

Today is my Niece’s Wedding, and to send her off on the adventure we call “eternal love” I offer this poem I wrote before she was a glimmer in her father’s eye and only an idle hope in her mother’s heart.  It was true then and still is today on this her wedding day.

ΠΝΕΥΜΑ ΘΕΟΥ

Love is not a human emotion,

rather more a divine elation.

Ἐκστάσια θεῖα

ἡ ἀνθρῶπου φιλία.

More like life than death,

man moves from that divine breath

which makes him a spirit,

the love that cannot quit.

When a woman loves a man,

she finds The Master in him.

When a man loves a woman

he has found his Mary Magdalene.

                                    June 17, 1973

 

To my niece: my wish for her is nothing less than the best, or as our ancestors would say "Het Beste".

My Theology

My views are much more subtle than most, so bear with me by my attempt to say what I believe.

1) There is a God, and He created everything that is, out of nothing, id est no-thing.  God is and what His “is” is I cannot fully comprehend.

2) God does not exist, for to assert univocally that God exists is to limit Him and God is unlimited Being and Freedom.

3) God persists, resists, desists, insists and subsists, but does not exist. We can only say that God exists by analogy, since it is impossible for a limited entity to have perfect knowledge of the unlimited.

4) God is a person but not in the sense of a prosopon, but in the sense of a hypostasis, the two Greek words for Person.

5) The universe exists as a creation of God and God not only created and creates the world (the infinite vastness of it tells me this), but He imbues it with meaning. If the world and the universe just came about by accident, it would have no meaning and there would be no sense to speaking about cosmology or the universe, since it would have no meaning and hence be nothing and not an object of human thought.

6) God is worthy of worship, and how we choose to worship Him is immaterial to that worthiness. I can see God and feel His presence in a Catholic Mass, a Protestant service, a gathering of a Synagogue or a Hindu Temple and/or Shinto shrine.

7) When I climb up to the hills on a dark and clear night and examine the starry heavens above, I feel I am in the presence of God and feel His divine transcendence; when I look inward in times of trouble or when I have decisions to make, I feel God’s presence and I experience his immanence; This means that God is capable of hearing and answering prayer even though I may not like His answer.

8) Since God is the Raison d'être of all that exists, he is known not only by faith, but also by reason.  But my reason may be faulty.

9) God's commands are the source of all morality and that does not mean that what is right is what God commands, but merely that God commands what is right, these two things differ from one another. God's commands can be summarized in one word LOVE.

10) God is Love and those who do not know or cannot bring themselves to love, cannot know God.

The Dark Stain on Harvard Crimson

A little over a century ago a dark stain was put on Harvard University which no amount of detergent or soap could ever fully erase.

In the spring of 1895, Mary Whiton Calkins an instructor in Greek from Wellesley College presented her thesis at Harvard, on 'An experimental research on the association of ideas'. At the examination, held May 28, 1895, before Professors Palmer, James, Royce, Munsterberg, Harris and Dr. Santayana, it was unanimously voted that "Miss Calkins satisfied all customary requirements for the degree". In Harvard's records this communication was noted, but not considered.  Harvard refused to grant her the degree, and there ensued some bitter letters to the Regents and Trustees of the Harvard Corporation from Royce, James and Munsterberg. Royce who was teaching a course at Radcliff and some of the others asked the authorities at Radcliff to grant her a degree and they agreed.  But Mary refused because she had attended Lectures and Seminars at Harvard, and thus deserved a degree from Harvard.  Can anyone blame her for that attitude? No! and neither could any of her committee. 

Mary returned to Wellesley where she continued to teach Psychology, Philosophy, Greek and other subjects. In 1905, Calkins was elected president of the American Psychological Association and the president of the American Philosophical Association in 1918. Her achievements brought her a number of honors in addition to these presidencies. In a 1908 list of leading psychologists in the United States, Calkins was ranked twelfth of the list. Columbia University bestowed a Doctor of Letters degree on her in 1909 and Smith College a Doctor of Laws degree in 1910. Both Columbia and Smith also offered her positions on their faculty which she declined, partly because of the responsibility she felt to remain with and look after the welfare of her parents.  Mary was the only person to hold the position of president of both these APAs (American Philosophical Association and American Psychological Association).

Today, Harvard has made great strides in erasing that stain on its reputation that never  will be fully erased, but it has considerably faded by electing Drew Gilpin Faust as its 28th president and first female President. 

Dr. Santayana from Mary's committee was that philosopher who said "those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it".  Thank God he was in part wrong. 

Something else is greatly appreciated in Drew Gilpin Faust's election is that the President of Harvard will come from the Liberal Arts something for which Harvard used to be famous.  Good-bye to Business School supremacy.  It is long past time that the Premier University in this country grant the Liberal Arts its due position in the University.

Women have come a long way on a long, too long, journey, and it is now time they get exactly what they deserve for who they are, what they as individuals accomplish and not any other reason.