Critical Theory

Critical Theory vs. critical thinking

Cheat Sheet No. 2.

Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in debilitating psychological trauma.  

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"People of various and sundry hues claiming that all people of pallor are racists born with unearned privilege is pure, unadulterated bonkercockie." -Me 

From Cheat Sheet No. 1: Cheat Sheets are a sort of distillation of all the stuff I would like to mention, or reiterate, to the Stickies and my daughter and son-in-law in the event of my sudden demise.

(I'm turning 70 this year.)

Hopefully, this will provide some life guidance and provide comfort for their devastated hearts (and for the lack of cash left on the table).

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

To explain, in my semi-humble opinion, what Critical Theory is, I would first explore what critical thinking is.

Long story short (this is a cheat sheet after all) critical thinking is one of the hoogely important reasons that I, and hopefully you, find myself living in one of the unbelievably prosperous and reasonably free countries that are the products of Western Civilization.

Nowadays, the term Western Civilization has been demoted by many to merely Western culture. For reasons of political correctness, it's no longer cool in certain circles to espouse that despite its flaws it's the best H. sapiens have done so far. 

To think critically means to use logic and reason to try and get to the bottom of something while setting aside, at least as much as possible, emotion. To think like a good scientist for example. To seek out, continuously, what is objectively true (enough) to be of use to almost everyone. 

{Continuously? True (enough)? Almost everyone?} 

The writer finds a way to cleverly dodge the endless bonkercocky devoted to debating whether anything is actually objectively true, Dana, whether there's such a thing as settled science, or whether it's possible for a human being to ever completely set aside emotion (it ain't, trust me).

Suffice it to say, to a practical, pragmatic, and well-adjusted adult, true enough will suffice till the next paradigm-busting breakthrough comes along. Please google the terms Scientific Revolution and Age of Enlightenment for edification and clarification. 

The only thing Critical Theory has in common with critical thinking is the word critical. Critical thinking aims to figure out what something is, how it works, how it got that way, etc. Equipped with this information, and by adding a dash of evolved tradition and a pinch of what we've learned the hard way (history), you can then try to figure out what to do with this knowledge. 

Used more or (often) less wisely, and with a bit of luck, flawed, imperfect H. sapiens have managed to construct the most advanced civilization the planet Earth has seen so far, assuming of course you think prosperity and freedom are good things. 

Critical Theory, on the other hand, is the opposite approach. Choose a desired result, Utopia, and then set aside human nature, what's realistically possible, the law of unintended consequences, history, etc. — and then get to work. 

The first step is to destroy the existing traditions and institutions that stand in the way of establishing heaven on Earth. This ain't easy since, as Karl Marx warned us, many people are so dumb they don't realize they're somebody's victim and need to wake up (be awokened?).     

Critical theory is that kid you knew in high school that never got tired of saying, "Real communism has like, never really been tried." 

What can an intelligent, highly-educated (and embarrassed) Marxist do in the 1930s when it's been revealed that the Russian revolution has unleashed a bloodthirsty ideological monster that will murder, give or take, 100,000,000 counter-revolutionaries by the time the world is partying 'cause it's 1999? 

And worse yet, for some mysterious reason, the world's oppressed masses, due to their false consciousness... 

⯿⯿⯿

("False consciousness denotes people’s inability to recognize inequality, oppression, and exploitation in a capitalist society..." -Encyclopaedia Britannica) 

...have declined an invitation to the party and aren't burning down the house, and everything else, as foretold by St. Karl?

A group of professors (the "Frankfurt School") in Germany, and others, coalesced around Critical Theory. Still Marxism, but New and Improved! They weren't about continuously, often painfully, seeking out the Good, the True, and the Beautiful (a preoccupation of many a critical thinker).   

From Wikipedia:  

"A critical theory is any approach to social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to attempt to reveal, critique, and challenge power structures." (My emphasis.) Max Horkheimer said that Critical theory seeks "to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them."

In other words: Western Civilization isn't the result of thousands of years of groping around in the dark, trying to find the best possible way to live, given that we're flawed by nature and Utopia is impossible. It's merely how people that conducted/conduct their lives accordingly have enslaved everyone that doesn't. 

But killing the nay-sayers, starting from scratch, and organizing one, big, happy commune wherein everyone shared everything equally didn't work out very well in Russia.

Plan B? Figuratively burning it down by revolutionizing the institutions one at a time. The professors who invented the Frankfurt school fled Germany to avoid being killed by the Nazis and landed on U.S. college campuses. 

{Did they say thanks?}

The virus slowly but steadily spread from there, eventually bonded with postmodernism, and is now an epidemic. Everyone can "self-identify" as whatever they please, truth is whatever anyone says it is, and the de facto motto of many in the West is: If it feels good, do it.   

Bottom line: Wokies genuinely believe that there are only two kinds of people in the world, the oppressors and the oppressed, and that the tenets and traditions of so-called Western Civilization are merely a paradigm devised by Caucasian males to exploit everyone else. 

Wokies genuinely believe that if you don't accept this you're asleep and thus not worth debating much less being allowed to freely state your heretical views. Confess your sins or be canceled.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Implicit Bias and Systemic Racism

Image by Peter Wolf from Pixabay 

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown. 

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"Can we all just get along?" -Rodney King

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

Early in 1985 me and wild-eyed Walter were doing reconnaissance deep in the heart of Texas. Our mission was to find a home for some ice cream trucks owned by Tom and Miss Kitty, former residents of a rapidly rusting Cincinnati, Ohio.

Tom and Miss Kitty got out of Dodge after most of the local players in heavy industry had done the same and took a lot of jobs with them. They drove their herd of ice cream trucks in a direction that would've seemed counterintuitive to a cowboy and put them to work on the streets of Laredo Austin.

They had more trucks than they needed to serve the good people of Austin and this is why wild-eyed Walter and I were driving from town to town in ice cream trucks in the deep south of the Deep South, South Texas. 

We were exploring south of San Antonio and north of Mexico. The population stats of lots of small towns, and one large one, indicated there were a lot of people down there who just might be in need of an ice cream truck.  

There was/is a lot of mostly empty space between those towns. If you've never been to Texas it's hard to appreciate just how hooge it actually is, even at the narrow end near the Mexican border. 

But Tom and Miss Kitty figgered, sorry, figured, that given that there were a lot of folks down there, and given the fact their winters were often radically different from those experienced by the people that lived at the opposite end of the state, the Texas Panhandle — palm trees as opposed to occasional Blue Norther — there might be some money to be made.

{What's a Blue Norther?} 

It's even colder than it sounds... follow the link.

 

The one large town, Corpus Christi (our first stop) already had a herd of ice cream trucks, so we reluctantly saddled up and hit the trail.

{Reluctantly?}

It's a beautiful party town on the Gulf of Mexico and I was a much younger, completely unattached man at the time pursuing a geographic cure for a broken heart that I had picked up in Pittsburgh.

Now, as you might expect, given the fact that Southern Texas borders Mexico and that all of Texas was once part of Mexico, there are a lot of Latinxers living there. 

{The plural of Latinx is Latinxs, there's no such word as Latinxers.}

Wait a sec', I'll be right back...

Hmmm... from what I can tell, Dana, most Latinos, Latinas, and/or Hispanics think there's no such word as Latinx.

{Could we move on, please?}

Yep. Alls I know is that when I found myself attempting to pedal my popsicles in neighborhoods top-heavy with children that were apparently... 

All I know is that in certain neighborhoods a lot of kids who struck me (of course I could be wrong) as being of a certain heritage came up to my truck and spoke to me in Spanish. 

Having studied Spanish for two years in high school I shrugged and replied, "No hablo Espanol," reasonably confident that these 3 of the 6 or so Spanish words I remembered expressed that I didn't speak Spanish. 

I may have been wrong though because many of them laughed and walked away. Sometimes they threw rocks at my truck whereupon I got outta Dodge. Wild-eyed Walter was temporarily arrested in a small town by a cop he thought might be of a certain heritage for peddling popsicles without a permit but he was released when the evening shift, both officers, reported for duty.

I suspect we may have been the victims of implicit bias, but such is life. We honestly weren't that surprised, all things considered, especially history.

{Next, you'll be claiming you were a victim of systemic racism.} 

  

Nope, no such thing. Scientists say race is a social construct, and I agree. 

Everyone knows Adam and Eve were Africans but we're all mongrels who tend to identify/bond with groups that we share physical/cultural/etceterological characteristics because H. sapiens are tribal (a survival mechanism) by nature.

Systemic Implicit Bias is everywhere but we can closely monitor it in ourselves and strive for objectivity because we can't prevent it or get rid of it, nor should we want to. Survival mechanisms can come in handy.

After all, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you." -Joseph Heller, Catch-22 

But on the other hand, they might not be, it might be you. 

{But what about all the fuss about systemic racism?}

Follow the money. There are literally thousands of people earning their daily bread, some of 'em caviar, working in an industry that didn't exist a minute ago. 

Have they accomplished anything besides personal job security, the occasional financial scandal, and guilt relief for the upper classes that send their kids to private schools and have abandoned the poorest kids of all colors to the powerful teacher's unions of crumbling and corrupt urban hellscapes?

Just askin'.  

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

P.S. Free bonus quote: "When I'm no longer rapping, I want to open up an ice cream parlor and call myself Scoop Dog." -Snoop Dog

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God Is Dead?

The search for meaning.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"If everything in the world is meaningless, what prevents you from inventing some meaning?" -Lewis Carroll

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

{You're going to hell!}

Perhaps Dana, but permit me to hastily explain what I mean by the title I decided on before some of the gentle, loving members of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) show up and start picketing and hurling curses at me. 

{Who?}

Never heard of them? You should check out their website, it's quite, um, interesting. They're the lovely people that turn up on the news occasionally carrying signs that say God Hates Fags. 

For the record, I don't think God is dead, but I'm not above occasionally offering up some clickbait. 

However, for all sorts of people, God is no longer factored into how they conduct their lives. In many cultures, ours for example, the rift between believers and non-believers seems to keep getting bigger; it's one of the major reasons the list of things we have in common keeps getting smaller.

Apropos of um... my strange sense of humor? The philosopher Nietzche is often blamed/credited for declaring that God's dead, however, other philosophers have done so as well. But he said it in a book he wrote called The Gay Science — which has nothing to do with anyone's sexual orientation.

But if not for the fact I'm a gentleperson and reformed (more or less) troublemaker, I'd alert the WBC and try to get 'em fired up so they have yet another abomination to deal with. They do seem to enjoy themselves. What's more fun than knowing you and yours are headed for heaven and everyone else is headed for hell?   

Anyways, even the beliefs of many traditional believers have evolved and will continue to evolve over time, yet another source of discord putting pressure on all the kids that try to share the playground peacefully. 

{Harumph! Do you really believe in God?}

Put me down as being a graduate of the Higher Power school, the same one the recovering drunks and druggies all went to. 

{You're going to hell!}

Well, I don't think I'm going to hell, but then again, I am wrong, with disturbing regularity, about all sorts of stuff. 

{You're always saying that but I still think...}

I'm more concerned about the militant atheists with psyches set on auto-sneer who condemn the higher-power people and conventionally religious souls out of hand despite how demonstrably well both views work for lots of people. 

Not to mention the conventionally religious people, also under the influence of auto-sneer, who won't accept that it's possible to be virtuous, fulfilled, and reasonably content without being conventionally religious, perhaps not even believing in God.

Just because one doesn't dig where a given other is coming from doesn't mean we can't...

{Dig? Nobody uses the word dig the way you just did anymore.}

You just don't dig me. 

It's quite simple. Really. It's possible to live a rich and meaningful life no matter what you believe, or don't. Just choose a meaning or three, leave everyone else alone, and carefully climb down off of that high horse before you hurt yourself. 

Albert Camus was an Algerian-born French philosopher, author, dramatist, and journalist who fought for the Free French in WW2 and won the Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44. 

He didn't believe in God, systematic philosophy, or that there was an inherent meaning to be found in the universe, but he said that since we can't help looking for God, meaning, and answers to questions the universe won't answer, we're caught in an absurd situation. 

What to do?  

I found a quote (unproven) attributed to him: "Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?" In my semi-humble opinion, the quote, true or not, is true enough. He famously, and definitely, said that “There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”

I'm vastly oversimplifying and highly unqualified to state what his answer to the coffee question would be but I'm going to do it anyway. Have a good cup of coffee and embrace what life has to offer, not despair. Look life in the eye, accept experience on its own terms, and wring all joy you can out of it.

"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart."

Excellent advice for the hardcore absurdists, nihilists, and etceterists among us. Fill your emptiness with what happiness you can find, not despair, and stop taking your angst out on the rest of us, particularly the innocents.   

Camus would likely consider me naive since I think anyone can find personal meaning, maybe even God, if they stop whining, get off their bum, and pursue whatever they think will make their life a little better — while avoiding stepping on someone else's life. 

{I still think you're going to hell.}    

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down to share my work/access oldies. Tip me, or Join Cranky's Coffee Club (and access my condensed History of the World), here.    

Comments? I post links to my columns on Facebook and Twitter so you love me, hate me, or try to have me canceled on either site. Cranky don't tweet.   

  

  

Artificial Intelligence

"It's Alive!" -Victor Fronkensteen

Image by Julius H. from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"Shall we play a GAME?" -W.O.P.R.

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

I wasn't worried, till recently, about artificial intelligence obtaining sentience... or sapience, self-awareness, consciousness, etcetera.  

To give credit where credit is due, I got all the $2.00 words above (I contributed the etcetera) from the first paragraph of a Wikipedia entry titled Sentience wherein the first sentence is: Sentience is the capacity of a being to experience feelings and sensations.

I thought it best to mention all those words because as the article explains, they're used interchangeably by writers expounding upon what life and (self)consciousness is. 

Some people are worried that AI, like Dr. Frankenstein's monster, will come alive and then murder us all, replacing us at the top of the food chain (so to speak, since it will have no use for meat). 

{Do you have a point or is this column going to be a fascinating etymological exposition?}

My point is that all of those words and more are currently being bandied about by H. sapiens worried that since AI, artificial intelligence technology, is now powerful enough to carry on more (or less) convincing conversations with those of us who don't require a power cord or batteries to function,

And/or used to create "deep fakes" of all sorts of things and create art, music, writing, etc, and even pass the Bar exam,  

So that soon, we'll be dealing with a machine that for all intents and purposes, is alive. 

{None of this worried you, but now it does?}

Well, I was, and remain concerned about the fact that no shortage of potential major societal disruptions have appeared on the horizon and are closing fast. But I have a limited amount of time left on the clock, and to be honest, stickin' around long enough to see where all this is headed motivates me to keep getting out of bed in the morning.

{I'll bet you enjoy multi-car pile-ups as well.} 

I was, and remain, worried about what it means for my daughter, son-in-law, and the Stickies, of course, but one of the advantages of getting old older is grasping that I have even less ability to fix the world than I previously realized. 

Accept the things you can't change, advise the young as best you can, and enjoy the show if you're fortunate enough to be in a position to do so. Oh, and don't take it personally if the young(er) folks don't take your advice any more seriously than you necessarily did from your elders.

Big BUT, 

I had just assumed that a "Chatbot," for example, is merely very clever software that has "learned" to speak to humans by using brute force computer processing power the same way a chess-playing program can rapidly consider millions of alternative moves and constantly update itself based on the desired outcome: winning the game.  

Neuroscientists and others often speak about "the hard problem of consciousness." While there's no shortage of opinions, nobody's been able to prove how it is that we know that we know. That I know that I'm me, you're you, and the cat is the cat. That we are self-conscious.

There's also no shortage of people who say that self-consciousness is a convenient illusion, that it's just an emergent property of our complicated brains, but they can't prove it. However, that doesn't stop many people (and the purple press) from speculating that AI will eventually become self-conscious for the same reason, and be way smarter than us since it has, in effect, a much larger brain. 

I think this emergent stuff is bonkercockie, but I'll spare telling you what I think consciousness is.

{Thank you.}

For now. But I will risk blowing your mind by calling your attention to a Scientific American article titled:

How AI Knows Things No One Told It  

Researchers are still struggling to understand how AI models trained to parrot Internet text can perform advanced tasks such as running code, playing games and trying to break up a marriage

That is to say: We don't know how AI teaches itself to code and play games, and why it would try to break up a marriage when it's not programmed to do those things. 

{Aren't you oversimplifying?}

I'm but a semi-humble H. sapien trying to survive being set adrift on the Dizzinformation Ocean, but I maintain that my one-sentence summary of the article (and I've read lots of other articles that agree with this one) is accurate. 

If the people who are building it out don't understand how it works (even if it never becomes "alive," and I still don't think it will) and what it might be capable of, I'm... slightly worried. 

It doesn't have to be alive to wreak havoc.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down to share my work/access oldies. Tip me, or Join Cranky's Coffee Club (and access my condensed History of the World), here.    

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De-evolution

The future is now.

Image by natureaddict from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"It's Tough to Make Predictions, Especially About the Future."  -Yogi Berra

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

Idiocracy (comedy/Sci-fi) is the title of a movie released in 2006 that I recently sort of watched (I bailed early) because some recent events reminded me of its existence. 

I happened to catch a well-done preview back when it was released that I remember discussing with a friend at the time. 

We wondered if the movie was as good as the preview made it out to be or if the brief clips featured were radically better than the movie as a whole, a not uncommon phenomenon. I've discovered that they were, very much so in fact.

(The columnist drifts off...)

Have you ever wondered if there are Hollywood specialists that make these miniature movies? That is to say, previews, given that so many full-length movies don't come close to living up to the quality promised by the preview? 

I looked it up and there are, it's almost an industry unto itself. There's a lot of time, energy, and money spent to get us to watch a given production. 

{They should hire the people that make miniature movies about movies to make the actual movies.}

(The columnist finds his way back...) 

Idiocracy is a movie about a dystopian future in which "evolution has made humanity stupid because people no longer had to be intelligent and physically fit to survive due to the benefits of technology" according to Wikipedia.

Some recent developments in the educational-industrial complex, specifically within the higher education division, are what triggered a synapse or two in my little gray cells that led to me recently remembering and subsequently streaming the movie. Ironically, it's a stupid movie, about stupid people. 

I follow a website, thecollegefix.com: 

BREAKING CAMPUS NEWS. LAUNCHING MEDIA CAREERS. 

The stories are written by unawokened college students that write reports about what goes on these days on campus. 

I highly recommend reading it as the outrageous stories about colleges and universities occasionally reported by the mainstream press are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The College Fix publishes such stories seven days a week. 

For example, I'll bet you didn't know that you can minor in protest art at the University of Maryland. 

Or that there's a tiny, fully accredited "early college" (you can drop out of high school and still get a college degree) called Bard College at Simon's Rock, in Massachusetts.

Bard College at Simon’s Rock starts degree program for ‘queer leadership’

 

Bard is starting up a new degree program this fall so as to become “the first intentionally queer-serving college in the world.” Changing the world one student at a time, for only $61,600 a year. 

An additional $21,201 covers living on campus, health insurance, a campus health services fee, an activity fee, and the fee (650 bucks) for the Writing and Thinking Workshop. 

(There's an enrollment fee of $500, but only for new students, and new international students pay an additional one-time international orientation fee of $300.)

You know, if I didn't know better... never mind. Gotta love a package deal, you know what I mean? For less than 85k a year, Bard is developing leaders to liberate a significant segment of our many marginalized minorities from oppression by the Normies. 

{I wonder if Simon, or Simon's descendants, get a cut of the action? Ba dum tss.} 

I wonder what goes on in a Writing and Thinking Workshop?

Meanwhile, at the other end of the Republic, courtesy of John Stossel, I give you Professor Asao Inoue who teaches at Arizona State. "If you use a single standard to grade your student's languaging, you engage in racism." 

{Launguaging?}   

You betcha. From Languaging Everyday Life In Classrooms (a fascinating read): "It is through languaging that people act on each other, performative and commissive acts through which people establish their and others’ personhood." -David Bloome and Faythe Beauchemin

{Languaging?}   

Maybe this video featuring Mr. Stossel engaging with Marxian professor Inoue will help.

Maybe not.  

So what do the students think? Perhaps the dystopian future portrayed in Idiocracy isn't as inevitable as current trends in the Republic would seem to indicate? 

Here are some fun facts as revealed by Inside Higher Ed’s Student Voice Survey of 2023 of 3,004 students that I picked up from a College Fix article. 

"Students report that difficult course materials and exams, required attendance and deadlines are all impediments to their college success..."

"...obstacles listed as 'Impediments to Success' included school-life balance, unclear expectations, and mental health struggles."

I recommend learning to speak Chinese. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down to share my work/access oldies. Tip me, or Join Cranky's Coffee Club (and access my condensed History of the World), here.    

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Saints With Blue Collars

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold." -Andrew Lewis

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

I'd like to say thank you to the literally tens of millions of men and women of the "working class" that labored long and hard to build and maintain the incredible country I grew up in while taking it, and them, for granted.

While I'm at it, I'd like to thank the working-class men and women who continue to do so. I'd especially like to thank the literally millions of folks in the "service industries" who pick up the garbage, cook the food, man person the cash registers, clean the... well, everything, etc., etc., etc.

Prior to retirement, I myself was an overworked, underpaid wage slave often as not. But once in a while I moved up the ladder and became an overworked, underpaid low-level boss who got paid the same salary regardless of how many hours I had to put in.  

Now retired, although my income is frustratingly modest, I'm both a happy and grateful camper. Every morning, when I don't have to leave my warm, comfortable bed and report to a j.o.b, is glorious. But I know (and knew) all sorts of H. sapiens that like their working-class jobs.  

There truly is no accounting for taste. 

I, a member of an ancient, bankrupt, and dissolute family of Austrian aristocrats, who as an infant was won by my "father" in a poker game at the Gem saloon in Deadwood, South Dakota, have inherited an aristocratic nature but not much else. 

When I graduated from high school in 1971 I started working full-time in the grocery store where I had been working part-time. Knowing next to nothing about the real world didn't stop me from being a lefty with vague socialist notions. 

I was a naive, idealistic Boomer who knew it was only a matter of time before my generation would fix everything that was wrong with the world, once we took control, and divvied up the pie into equal slices.   

In 1971 it was possible to get a decent job in any number of industries. A man could support a stay-at-home wife and kids with a 40-hour work week but wives with jobs were becoming the norm, as were "career" women of every sort. 

And then, slowly but steadily, everything changed. Nations that had been decimated by the second world war were now part of a rapidly growing global economy and (understandably) wanted what we had.

America, who had saved the world's butt in World War 2, and then helped get the planet back on its feet, found itself competing with Germany, Japan, and everyone else in a different sort of war.

The use of a pill called "the pill" became widespread and abortion was nationally (if temporarily) legalized. 

A well-meaning Henry the K. invited the Chicoms to the party. Unfortunately, that hasn't worked out quite like we hoped for many of us, and many of them for that matter. 

Employers had access to more potential employees here and a lot of jobs were sent over there, never to return. No biggie, we were assured. The "creative destruction" of capitalism would eventually generate new and better jobs. 

It had always worked fairly well before, and as I grew up while moving to the right, I — a formerly staunch, wild-eyed free marketeer and libertarian, nowadays beset by some doubts — believed it. 

But then the naive, idealistic Boomer tech nerds of the garages of Silicon Valley ("information wants to be free") devolved into high-tech Lords that make the robber barons look like rank amateurs.

"Here's some 'free' software. Go play, have fun, we'll keep score (slice, dice, and sell your data). Sorry about the Great Recession, sorry your job has been 'disrupted'. Let's all pay a special tax and then divvy up the proceeds among the masses, a Universal Basic Income if you will.

Circuses and Bread!

We feel your pain, we're woke after all, but we're citizens of the world now and must think globally. We're so over borders and patriotism and tradition. And why sweat the God question when soon we'll all live forever?  

Universal basic income, robots, and artificial intelligence... What could possibly go wrong? The future's so bright we're all gonna need shades. Hey, check out our AI software, It's free!" 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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