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Dependency

There’s some nonsense floating around about how having FEMA to take care of our disasters breeds dependence. I see the point: if someone else, in this case, the government, routinely takes care of a particular problem, others benefiting from that shelter of care will become numb to that risk, will fail to prepare for it in the future, will lose the ability to react to it and will therefore be dependent upon that organization to save them when calamity comes.

scoundrels

(Scoundrels)

As an argument, taken very generally and only in certain contexts, for building self-reliance say, in children or young adults, this makes a certain kind of sense - we want people to be able to engage the world and solve their own problems and so in a lot of circumstances parents or mentors will stand back and let people build that experience and confidence to tackle their own problems. There’s a catch though which is that we don’t apply this principle across the board on all issues, no one is going to say, “stop feeding that infant, you’re breeding dependency,” because it’s not reasonable to expect the it to overcome the trial and learn something from the experience of being totally ignored and therefore forced to fend for and feed itself.

Make your own dinner

(Make your own dinner)

If we shouldn’t have FEMA, because they arrive in disasters and solve the problem for us (how terrible!) then we probably shouldn’t have firefighters either, or, as is sometimes the argument, we should privatize both. Individuals could enter into contracts with each other, one performing that service of search and rescue and fire extinguishing for the other (with no temptation or structural inclination for extortion in those crucial moments, no sir!). 

And if, at the end of the disaster, the people who were paid to rescue you didn’t, and if you’re still alive, you can enforce your own contract because having a court system and police and so on also clearly breeds dependence. Think about it, when was the last time you enforced your own contract? Would you even know where to start?

Justice

(Justice)

Our society is so dependent already. You are so dependent.

And what about national defense? Having such a wide-scale government takeover of the national defense industry as we have in this country has truly bred a nation of pansies, utterly dependent on our national defense agencies to defend us as a nation from foreign invasion and attack. When our embassy was attacked in Libya, did a single private citizen stand up, get a flight over there and investigate what happened? NO! Because we’re all dependent on the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate crimes at a federal level for us.

watch out al'qaeda

(Watch out al’qaeda!)

Let’s not even mention the fact that we were already dependent on the government to do the work of an embassy in Libya. Why don’t we trust average Americans enough to let them be the public face of our nation to others? Plenty of young, intelligent college students go abroad every year, why can’t they be our face to other nations? 

Embassador "Dude"

Don’t even get me started on the medical profession and how utterly clueless 99.9% of Americans are to the kinds of things doctors know after 9 years of schooling.

Whether it’s government or even privately performed, the very notion of specialization implies that one person is doing for another a thing they ought to be doing themselves, denying them the opportunity to learn how, to succeed or fail and ultimately making them dependent on the other for that service - what a racket! Just look at how we’ve designed our economy. The whole thing is set up to deprive people of the opportunity to learn how to do for themselves whatever they need doing. Did you build the computer you’re reading this on? No. Did you build the house you’re in? No. I bet you didn’t even design the computer you’re using or cobble your own shoes, tanning the leather after hunting or raising the animal yourself. 

Leather Tanning

Useless.

Now don’t kid yourself, some will say that specialization makes things (tremendously) more efficient, that a division of labor and responsibilities allows people to find work they are better at and excel, doing a better job than any jack-of-all-trades amateur would. Again, don’t be fooled by this nonsense. The idea that some skills or contexts require different solutions and have different intended outcomes is ludicrous. Don’t start down the slippery slope of thinking that sometimes it’s better for the individual and society that  some members specialize in solving certain problems so that others can be freed up to do a better job in their field.

Nonsense.

The only way for us to be truly independent is for all of us to do all of our own work, make all of our own clothes, homes, shoes, computers and energy grids. The only way we’ll be truly free is if we sever ourselves from the controlling and reliant relationship we currently have with government, private firms, our neighbors, parents, friends and children, and refuse any and all distribution or division of responsibilities and labor. 

When I see everyone building their own fortresses, hiding behind thick stone walls in the cold, tanning their own leather and cooking down their own slop which they picked (shoveled?) from their personal farm plots just before ignoring the eager and yearning shouts from their infants to feed them (dependency!) then I will be truly happy in the knowledge that we have created a dependency-free civilization.

Peasant Lyfe!

(Click for a view of this utopia)

Or total anarchy.

And then the South Koreans will show up and wonder why the fuck we can’t get our act together and just embrace systems that work by combining self-reliance with collective and structural solutions, and stop clinging to ideologies that no longer inform us with metaphors that usefully illuminate the problems we face.

“Better have a short life, doing what you love doing, than have a long life spent in a miserable way.”

Another gem, though not so inspiring…

“It’s all wretch and no vomit.”

Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure.
Theodore Roosevelt

Grey-Day.

We woke up early and watched the sun rise over the plains, the moutains unbelievably huge, but distant, the sun a red line and then an orange disk you could look at with naked eyes. The morning cool turned into noontime perfection and people started to come to the secluded farmstead. They cooked chili and drank beer and met each other. Working people in their few moments stepping outside of responsibility, necessity and the constant demand of their no doubt important, professional careers - worry, concern and stress whispering in their ears just loud enough to remind them how important these moments, 70 mies away from The City were to them, to their mental health and to the development of their young children whom they worried about growing up in the city and not getting enough fresh air.

The air gained a little more dust from the wind and activity about them, it’s dry this time of year after all, but that makes the tomatoes, drip-irrigated, all the more delicious, plumb, exceptional, and impossibly delectable by City standards. “You can’t find tomatoes like this on a shelf,” they would say, literally tasting what their urban living normally sought to deprived them of. You can find the most ingenious and mouth-watering combinations of food, spice and herb in The City, but you will find purchasing something fresh much more difficult.  Even the air here had a taste. Dirt doesn’t exactly taste good, but it’s real, and it didn’t come out of the back end of a car.
They added soaked beans, onions, spices, ground meat and peppers to their tomatoes to make each of their own special recipes of this American Mandja come to life. They showed their children how to do it, planting the smallest seeds of verbal tradition and history in the minds of slightly larger seeds of human life. They drank beer and tried not to curse too much, but they still had a good time.
The sun approached the Western horizon just as quickly as it had left the Eastern some hours before and as the light turned to dark those one-time strangers came together to share and to feast; to sit around the table first and then around the fire in a place so far from home, but quickly becoming a new one. They brought their liberal sensibilities, concern for humanity, and sarcastic humor, rarities in these rural parts and it was a treat to share drinks in the open-air intimacy of new friendships under the stars. And there were so many stars - more, they would swear, than there usual are.

The kids, the adults and the youths finally rested, some in tents, some in sleeping bags only, all of them under the moon, huge, full and glowing, making the night a grey-day for all to enjoy.
When they woke they packed and ate breakfast as a family. The unfamiliarity between them had been slepted away and friendship could be witnessed not just in the change of tone, but also in the tighter seating, as people seemed to need less personal space to be comfortable. They were at ease with each other. No chit chat, no alcohol needed to warm their budding affections.
They toured around the grounds, learning about production, crop growth, harvesting and what strawberries, red to their core, plump and gushing with flavor, taste like when you pull them off the vine yourself. For a moment they apprecaited it. A moment is all they dared ask for, any more than that would be to shout what could only ever be a whisper. Any more than a moment and they’d have to tell each other how afraid they were about this or that, how much they loved their parents and their children, how much they missed the dead and regretted their mistakes. Any more than a moment and they’d explode. Or implode, or maybe it was the universe that would. It was impossible either way. It couldn’t be done. You just didn’t do that. You never asked for more, you took you’re 2 seconds being alive and thanked the clock that it had finally ticked its way through the work day and you fell to your knees in your mind, in the darkest part of it so not even your mind’s eye could see it because there can be no witnesses.
If there were a witness, then it’d be real, and you’d have to quit the job you hate and do what you love and never look back and who knows what that would do to the social fabric of society. It would tear itself apart and your family would be so disappointed in you.

(a dilapidated weigh station and communal factory) I am starting to believe that the truth of Communism is that all of the things we’ve heard were so. All of them. That for some people they worked hard for the collective, for what they believed in, for an ideal: getting up early, working hard, and contributing greatly, and were in return taken care of in a virtuous cycle, by the collective. And that for others they didn’t like working all that much, and so they became a social spy, reporting on the thoughts and misgivings of those they had coffee with every morning. That for some they had been mysteriously blocked from their studied and chosen profession or from promotion, or had been blocked from such things quite obviously, as a result of their low favor with the party, because of anti-communist sentiments, or for being to inquisitive, or for questionable behavior they, or even a dead grandparent of their’s had expressed. And for yet others, someone listened to foreign radio and was punished severely. That the government was good and looked after its people, while at the same time it intentionally didn’t alert them to the catastrophe in Chernobyl and how the radtion was flowing over their country in the air they were breathing. The government flooded the valley where they grew the majority of their crops in order to make a dam. For some there were no concerns, no problems, it was heaven. Get up, work, buy food at extremely low and then discounted prices for breakfast, lunch and dinner, go to the cafe for drinks with the boys, and go home. What else do you want in life? Finally, that the end of Communism came when The West paid Gorbachev to end it while at the same time the system collapsed because the entire country was hemorrhaging money faster than it could be sent to them in tremendous “loans” from Russia. Basically it’s all true, and gives us a whole host of lessons about human-nature, the importance of openness in society, social-trust/capital, pragmatism over ideology and the necessity of connection rather than disconnection of individuals with the costs of their life and the resources they consume. No matter how long you tell a story about how the world is, simply telling it will never make it so.
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(a dilapidated weigh station and communal factory) I am starting to believe that the truth of Communism is that all of the things we’ve heard were so. All of them. That for some people they worked hard for the collective, for what they believed in, for an ideal: getting up early, working hard, and contributing greatly, and were in return taken care of in a virtuous cycle, by the collective. And that for others they didn’t like working all that much, and so they became a social spy, reporting on the thoughts and misgivings of those they had coffee with every morning. That for some they had been mysteriously blocked from their studied and chosen profession or from promotion, or had been blocked from such things quite obviously, as a result of their low favor with the party, because of anti-communist sentiments, or for being to inquisitive, or for questionable behavior they, or even a dead grandparent of their’s had expressed. And for yet others, someone listened to foreign radio and was punished severely. That the government was good and looked after its people, while at the same time it intentionally didn’t alert them to the catastrophe in Chernobyl and how the radtion was flowing over their country in the air they were breathing. The government flooded the valley where they grew the majority of their crops in order to make a dam. For some there were no concerns, no problems, it was heaven. Get up, work, buy food at extremely low and then discounted prices for breakfast, lunch and dinner, go to the cafe for drinks with the boys, and go home. What else do you want in life? Finally, that the end of Communism came when The West paid Gorbachev to end it while at the same time the system collapsed because the entire country was hemorrhaging money faster than it could be sent to them in tremendous “loans” from Russia. Basically it’s all true, and gives us a whole host of lessons about human-nature, the importance of openness in society, social-trust/capital, pragmatism over ideology and the necessity of connection rather than disconnection of individuals with the costs of their life and the resources they consume. No matter how long you tell a story about how the world is, simply telling it will never make it so.
Zoom Info
(a dilapidated weigh station and communal factory) I am starting to believe that the truth of Communism is that all of the things we’ve heard were so. All of them. That for some people they worked hard for the collective, for what they believed in, for an ideal: getting up early, working hard, and contributing greatly, and were in return taken care of in a virtuous cycle, by the collective. And that for others they didn’t like working all that much, and so they became a social spy, reporting on the thoughts and misgivings of those they had coffee with every morning. That for some they had been mysteriously blocked from their studied and chosen profession or from promotion, or had been blocked from such things quite obviously, as a result of their low favor with the party, because of anti-communist sentiments, or for being to inquisitive, or for questionable behavior they, or even a dead grandparent of their’s had expressed. And for yet others, someone listened to foreign radio and was punished severely. That the government was good and looked after its people, while at the same time it intentionally didn’t alert them to the catastrophe in Chernobyl and how the radtion was flowing over their country in the air they were breathing. The government flooded the valley where they grew the majority of their crops in order to make a dam. For some there were no concerns, no problems, it was heaven. Get up, work, buy food at extremely low and then discounted prices for breakfast, lunch and dinner, go to the cafe for drinks with the boys, and go home. What else do you want in life? Finally, that the end of Communism came when The West paid Gorbachev to end it while at the same time the system collapsed because the entire country was hemorrhaging money faster than it could be sent to them in tremendous “loans” from Russia. Basically it’s all true, and gives us a whole host of lessons about human-nature, the importance of openness in society, social-trust/capital, pragmatism over ideology and the necessity of connection rather than disconnection of individuals with the costs of their life and the resources they consume. No matter how long you tell a story about how the world is, simply telling it will never make it so.
Zoom Info
(a dilapidated weigh station and communal factory) I am starting to believe that the truth of Communism is that all of the things we’ve heard were so. All of them. That for some people they worked hard for the collective, for what they believed in, for an ideal: getting up early, working hard, and contributing greatly, and were in return taken care of in a virtuous cycle, by the collective. And that for others they didn’t like working all that much, and so they became a social spy, reporting on the thoughts and misgivings of those they had coffee with every morning. That for some they had been mysteriously blocked from their studied and chosen profession or from promotion, or had been blocked from such things quite obviously, as a result of their low favor with the party, because of anti-communist sentiments, or for being to inquisitive, or for questionable behavior they, or even a dead grandparent of their’s had expressed. And for yet others, someone listened to foreign radio and was punished severely. That the government was good and looked after its people, while at the same time it intentionally didn’t alert them to the catastrophe in Chernobyl and how the radtion was flowing over their country in the air they were breathing. The government flooded the valley where they grew the majority of their crops in order to make a dam. For some there were no concerns, no problems, it was heaven. Get up, work, buy food at extremely low and then discounted prices for breakfast, lunch and dinner, go to the cafe for drinks with the boys, and go home. What else do you want in life? Finally, that the end of Communism came when The West paid Gorbachev to end it while at the same time the system collapsed because the entire country was hemorrhaging money faster than it could be sent to them in tremendous “loans” from Russia. Basically it’s all true, and gives us a whole host of lessons about human-nature, the importance of openness in society, social-trust/capital, pragmatism over ideology and the necessity of connection rather than disconnection of individuals with the costs of their life and the resources they consume. No matter how long you tell a story about how the world is, simply telling it will never make it so.
Zoom Info

(a dilapidated weigh station and communal factory)

I am starting to believe that the truth of Communism is that all of the things we’ve heard were so. All of them.

That for some people they worked hard for the collective, for what they believed in, for an ideal: getting up early, working hard, and contributing greatly, and were in return taken care of in a virtuous cycle, by the collective.

And that for others they didn’t like working all that much, and so they became a social spy, reporting on the thoughts and misgivings of those they had coffee with every morning.

That for some they had been mysteriously blocked from their studied and chosen profession or from promotion, or had been blocked from such things quite obviously, as a result of their low favor with the party, because of anti-communist sentiments, or for being to inquisitive, or for questionable behavior they, or even a dead grandparent of their’s had expressed.

And for yet others, someone listened to foreign radio and was punished severely.

That the government was good and looked after its people, while at the same time it intentionally didn’t alert them to the catastrophe in Chernobyl and how the radtion was flowing over their country in the air they were breathing. The government flooded the valley where they grew the majority of their crops in order to make a dam.

For some there were no concerns, no problems, it was heaven. Get up, work, buy food at extremely low and then discounted prices for breakfast, lunch and dinner, go to the cafe for drinks with the boys, and go home. What else do you want in life?

Finally, that the end of Communism came when The West paid Gorbachev to end it while at the same time the system collapsed because the entire country was hemorrhaging money faster than it could be sent to them in tremendous “loans” from Russia.

Basically it’s all true, and gives us a whole host of lessons about human-nature, the importance of openness in society, social-trust/capital, pragmatism over ideology and the necessity of connection rather than disconnection of individuals with the costs of their life and the resources they consume.

No matter how long you tell a story about how the world is, simply telling it will never make it so.

Elections in Bulgaria

Turns out I’m still a huge sucker for the democratic process and having elections in my village, in which my boss and friend was running was really exciting.

People here constantly asked me if I’m voting or who I’m voting for etc. I of course do not have the right to vote here since I’m not a citizen, what’s more, my role here is to be somewhat impartial to the political process.

That said, I also tell people of course I’d be happy if I didn’t have to learn to work with a new person and if I could instead simply continue building on our relationship and success. There are practical considerations and implications of elections as well.

On election day people waited outside the polls in line literally all day, and by around 8 or 9pm, the polls just shut closed as the national election committee called an end to voting. I started asking the people hanging out around the polling station what was going on, why voting had stopped when there was still a line of people who had been there since before the predesignated cut-off time.

This is one of the rare times when I unashamedly tell people how something is typically done better in the US. “If you get there before the polls closed, they let you vote, it doesn’t matter how long it takes - everyone votes.”

Of course there’s been tricky business along with this: deception, leaflets in poor neighborhoods spread around to fool people into missing the election and all sorts of of other nonsense in the US, which is why we now have a great deal of lawyers who show up to volunteer to monitor polling places to make sure everything goes according the law. The thing about this particular form of vote obstruction and denial is that it was totally legal and in fact was a decision passed down from the national government.

The sentiment around the polls was that this is “a false democracy” and that it was the “mafia” (mafia is often short-hand for anything between actual organized crime involvement, all the way to skimping on work or everyday, low-level tax evasion).

Seeing quite clearly the conflict between how I felt, and what my role and responsibilities were in this situation I was left simply asking people what they were going to do about it - it’s their democracy after all.

I noticed my boss, the previous mayor wasn’t there at all so I went over to his house where I found him, his family and close friends sitting in a wood fire heated room escaping the cold and worrying, debating and complaining about the situation. There were two candidates for mayor including him and he was worried that a majority of the people who were turned away from the polls, despite being there on time (in some cases people waited for 6, 7, 8+ hours), were his supporters, thus losing him the race.

I had more confidence in his ability to win with a lead regardless of this nonsense, but that didn’t stop me from being thoroughly annoyed and outraged given the symbolic defeat of the situation, nor did it stop me from soaking up some of the ambient concern and doubt the room was filling with.

“Even in communist times everyone got to vote, we only had one party to vote for but still everyone got to vote,” a friend said to me.

Eventually someone came and said that people at the polls were wondering where he, the previous mayor, was and what he was doing. 

They needed a leader.

The two mayoral candidates found each other in front of the polling site and were gave some advice from one of the people there saying that they had the right to file a complaint and get additional votes cast, those of the people who were waiting in line (70 or so) the following weekend when the national run-off elections were to be held.

The two candidates together wrote a complaint on behalf of the villagers, printed copies for each of them and signed them and planned to set off for the municipality that night to have them filed officially. That moment of shared interest and cooperation between opposing candidates, it was beautiful.

The candidates returned to their homes to get ready to head out and in the mean time the vote count for the mayoral election had been completed. The previous mayor had won by a margin of about 80 votes, rendering the un-cast 70 votes inconsequential to that race.

People lost it, shouting and howling in the streets, “Poh-be-da, poh-be-da!//победа, победа!//VICTORY, VICTORY!”

Beer, wine and rakia materialized and someone even tried to hook up a stereo to play music and do traditional dance despite the fact that it was about 30 degrees F and 2 in the morning.

The candidates again met for a moment, shaking hands and saying something to each other in private.

Sadly, once that race had been decided the deeper issue, that the right of some to cast votes had been nullified to satisfy some bureaucratic formality was lost and forgotten.

I got to see firsthand just how fragile good will toward the government here is. People were offended and let down, and though party representatives came to the village to congratulate the mayor and to try and convince people to vote in the following run-off election, few people were happy to see them, or moved by their words. People tell you to vote, that your vote matters, you go to do just that and then you wait all day and still don’t get to exercise your right to be heard. People already think very poorly of their government and officials, thinking most of them to be beholden to organized crime or actual members of the mafia itself. 

Out of 300 voting-age people about 60 abstained and another 70 were cut out of the process, meaning about 1/4 would-be voters were ignored because the poll was under-funded and therefore under-staffed which slowed the voting process and then because the national government cut off voting at a certain time instead of just letting it go on until it was done.

At the end of it there’s tons of lessons here. Democracy is not magic and as inalienable as our rights may be, they can be taken away or marginalized in ways sinister, mundane or even accidental. What’s more, the reality of the situation in the country, levels and modes of corruption, wealth disparity, accountability and the culture of political involvement versus the national sense of disenfranchisement are all important ingredients in the making of a better- or barely-functioning democracy.

In other words, a pile of organs does not make a living person.

A living body, body-politic in this case, requires not just basic ingredients but a balance and particular interaction between them for it to work properly, or at all. People have to care and know about what they are voting on, they have to know that voting matters (and it does indeed have to matter) and they have to be able to hold their officials accountable and to have some basic level of faith in their government for any of that to happen in the first place and for the results of the election and the authority of the government to be accepted as legitimate.

People don’t pay taxes to nor do they follow the laws of governments they don’t see as legitimate.

Bulgaria is a country in transition. The new “center-right” party, which is largely responsible for the funding and building of the road to the village, is now in the office of the President and the Prime Minister, coming out ahead of the Bulgarian Socialist Party. Here’s hoping that they are well intentioned and capable and as much as they are those two things, successful in their endeavors.

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