Poem For The End of The Century

Poem For The End of The Century
Czeslaw Milosz
[Listen]

When everything was fine
And the notion of sin had vanished
And the earth was ready
In universal peace
To consume and rejoice
Without creeds and utopias,

I, for unknown reasons,
Surrounded by the books
Of prophets and theologians,
Of philosophers, poets,
Searched for an answer,
Scowling, grimacing,
Waking up at night, muttering at dawn.

What oppressed me so much
Was a bit shameful.
Talking of it aloud
Would show neither tact nor prudence.
It might even seem an outrage
Against the health of mankind.

Alas, my memory
Does not want to leave me
And in it, live beings
Each with its own pain,
Each with its own dying,
Its own trepidation.

Why then innocence
On paradisal beaches,
An impeccable sky
Over the church of hygiene?
Is it because that
Was long ago?

To a saintly man
--So goes an Arab tale--
God said somewhat maliciously:
"Had I revealed to people
How great a sinner you are,
They couldn't praise you."

"And I," answered the pious one,
"Had I unveiled to them
How merciful you are,
They wouldn't care for you."

To whom should I turn
With that affair so dark
Of pain and also guilt
In the structure of the world,
If either here below
Or over there on high
No power can abolish
The cause and the effect?

Don't think, don't remember
The death on the cross,
Though everyday He dies,
The only one, all-loving,
Who without any need
Consented and allowed
To exist all that is,
Including nails of torture.

Totally enigmatic.
Impossibly intricate.
Better to stop speech here.
This language is not for people.
Blessed be jubilation.
Vintages and harvests.
Even if not everyone
Is granted serenity.

is God good?

Peter Singer over at Comment is Free:

In earlier times, when original sin was taken more seriously than it generally is today, the suffering of animals posed a particularly difficult problem for thoughtful Christians. The 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes solved it by the drastic expedient of denying that animals can suffer. Animals, he maintained, are merely ingenious mechanisms, and we should not take their cries and struggles as a sign of pain, any more than we take the sound of an alarm clock as a sign that it has consciousness.

People who live with a dog or a cat are not likely to find that persuasive. Last month, at Biola University, a Christian college in southern California, I debated the existence of God with the conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza. In recent months, D'Souza has made a point of debating prominent atheists, but he, too, struggled to find a convincing answer to the problem I outlined above.

He first said that, because humans can live forever in heaven, the suffering of this world is less important than it would be if our life in this world were the only life we had. That still fails to explain why an all-powerful and all-good god would permit it. Relatively insignificant as this suffering may be from the perspective of eternity, the world would be better without it, or at least without most of it.

Read the full article here.

currently reading

The law, through "property," can be used by the kings of yesterday to protect themselves against the kings of tomorrow, and we--especially we lawyers--should be defending tomorrow against yesterday. -- Lawrence Lessig, The Future of Ideas

fast food fighters

Hahaha, go Colonel Sanders! Go Ronald! Great game. They should have this in every outlet.

Power politics

Conrado de Quiros from Inquirer.net writes furiously against government moves towards the take over of the major energy distribution company:

x x x

Why has government suddenly gone after Meralco?

The opposition is right: Because, like Ferdinand Marcos, Arroyo means to cow the Lopezes into submission, or at least tame their criticisms of government in ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp. and ABS-CBN News Channel. Because, like Marcos, Arroyo means to take over Meralco and possibly the other Lopez companies. Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago says that in the event taking over Meralco becomes necessary, the Constitution guarantees that the state has the right to defend public interest against selfish private ones. She forgot that the principle carries a caveat, which says, “unless that state is the most corrupt in Asia, in which case it will only protect the far more selfish interests of a few.”

I myself can think of a couple of other reasons government has made the move. The first is to escape blame for the rice crisis that’s about to ravage this country. Hunger is no ordinary issue. None of the past scandals threatens to have the same explosive effects. With government finding it harder to import the staple and with the lean months (July-September) coming closer, Arroyo needs a scapegoat. Meralco is a convenient one. Everyone’s pissed off with their electric bills and the Lopezes have always fitted the role of the cacique “contrabidas” [villains] of yore or the overbearing rich of their current “telenovelas” [TV soaps]. It’s Propaganda 101: Blame the Lopezes for making the life of the poor harder with the power rates, credit government for making the life of the poor easier with the rice cards. Arroyo equals friend, Lopez equals enemy.

Are these the actions of someone who intends to go quietly by 2010?

That brings us to the second reason. Tightening the screws on the Lopezes has several uses. It puts pressure on them to be tractable, if not cooperative, particularly when the rice crisis truly bites in the lean months from July to September. It puts pressure on them to be cooperative, if not enthusiastic, when an initiative is taken to amend the Constitution. It puts pressure on them to be enthusiastic, if not to go all-out, when Arroyo calls for more powers to deal with emergencies, including suspending the Constitution.

Not quite incidentally, it puts pressure on Vice President Noli de Castro to shift loyalties completely away from the Lopezes to Arroyo. At least it puts pressure on the Lopezes to stop calling for De Castro to succeed Arroyo now or later.

Can Arroyo get away with it? Well, unlike Marcos when he took this populist tack against the “oligarchic” Lopezes shortly before he declared martial law, Arroyo has no credibility whatsoever. Marcos might have ceased to be popular by the early 1970s, but he was never this unpopular. And you have to wonder how long government can supply cheap rice to rice card holders.

On the other hand, Arroyo has shown more willingness than Marcos to do anything to keep power. And given that people like the Jesuits say it’s futile to try to oust her today because she is resolved to not go, she is being persuaded by the day that all it takes is grim determination to stay, possibly forever.

The long and short of it is that the short wants long. And the long and short of it is how long we are willing to be shortchanged.

Click here for the full article.

jonathan zittrain's new book

Pic borrowed fromLawrence Lessig's site.

Jonathan Zittrain writes about the future of the internet, and well, the unexpected outcomes that we might wish not to see. Here are some lovely excerpts.

If security problems worsen and fear spreads, rank-and-file users will not be far behind in preferring some form of lockdown—and regulators will speed the process along. In turn, that lockdown opens the door to new forms of regulatory surveillance and control. We have some hints of what that can look like. Enterprising law enforcement officers have been able to eavesdrop on occupants of motor vehicles equipped with the latest travel assistance systems by producing secret warrants and flicking a distant switch. They can turn a standard mobile phone into a roving microphone—whether or not it is being used for a call. As these opportunities arise in places under the rule of law—where some might welcome them—they also arise within technology-embracing authoritarian states, because the technology is exported.

x x x

The framers of the Internet did not design their network with visions of mainstream dominance. Instead, the very unexpectedness of its success was a critical ingredient. The Internet was able to develop quietly and organically for years before it became widely known, remaining outside the notice of those who would have insisted on more cautious strictures had they only suspected how ubiquitous it would become.

The book is available through the glorious Creative Commons License method here.

if i fell

Picked up my guitar. Googled the song. Found the chords. Played the guitar like the lonely high school boy I was.

Far cry from professionals. So just listen to Maroon 5's version... way loads better than mine.



Then I found this heavenly version from Across the Universe.

unequal democracy

Over at Princeton University Press, Chapter 1 of Larry Bartels Unequal Democracy:

While economists have spent a good deal of scholarly energy describing and attempting to explain the striking escalation of economic in equality in the United States over the past 30 years, they have paid remarkably little attention to social and political factors of the sort cited by Krugman. For example, one comprehensive summary of the complex literature on earnings in equality attempted to ascertain “What shifts in demand, shifts in supply, and/or changes in wage setting institutions are responsible for the observed trend?” The authors pointed to “the entry into the labor market of the well educated baby boom generation” and “a long- term trend toward increasing relative demand for highly skilled workers” as important causal factors. Their closest approach to a political explanation was a passing reference to a finding that “the 25 percent decline in the value of the minimum wage between 1980 and 1988 accounts for a small part of the drop in the relative wages of dropouts during the 1980s.”

It probably should not be surprising, in light of their scholarly expertise and interests, that economists have tended to focus much less attention on potential political explanations for escalating economic in equality than on potential economic explanations. In a presidential address to the Royal Economic Society, British economist A. B. Atkinson criticized his colleagues’ tendency to ignore or downplay the impact on the income distribution of social and political factors, arguing that “we need to go beyond purely economic explanations and to look for an explanation in the theory of public choice, or ‘political economy’. We have to study the behaviour of the government, or its agencies, in determining the level and coverage of state benefits.”

I think the political democracy of one vote per person, has become a passe. A different demand will take over someday--whether one parcel of land per person, or a different kind of sharing agreement. Otherwise, it would have to take all the powers of the law (that illusion/superstructure that maintains the status quo) to hold the fort.

This book reminds me of an earlier economic theory, by Henry George, Progress and Poverty.

In Progress and Poverty, George examines various proposed strategies to prevent business depressions, unemployment and poverty, but finds them unsatisfactory. As an alternative he proposes his own solution: a single tax on land values. This would be a tax on the annual value of land held as private property. It would be high enough to allow for all other taxes -- especially upon labor and production -- to be abolished. George argued that a land value tax would give landowners an incentive to use the land in a productive way, thereby employing labor and creating wealth, or to sell the land at affordable prices to those who would themselves use the land in a productive way. This shift in the bargaining balance between resource owners and laborers would raise the general level of wages and ensure no one need suffer involuntary poverty.

"Take now... some hard-headed business man, who has no theories, but knows how to make money. Say to him: "Here is a little village; in ten years it will be a great city-in ten years the railroad will have taken the place of the stage coach, the electric light of the candle; it will abound with all the machinery and improvements that so enormously multiply the effective power of labor. Will in ten years, interest be any higher?" He will tell you, "No!" Will the wages of the common labor be any higher...?" He will tell you, "No the wages of common labor will not be any higher..." "What, then, will be higher?" "Rent, the value of land. Go, get yourself a piece of ground, and hold possession." And if, under such circumstances, you take his advice, you need do nothing more. You may sit down and smoke your pipe; you may lie around like the lazzaroni of Naples or the leperos of Mexico; you may go up in a balloon or down a hole in the ground; and without doing one stroke of work, without adding one iota of wealth to the community, in ten years you will be rich! In the new city you may have a luxurious mansion, but among its public buildings wil be an almshouse."