I wonder what it would have been like to be an alien watching our planet in the 1940's. Or even an impressionable teenager or pre-teen. The world seemed ready to fall apart, at war for years. Millions were dying. In Europe, a crazy dictator was methodically trying to exterminate an entire race of people. Others, even those who were considered credible in the free world, supported a less drastic measure of "purifying" the world through eugenics. Wars raged on, with no side appearing to win, and all over the globe. Those countries that abstained from the war effort drew into themselves, their populace beginning to seethe with discontent. In or out of the world, things would have appeared hopeless - perhaps to the extent of the end of humanity itself.
If we didn't know it was true, the horror of the Holocaust would seem like a sci-fi or horror film. I saw "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," and it seemed like some sort of M. Night Shamaylan creepfest, but unfortunately too much of it was based on historical fact (the surprise twist was made up).
And then, a victory - in Europe - that gave hope to the world, but it was short lived hope. How could the Allies rest while there was still a gruesome war going on halfway around the world?
And so it happened in early August, two flashes of light. Boom. Boom.
And then, silence.
If our observer were to watch the next 50 years, it would be as if the entire world took a collective gasp. What was this horror that had been unleashed? And when would it strike next? It was as if the world was waiting.
On the planet, life went on - advances were made in technology, social norms changed, people married and had children, they worked and played. But collectively, the gasp remained. In the silence of space, looking down on the planet our observer might wonder what had happened to make the planet as quiet as the space around it.
And gruesome as the question is, I have to wonder, 65 years later, why there were only two explosions.
While the world gasped at the display of power, the United States stood like a mother separating feuding children. The world was gasping. She was screaming, "Stop!" Like the first time a child gets spanked, the effect was instantaneous and, in the scheme of history, short lived.
Our alien doesn't know that in the quiet the world shivers. Nations race to develop the power to explode these horrendous bombs. But the mother is ready, her arms remain outstretched, weapon in hand, facing her enemy, who also carries his weapon. The parents face off - the children cower behind their legs.
I can't help but wonder what would have happened if it had not been the United States who developed this weaponry first. What if it had been any one of our three main enemies at the time. Would they have used the bombs as a warning signal? Or would they have used them to annihilate their enemies and advance their agenda? I know that history is written by the winners, and that the winners therefore come out as "good." But couldn't you also assign the term "good" to the defenders, rather than the aggressors? In which case, wouldn't the result be the same?
Silence.
After going through the Liberty Memorial, I am even more aware now that we may just be living in the time between two wars. 20 years after World War I, Hitler was still vengeful. 20 years after World War II, the war was still at the forefront of Europe's mind, and C.S. Lewis was always writing about it in the 60's.
And yet, even as the pot starts to simmer again, I wonder if this weapon will ever seriously come back. The mother is watching the kids of her enemy - little children who want to play with their daddy's gun. But mother still has her arms outstretched, ready to defend her children. I think that, even between the adult parents, there was an unspoken agreement not to pull the weapon out again. A decision to take two steps back in that particular scientific advancement to advance the cause of something more important that was threatened by its very existence. Humanity.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
A Never Ending Recession
I'm two classes short of a minor in economics, but I do have a Master's in Accounting. And two years into the Recession, I have the same thought about it I did going in. "How did the Great Depression end?" and "Will this not be a self perpetuating crisis?" Frankly, I don't think there is a way out, and it's a good and bad thing. Much like the crisis we have created with healthcare, it is a crisis of our own doing.
Let me explain.
During the recession, people are either out of work or afraid they will become out of work, or they are asked to take a pay cut. As such, they cut back on spending all but the necessities. This causes companies that make "luxury" items (anything that is not clothes, food, houses, cars) to lose revenue and lay people off, adding to the recession. Now, some of these companies struggle as well, because we have found creative ways to make a necessity (car) a luxury (fully-loaded SUV, a new one purchased every two years). So more people lose jobs, less people buy luxuries. I really don't see the cycle ending until we are back to food, utilities, cars, houses, etc. (On the other hand, when the iPad and the Kindle are some of the hottest selling items of the year, can anyone really say that we are in a recession? Perhaps people just traded their annual splurge on a car to a splurge on an electronic device - I could see that).
But there is something, I think, different about this recession than there was about the Great Depression. We actually have enough resources to go around. Yes, there has been an influx of homeless and no structures in place to take care of them, but that is just because shelters take time to build. Americans still produce enough food and clothes and shelter to give everybody the necessities.
Take a simple economy. 100 years ago people spent all day every day making food. Everybody worked and everybody ate. Then someone discovered a way to make twice as much food using half the workers. Now there is a surplus of food, but there is 50% unemployment. The question becomes, how do you distribute food to people who aren't working? So the newly unemployed start being creative. They invent luxury goods and a perceived "need" among the employed. They trade those goods for food. Again, someone refines the process, and the number of employees needed to produce food is cut in half again. Pretty soon, only a small fraction of the population is producing food for the entire population, but a large economy has sprung up to trade non-food luxury items back and forth.
Now, let's look at real history. In the 1950's we suddenly had an influx into the workforce. We always talk about women going to work, but in reality, we mean middle class women. Any perusal of a 19th century novel will show you that women had been working for centuries - either to support themselves or if their husbands could not make enough to support a family. So what we mean by women in the workforce is "women who otherwise would not HAVE to work and still be able to feed their family."
Of course this caused an economic boom. Families' incomes doubled, so they were able to purchase more luxury goods. And these luxury good companies sprung up and hired the additional workforce that had caused such an influx.
Now we are faced with the opposite problem. Baby boomers are starting to retire - which may help our employment numbers. But it also means the largest portion of the population will be scrapped for cash.
But if we think about present unemployment numbers and then walk back to the pre-1950's era, are we really surprised that we now see 10 - 17% unemployment? (17% is the estimated actual unemployment when people who have dropped out of the job market are considered). Would this represent the previously unemployed middle class woman?
I wonder if every married, parenting couple that could affor do to so voluntarily selected a parent (let's be feminist here and say it could be the father OR mother) to stay home with the children, I imagine our unemployment numbers would fade away. Sure, these families may have to downsize and not live the large life they had been living. But look at the alternative. Employment is allocated sporadically across the population. Most families still have two incomes, while young singles right out of college and divorced mothers may have been hit by layoffs. Going back to a pre-1950's model may actually put our economy back in balance. It would just lower our standard of living.
But once again, our standard of living was actually over-inflated. Partially because so many people were living up to their ears in debt (I am still furious at what I see as the majority of American people who put us into this terrible mess and still expect someone else to get them out of it). But also because we had two-income households.
I am not writing this as a sort of action item, although I do think the real benefactors of having single income families would be the children who get to be raised by their parents again instead of corporate day care. I am just pointing out that the economy is a big and complicated monster - prone to cough up problems rooted decades ago. We must face the reality that perhaps our productivity is so good that we can only ever gainfully employ 90% of the population. And we have resources enough for everyone - we are just in the middle of growing pains to discover how to make sure everyone has them.
Let me explain.
During the recession, people are either out of work or afraid they will become out of work, or they are asked to take a pay cut. As such, they cut back on spending all but the necessities. This causes companies that make "luxury" items (anything that is not clothes, food, houses, cars) to lose revenue and lay people off, adding to the recession. Now, some of these companies struggle as well, because we have found creative ways to make a necessity (car) a luxury (fully-loaded SUV, a new one purchased every two years). So more people lose jobs, less people buy luxuries. I really don't see the cycle ending until we are back to food, utilities, cars, houses, etc. (On the other hand, when the iPad and the Kindle are some of the hottest selling items of the year, can anyone really say that we are in a recession? Perhaps people just traded their annual splurge on a car to a splurge on an electronic device - I could see that).
But there is something, I think, different about this recession than there was about the Great Depression. We actually have enough resources to go around. Yes, there has been an influx of homeless and no structures in place to take care of them, but that is just because shelters take time to build. Americans still produce enough food and clothes and shelter to give everybody the necessities.
Take a simple economy. 100 years ago people spent all day every day making food. Everybody worked and everybody ate. Then someone discovered a way to make twice as much food using half the workers. Now there is a surplus of food, but there is 50% unemployment. The question becomes, how do you distribute food to people who aren't working? So the newly unemployed start being creative. They invent luxury goods and a perceived "need" among the employed. They trade those goods for food. Again, someone refines the process, and the number of employees needed to produce food is cut in half again. Pretty soon, only a small fraction of the population is producing food for the entire population, but a large economy has sprung up to trade non-food luxury items back and forth.
Now, let's look at real history. In the 1950's we suddenly had an influx into the workforce. We always talk about women going to work, but in reality, we mean middle class women. Any perusal of a 19th century novel will show you that women had been working for centuries - either to support themselves or if their husbands could not make enough to support a family. So what we mean by women in the workforce is "women who otherwise would not HAVE to work and still be able to feed their family."
Of course this caused an economic boom. Families' incomes doubled, so they were able to purchase more luxury goods. And these luxury good companies sprung up and hired the additional workforce that had caused such an influx.
Now we are faced with the opposite problem. Baby boomers are starting to retire - which may help our employment numbers. But it also means the largest portion of the population will be scrapped for cash.
But if we think about present unemployment numbers and then walk back to the pre-1950's era, are we really surprised that we now see 10 - 17% unemployment? (17% is the estimated actual unemployment when people who have dropped out of the job market are considered). Would this represent the previously unemployed middle class woman?
I wonder if every married, parenting couple that could affor do to so voluntarily selected a parent (let's be feminist here and say it could be the father OR mother) to stay home with the children, I imagine our unemployment numbers would fade away. Sure, these families may have to downsize and not live the large life they had been living. But look at the alternative. Employment is allocated sporadically across the population. Most families still have two incomes, while young singles right out of college and divorced mothers may have been hit by layoffs. Going back to a pre-1950's model may actually put our economy back in balance. It would just lower our standard of living.
But once again, our standard of living was actually over-inflated. Partially because so many people were living up to their ears in debt (I am still furious at what I see as the majority of American people who put us into this terrible mess and still expect someone else to get them out of it). But also because we had two-income households.
I am not writing this as a sort of action item, although I do think the real benefactors of having single income families would be the children who get to be raised by their parents again instead of corporate day care. I am just pointing out that the economy is a big and complicated monster - prone to cough up problems rooted decades ago. We must face the reality that perhaps our productivity is so good that we can only ever gainfully employ 90% of the population. And we have resources enough for everyone - we are just in the middle of growing pains to discover how to make sure everyone has them.
On 9/11
Sometime in the days after September 11, 2001, my history teach began to ponder the impact of the terrorist attacks in a historical sense. I remember how he analzyed it at the time, that it was not as big an event as the attacks on Pearl Harbor had been. But, he said, we would have to see just what the consequences of the attacks were.
Nine years later, I think he was right to some extent, but he may have undervalued the significance of the attacks. Nine years later we are still involved in the war on Afghanistan and the War on Terror. Nine years later people are still sore and hurting about a mosque being built in New York City. Nine years later the idea of a terrorist attack is more real to us than it ever was before the attack.
Pearl Harbor forced our hands - and it got us involved in a world wide war, and it ultimately resulted in the Allies winning the war. If the War on Terror ever careened to the proportions of World War II (I hope not World War III at all), then it would be comparable.
I also noticed the impact World War II had on those who lived in that time period, and also the impact of World War I. 20 years after World War I, Hitler began the second World War because he was still bitter about the outcome. 20 years after World War II C.S. Lewis was writing books about the war, using Nazis as his example of "bad guys." (Frankly, 65 years later World War II continues to have a lasting impact on us - even those who did not live in that time period. It literally changed the world!)
So we are not even halfway to the midpoint of 20 years to see if this was a defining moment. We are in the middle of a recession that, experts say, will define my generation's spending habits. And my generation is still involved in the Afghanistan war. But in 11 years will we all continue to think of September 11th with the same patriotism and fervor that we do now?
I don't know. And I don't know what answer I would like. I would like to say "yes" because it means we would remember those who died that day and what it means to be an American. On the other hand, to say "yes" would imply the terrorists had won - they had created an "incident" as great and terrible as the attack on Pearl Harbor had been.
But I supose it doesn't matter - in 20 years I will probably still know exactly what 9/11 means on my calendar. But hopefully 11 years from now the terrorists will finally understand what the Japanese learned - don't mess with the USA.
An afterthought: the other day I went downstairs to our cafeteria, and the news was playing. On it was a picture of black, billowing smoke. My immediate thougth was, "Oh no, what have they blown up this time?" The video turned out to be of the oil well explosion in the Gulf. However, it reminded me of the impact 9/11 had on me - an embedded uneasiness about certain things - behaviors of airplanes, clouds of smoke. I don't know when that unease will go away.
Nine years later, I think he was right to some extent, but he may have undervalued the significance of the attacks. Nine years later we are still involved in the war on Afghanistan and the War on Terror. Nine years later people are still sore and hurting about a mosque being built in New York City. Nine years later the idea of a terrorist attack is more real to us than it ever was before the attack.
Pearl Harbor forced our hands - and it got us involved in a world wide war, and it ultimately resulted in the Allies winning the war. If the War on Terror ever careened to the proportions of World War II (I hope not World War III at all), then it would be comparable.
I also noticed the impact World War II had on those who lived in that time period, and also the impact of World War I. 20 years after World War I, Hitler began the second World War because he was still bitter about the outcome. 20 years after World War II C.S. Lewis was writing books about the war, using Nazis as his example of "bad guys." (Frankly, 65 years later World War II continues to have a lasting impact on us - even those who did not live in that time period. It literally changed the world!)
So we are not even halfway to the midpoint of 20 years to see if this was a defining moment. We are in the middle of a recession that, experts say, will define my generation's spending habits. And my generation is still involved in the Afghanistan war. But in 11 years will we all continue to think of September 11th with the same patriotism and fervor that we do now?
I don't know. And I don't know what answer I would like. I would like to say "yes" because it means we would remember those who died that day and what it means to be an American. On the other hand, to say "yes" would imply the terrorists had won - they had created an "incident" as great and terrible as the attack on Pearl Harbor had been.
But I supose it doesn't matter - in 20 years I will probably still know exactly what 9/11 means on my calendar. But hopefully 11 years from now the terrorists will finally understand what the Japanese learned - don't mess with the USA.
An afterthought: the other day I went downstairs to our cafeteria, and the news was playing. On it was a picture of black, billowing smoke. My immediate thougth was, "Oh no, what have they blown up this time?" The video turned out to be of the oil well explosion in the Gulf. However, it reminded me of the impact 9/11 had on me - an embedded uneasiness about certain things - behaviors of airplanes, clouds of smoke. I don't know when that unease will go away.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
A Good Friday
Recently I wrote about a typical Sunday for me. I thought it would be fun to explain my typical Friday. First of all, let me backtrack to the rest of the week. Most nights I get home around 5:00 and aim for bed by 9:00 (so I actually get to bed by 10:00). These days include as long a walk as I can stand, eating dinner, playing computer games, maybe a soak in the tub.
Mondays I volunteer, which I always go to in a crabby mood, dragging my feet. I don't get home until 7:30 or later, which cuts my 5 hours into about 2 (thus the crabbiness).
Tuesdays Kristen is usually home, so I like to talk to her. Sometimes we just sit together in the living room both playing our computers. Sometimes we go out to dinner.
Wednesdays are my veg nights. I have nothing going on.
Thursdays I have puppy class (intermediate dog training, actually).
But Fridays I don't care when I go to bed, because I can "sleep in" or take a nap the next day. So I have a ritual. While the general weeknight pattern takes place, I have a few twists. I eat cheese pizza, for one. I also allow myself any other fun snack - like ice cream or s'mores. Sometimes I rent a movie. But the best part happens at 9:00.
At 9:00 I get into the big poofy red chair and prop my feet up. I have at my disposal a book or my laptop. I also have a nice glass of either wine or Dr. Pepper (in a wine glass, of course, to add to the glamour of it). Then I turn on the TV and watch "Star Trek: The Next Generations" - which I personally think is the least appealing of the four series I have followed in my life, but which I had rarely cared to see when it was airing. I get lost in the sci-fi show, in odd musings, subtle political statements. And, of course, I have my book or computer for the advertisements.
After Star Trek the King of Queens comes on and reminds me of my stay in Chicago - ah, I miss those days!
And I also miss Fridays when I don't get to play this came. I am half tempted to perform the routine tonight, and just risk being crabby tomorrow morning. I haven't decided yet, but I do know that I don't have any Dr. Pepper or wine lying around...
Mondays I volunteer, which I always go to in a crabby mood, dragging my feet. I don't get home until 7:30 or later, which cuts my 5 hours into about 2 (thus the crabbiness).
Tuesdays Kristen is usually home, so I like to talk to her. Sometimes we just sit together in the living room both playing our computers. Sometimes we go out to dinner.
Wednesdays are my veg nights. I have nothing going on.
Thursdays I have puppy class (intermediate dog training, actually).
But Fridays I don't care when I go to bed, because I can "sleep in" or take a nap the next day. So I have a ritual. While the general weeknight pattern takes place, I have a few twists. I eat cheese pizza, for one. I also allow myself any other fun snack - like ice cream or s'mores. Sometimes I rent a movie. But the best part happens at 9:00.
At 9:00 I get into the big poofy red chair and prop my feet up. I have at my disposal a book or my laptop. I also have a nice glass of either wine or Dr. Pepper (in a wine glass, of course, to add to the glamour of it). Then I turn on the TV and watch "Star Trek: The Next Generations" - which I personally think is the least appealing of the four series I have followed in my life, but which I had rarely cared to see when it was airing. I get lost in the sci-fi show, in odd musings, subtle political statements. And, of course, I have my book or computer for the advertisements.
After Star Trek the King of Queens comes on and reminds me of my stay in Chicago - ah, I miss those days!
And I also miss Fridays when I don't get to play this came. I am half tempted to perform the routine tonight, and just risk being crabby tomorrow morning. I haven't decided yet, but I do know that I don't have any Dr. Pepper or wine lying around...
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