Florida: A Failure of Community

After the Florida shooting President Trump spoke words of comfort to the children. “We will be there for you if you are lost, alone, confused, and even scared. You will never be alone . . . “   Was he talking to the survivors of the tragedy? Obviously the FBI wasn’t there, even with a prior warning.

Maybe Trump was talking to young men, the young men who are lonely and confused and angry. Maybe he was telling them that they don’t have to do this kind of violence in order to get attention. But neither the president nor any government official can make angry young men feel part of a community.  Only the community can do that. It was a failure of community – not an online community, but a failure of a real community in real time and in a real place. Maybe such a community wasn’t even there. It’s not just up to law enforcement who, practically speaking, can only react to something gone bad.

I saw again the still photo, black and white, of two boys in the Columbine classroom, the killers in that massacre. Angry, lonely, fearful. They must have known they would not survive the day.

High School can be a place where hormones make growing teens feel off balance, disoriented, easily moody. The pressure to fit in with the crowd is a top priority in lives lived minute to minute, often doing things that are risky. Our pre-programmed biology creates a kind of dance, pushing us to establish a social hierarchy. There are top dogs and then there are the rest of us. It can be cruel. Many subdominant males get left behind. Some get cast out.

This story is not new. It has been written about in books such as Lord of the Flies and A Clockwork Orange, worlds of youth gone sour and turned violent. One can feel the youthful passions present in popular music of the day and then reflected back again in Stravinsky’s Dance of the Adolescents. In the Lord of the Flies there was no one to guide them, no clues on how to get along with other children, and so their situation brought out the worst. Social pressure on young people without guidance from an older generation is definitely high stakes. It writes a warped and cruel drama.

Older people forget these passions. We’ve found our parking spot and turn our attention to the next thing.   Ever since Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone there have been warnings of what weak community bonds can look like, though it is often from a sociologist’s point of view more than what is experienced by the individual.

Girls don’t do these violent things as much as boys. Girls seem to form friendships with other girls that carry them though. Girls are not to blame for the violence but neither are they passive observers. Girls have their own special power over boys. Some of them are aware of this while others have their own self-concept challenges, but they too have this special power.

Teenagers seem driven – or maybe expected – to make fun of others, teasing, ignoring, saying cruel things to the weirdo, the kooks (whatever the current lingo), to the guy that stares at them and then tries to smile. It’s a Lord of the Flies, over and over again, a competitive field for the business of constructing and climbing the social ladder.  It’s serious stuff. Kids seem to know that, but I’m not sure they can see or sense a loneliness in others.

The Florida killer was reported to be an autistic young male. This does not mean that he was not sensitive to the pressures that build social hierarchies. He had recently lost his remaining parent. I would guess that outside of school he spent most of his time in front of a screen, playing violent video games or expressing his anger on social media, probably feeling even more alone. He didn’t want to go to school on Valentine’s Day, the day of the shooting.

Last year a flash mob in Oakland used their cell phones to coordinate the entrance into a subway car, told everyone to hand over their wallets and then left with their loot. The newspaper account was straight up news but still upsetting to read.   This was Clockwork Orange. It will be a challenge to the elders of Oakland, the parents, teachers, political leaders and police force.  What will the elders do? Simply catch and punish? Bring them to justice? Or somehow bring them back into the community?

How do we create a community where it is weak or non-existent? How do we find and bring in the angry, fearful young men?   Where is a place for them to connect?   Being alone is not bad. We all need some time alone. But inability to form friendships should be a warning sign.   When we see this, why are we unable to act?   One does not have to be their friend, but we can say hello, and maybe indirectly through other people help to find a place for the guy to fit in, to find some purpose in his life. That’s what leaders do.
In many ways the world of public school is not real, not real in the same sense that an apprentice might feel when learning a trade or learning skills from a parent.   High School students should work on real world problems, not just a hypothetical problem for extra credit. By themselves, students may not have enough experience to know how to connect and how to work on real issues, but their input may be critical to finding solutions.  Education, after all, is essentially about survival.

Where to start? Notice where students go when class is over and see if they have friends. Get to know the people around you and the neighbors too, but don’t limit it to neighbors. Go the distance to find someone (probably a young man) who doesn’t seem to fit in. If you find someone, don’t simply be nice. Ask them to do something. Give then a hammer or wrench and get them involved in a project. Help them find some place that itself has a real need. Sometimes just listen.

Influence of social media, violent videos, or overuse of drugs and medications are questions that a community should face up to. The lucky ones have extended families to help deal with it all. Many others among us have a nuclear family or a few close friends. Those outside the circle must become more than just “others”.

July 2019.  Climate One with Greg Dalton at the Commonwealth Club of California.

Guests included Jonathan Foley of Project Drawdown, Lois Quam of Pathfinder International, and Kate Brandt of Google.

I wonder whether the American people seem to be so unconcerned about climate because they don’t see the elite or leaders of this country cutting back on their flying.  Jonathan Foley said that flying is only about 1% of CO2 emissions.   Kate Brandt said yes, it was about the same level as energy consumed by data centers.  I think that these numbers are low.  With a smart audience they may be hurting their own credibility. (see the Rhodium report). Even Greg Dalton said that flying is on the rise.

But the main point is not about the numbers that we all throw out when asked such a question.  It’s the attitude.  Yes, Parliament has already declared a climate emergency and Congress may soon follow, but no one really acts like it is an emergency.  The pilots that I talk to don’t seem to think much about climate change.  Most politicians follow the polls.  That is why we need a Flying Sabbath (a NoFlyWednesday) in which all commercial planes worldwide take a day of rest.  It would get many more people thinking and talking about the true emergency that we do have.  The savings to the airlines would be significant too, though the prices would go up. It’s a flying habit, but this issue must get into the public sphere.

It may be that we need to “push” people – people at any level – to address one specific aspect of the climate and help them find something to do about it.  Not everyone needs to understand details of the science in order to contribute to making their local world a more energy efficient place.  Information Games is one such way to push them.

Jonathan Foley and Lois Quam both expressed frustration at the cultural momentum that makes us not talk about issues that need to be addressed.  Here again, Information Games can help provide that push.  More specifically it gives people a structure in which people can talk and question and be creative.

Parallels with the battle against cigarette smoking are only partly useful.  Most smokers wanted to quit. That battle against the tobacco companies was primarily fought in court and still took 20-30 years. Since then, the tobacco companies have moved their target market overseas only to be slowed down – in some cases – by health departments who have kept up to date on the science and on the damage that smoking can do.

Jonathan Foley quoted Amory Lovins: “the stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stone”.   Sounds good, but stones don’t provide the incredible amount of energy contained in a gallon of jet fuel or diesel.  With earth-moving equipment a gallon of diesel can do the work of a hundred people – and much faster.  Plus it keeps us warm and cooks our food that we get shipped in from all over the world. That is what we are up against, not stones.

“Pushing people” does not have to be unpleasant, but it must be a specific challenge or a specific question to a specific group of people.  Whatever results can be further refined by the same teams or other small groups of people.  It is a social learning structure that can accelerate our learning curve.  Much of the work may end up changing ways in which we construct our daily lives and jobs. If that happens, social learning tools can help people see the next step ahead and feel secure when taking it.

Crime of The Central Bankers –

Using the Power of the State to Mix the Real Economy with the Casino.

   -published on josuterdotcom, October 20, 2016

Social hierarchies and division of labor are essential to modern life. Our power as humans cannot be separated from the ability to create social hierarchies since, as individuals, we cannot do much aside from subsistence farming or hunting. The glue that bind us together includes language and the ability to create stories, some of which hopefully will reflect reality.   The other key ingredient is currency.   If we destroy the currency we destroy our ability to interact in a reasonable and kindly manner. Without a stable currency things fall apart.

Imagine what early currency might have been. A farmer and herdsman trade a bushel of apples for a goat. The apples are not yet ripe, so the farmer writes an IOU to the herdsman. This IOU is a form of currency.   It not only represents the value of the apples but is also a sign of the integrity of the agreement between two people. Suppose the owner of this IOU now makes many more copies of the IOU. It not only changes the value of the original IOU but possibly destroys a trusted relationship.   Counterfeiters of such IOU’s would not be looked upon kindly by the community.

Nineteenth century political scientist Max Weber observed that the nation-state is that entity which has gained a monopoly on the [legitimate] use of physical force. In modern society, central bankers and congress are responsible for maintaining the integrity of the currency and loss of this integrity harms our relationships with each other. This power of the state is what the Fed and other Central Banks use to enforce financial laws and regulations. They can do this by printing money or forcing interest rates to zero to save institutions who have bet too much.

Central Bankers misuse our trust by allowing a mixing of the real economy with the casino economy, then using the power of the state to enforce this connection.   Evidence for this connection is seen in the sky high Price to Earnings ration (PE).   A reasonable PE might be 10 or 15 to 1. Ten dollars invested in a growing business represented on Wall Street should earn one dollar more over a reasonable period of growth. But PE ratios are now as high as 60 to 1. No one expects that money to be paid back merely by growth of an honest business. Money invested at this level is made simply by staying ahead of other investors. Real and healthy investments are forced to support gambling.

Casinos have their separate economies with bouncers at the door who can spot persona non grata, clients who have not paid their gambling debts. Everyone who goes into a casino knows this.   The risk to the real economy is that this casino effect has been allowed to become entangled and mixed up with the casino economy. Congress, the Fed, and other Central Bankers use the power of the state to enforce this charade when they print money to bail out the banks. Retirement and honest investment funds will be brought down along with a casino that crashes because it is impossible to separate the two lines of investment.

Genevieve Guenther

I appreciated your discussion with Bobby Magill on Minnesota Public Radio.   Mr. Magill seemed to be captured by the people that he covers in the gas and oil industry and unable to imagine what is coming at us.  Would he feel the same if he reported from a battlefield? Or would he be like the nature photographer who maintains a neutral stance until the lion heads toward the tent where his family is sleeping?  The difference here is mostly in the time course and proximity of the disaster.

I thought you both were parsing words that may be important to reporters and editors but lost on the readers.  If journalists are to find the missing pieces of a puzzle that describes public resistance in talking about climate issues, it will be important to “push” some of the public with something that goes beyond reporting.  I think it can be done starting with small groups, using debate teams and real competition.

I addressed some of this in the Youtube video “New Climate Dice and the Media” by josuter. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH3Gx_qjPOc) The last 7 minutes describes some of these games but only generally.  Games can help journalists find better models and metaphors that will engage people in thinking not only about the reality of a climate emergency, but about solutions also.

One might start a discussion question with a pot of water.  Maybe you are making pasta tonight.  Put a bit of oil on the surface of the water when it is still cool.   Watch it coalesce into clouds.  Then watch it while you turn up the flame and add energy to the system.  This is more than a metaphor.  It is a model of a system that is very much like our atmosphere.  Is this a parallel that could be understood by the average climate denier?  If not, then what image might clarify the risks for them?

I think the only way to find out is to do the game.  Otherwise you don’t know why people agree or disagree with you.  Realization of the magnitude of the climate crisis can be very depressing.   We all tend to be on our own path of that realization, but we cannot wait for that.  Games (or some kind of physical meeting) can bring people together to think and act in concert.

Create teams that compete for the best answer and ask another team (not you) to judge the best answer.  But then you, or some other moderator, can help craft the next Discussion Question. Step by step in an efficient process they may come to understand not only what is happening but what they can do about it.

How people receive the news and what they do with it should really be a part of the task of journalism. We cannot simply create stories and then blame readers for not reacting.  Mostly we don’t know what will make people sit up and say “we’ve got a job to do!”    It will be essential to engage the public if we are to make the changes smoothly.

Addendum: I had written to the airlines asking for a Flying Sabbath, a NoFlyWednesday during which all commercial airlines take a break and don’t fly.   The price of tickets will go up and the airline companies will save on fuel and labor costs, but it is a chance for them to take control of their future.  It is also a way to engage the flying public in thinking about climate issues.  I received a polite written response and even a phone call after my first letter, but I am going to write to the airlines once again while new heat records are being set every month.