culture – REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE

CHOICE

The surprising message in “The Glass Castle” is homelessness may be a choice. One wonders if that is the fault of American society or the nature of human beings.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Glass Castle (A Memoir)

Author: Jeannette Walls

Narration by: Jeannette Walls

Jeanette Walls (Author, American journalist, former gossip columnist for MSNBC.)

“The Glass Castle” is Jeanette Walls remembrance of her nomadic family and the way she is raised in America. With 3 siblings, an alcoholic father who knows something about electrical and mechanical engineering, a mother qualified as a schoolteacher who is an aspiring artist, Jeanette Wall’s parents choose to roam America.

The Walls Family.

“The Glass Castle” is a memoir of Jeanette Walls upbringing in America. Her story is enlightening if not entirely believable. Walls writes about her chaotic peripatetic life in America, mentions two personal marriages, and a life she lives with a father who loves her and a mother who holds the family together. Jeanette Walls is the second child of the family. She has an older sister, Lori, a younger brother named Brian, and a younger sister named Maureen. She and her brother are characterized with above average intelligence. In the beginning of her story, she notes living on Park Avenue and seeing her homeless mother rummaging through a dumpster in New York city. She confronts her mother, Rose Mary, who walks away saying Americans are wasteful and throw away perfectly useful, sometimes beautiful, things. This shocking introduction is about Jeanette Walls’ and her family’s life in America.

Arizona and West Virginia.

Listener/readers are introduced to Wall’s grandparents who came from two different economic backgrounds with Jeanettes mother’s family being middle class living in Arizona and her father’s parents being poor and living in West Virginia. Both grandparent families are matriarchal with mothers being rulers of the roost. The grandmother in Arizona dies and leaves two houses and Arizona land with some money to Jenette’s mother that offers, for a short time, some economic stability to the family’s life in America. However, Jennett’s family decides to move on to pursue their peripatetic life. They visit her father’s parents in West Virginia. Her dad’s father is an alcoholic with a wife that sternly rules the house. That sternness causes Jeanette Walls and her family to leave for New York City.

“The Glass Castle” is a story about how children are raised in America.

There is no particular standard for those who grow up in America or, for that matter, anywhere in the world. Living life anywhere can be romantically identified as perfect but that is a universal fiction. There is no safety net whether in America or anywhere in the world. There are “haves’ and “have nots” in every society. Children growing to adulthood, whether wealthy or poor, are faced with the trials of life that begin with their birth, extend through family relationships and the exigencies of making their way in the culture in which they live. Children live and are raised in a “…Glass Castle” that hides little from the world and can be shattered by the random circumstances of life. “The Glass Castle” shows experiences of childhood are universal and are either constructive or destructive in ways that mold a child’s character.

Children are influenced by their parents in both good and bad ways.

Alcoholism in a parent may lead to a child’s following or rejecting its influence in their life. Seeing the consequence of a parent’s experience can turn one toward their parents or steer one’s life in an opposite direction. America purports to be a land of opportunity but like every culture in the world there is inequality, instability, risk, and reward that change a child’s direction in life.

The surprising message in “The Glass Castle” is homelessness may be a choice. One wonders if that is the fault of American society or the nature of human beings.

WHO’S CHOKING

Economic chokepoints illustrated by Fishman are real, but their effectiveness is problematic.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Chokepoints (American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare)

Author: Edward Fishman

Narration by: Robert Petkoff

Edward Fishman (American author, international relations scholar, former diplomat at the Council on Foreign Relations, professor of Public Affairs at Columbia, University.)

Edward Fishman offers a detailed history of economic “Chokepoints” that have become a tool of war between nation-states. He reminds readers of Trump’s first term as President of the United States. Trump did not change from policies he believed in his first term. He only became more effective in carrying out his beliefs in his second term.

Trump’s beliefs.

Fishman shows how Trump combines the tactics of warfare with economic chokepoints to decimate Iranian cities while starving its citizens of their right to believe and live. Trump is convinced of the potential of Iran’s current leadership to use weapons of nuclear war to destroy civilization because of religious belief. Trump chooses to bomb Iran while expanding economic policies instituted by both Democratic and Republican administrations to choke petroleum revenues from a country that provides 20% of the world’s oil needs.

Like the bombing of Dresden in WWII, today’s America is senselessly bombing Iran.

Trump is waging a war on the singular belief that he can force Iran to abandon research for a nuclear bomb. The consequence is to embroil America in a war of attrition and destruction based on Trump’s belief that Iran’s leadership is willing to use nuclear war to end life on earth for a place in heaven. Trump’s actions are deluded idea of a “bully in a school yard”. Denying nuclear bomb development by force is a fool’s errand. North Korea, Russia, China, and America are as likely to instigate a nuclear war as Iran. Religious belief is Trump’s excuse; not a cause for war.

Iranian citizen protest.

It is the citizens of Iran that bare the consequence of America’s chokepoint decisions.

Fishman explains how economic chokepoints have becomes as devastating as war. The Iranian people have been impoverished by American allies’ cooperation in restricting their economy. It may be, like the physical war against Germany and Japan in WWII, economic chokepoints will make Iran bend its knee. On the other hand, it may continue a “forever war” that only diminishes humanity. Chokepoints are a war by other means that offer compromise, or dictatorship. Chokepoint effects are poverty, death, or compromise. Religion, like political belief, is a personal choice that cannot be eradicated by force.

Effects of human descent.

Economic chokepoints illustrated by Fishman are real, but their effectiveness is problematic. First, one must identify the economic target that is affective. Second, there must be unity and credibility among nations that can enforce a chokepoint. Even with a chosen chokepoint, the target may make citizens willing to sacrifice everything for belief in sovereignty.

AMERICA’S JOURNEY

Today, it seems America has taken a step backward from human equality, but every 4 years gives America another opportunity to step forward. That step forward welcomes equality of opportunity for all who choose to become American.

America has come a long way since 1776, but it is far from the goals that it set for itself in the Constitution.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

American Grammer (Race, Education, and the Building of a Nation)

Author: Jarvis R. Givens

Narration by: Bill Andrew Quinn

Jarvis Givens (Professor and scholar of Education at Harvard)

“American Grammar” is a reminder of America’s past which shows the hard truths of what really made America great. In the 19th and 20th centuries, American government attempts to erase the cultural heritage of tribal nations. At the same time, America disingenuously encourages human slavery based on false claims of racial and gender inequality. This history lives on in America today with faltering efforts to compensate tribes for their cultural and economic losses, and its failure to provide equal opportunity for all.

Too many people fail to read or understand history. Not knowing history makes repeating it a likelihood.

America has become one of the most powerful nations in the world. Beyond the natural abundance of its land, Jarvis Givens explains the decision of America’s leadership to create an educational system to ensure white America’s political and economic success.

An educational system is a key to the door of American political and economic success.

Common education, focused on grammar, melds disparate cultures, races, and genders into one nation. The title of Givens’ book “American Grammar” is a testament to the method America uses to create an independent nation. Educational institutions became indoctrination centers designed to teach citizens a common language and the importance of conforming to a primarily white male system of governance.

American inequality.

All people, as implied by the American Constitution, deserve to have equal opportunity based on their innate ability, I.e., regardless of ethnicity, race, or gender. Givens shows how the wealth of native lands that were stolen, support of slavery, and gender inequality became culturally acceptable in America with an education system designed to indoctrinate the public. Givens’ history reminds listeners that building a great nation is a work in progress for every country. America’s Constitution recognizes the importance of human equality, and its leaders have made some progress toward that goal. However, America is far from the goal of equal opportunity for all.

America steps back and forward toward the goal of equality of opportunity in every political election.

Gender Inequality

Raising children is the responsibility of all, i.e., both mothers and fathers, and the society in which they live. The future depends on our children.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Lessons in Chemistry (A Novel)

Author: Bonnie Garmus

Narration by: Miranda Raison & 2 more

Bonnie Garmus (American author and former copywriter.)

Bonnie Garmus’s main character represents the truth of gender inequality in society. The author’s main character, Elisabeth Zott, is an example of a woman who achieves success despite gender discrimination. As an idealized character, Zott represents a brilliant woman who is smarter, more self-motivated, and confident than any other character in “Lessons in Chemistry”. Zott is a self-educated woman who overcomes the ignorance of personal and social inequality. She is an aspiring scientist who is derailed in her career by male associates who steal her research and claim it as their own. It is presumed by the research firm for which she works that her science papers come from association with her male partner’s accomplishments rather than her own work. Zott’s value is believed to be her attractive appearance rather than her intellect, personal work, and ambition.

Equal opportunity in society is a fiction.

Zott’s male partner is a renowned scientist in the same scientific research firm for which Zott is employed. They become an intimate couple with marriage on the mind of the man, but independence insisted upon by Zott. Her companion dies in an accident and Zott is left with what is an unexpected pregnancy. Alone with a child, Zott presumes she will continue to work at the research firm but is fired by the male director of the enterprise because of her having a baby out of wedlock. Zott uses what financial savings she has to create a research lab in her house, raise her child, and find another source of employment. The author illustrates how motherhood, particularly for a single woman, limit women’s opportunity in society. The responsibilities of life for a woman with child and no partner often trap women in poverty.

How Zott escapes a life of poverty is a meaningful fairy tale in Garmus’s story.

Zott is hired by a TV production manager to host a cooking show. Zott’s intelligence and experience as a chemist combine with her drive for independence to make the show a success. What Bonnie Garmus shows is the mountain for success one climbs as a single woman is steeper and more difficult than it is for men. The “Lessons in Chemistry” are that a woman’s right to think, work, and live independently are denied because equal opportunity and equal pay is thwarted by gender-related discrimination.

All in society, both male and female, need to step up to their responsibility for raising children.

The “Lessons in Chemistry” suggest men need to step up in society and take responsibility for gender inequality by providing an environment that allows women to achieve the same level of success as men–whatever that success may be to the individual. Raising children is the responsibility of all, i.e., both mothers and fathers, and the society in which they live. The future depends on our children.

VERIFIABLE TRUTH

Schweizer presents a book that has little substantiated proof about immigration in America. His book has become popular. “The Invisible Coup” has improved his economic well-being at the expense of knowledge based on verifiable fact.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Invisible Coup (How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon)

Author: Peter Schweizer

Narration by: Charles Constant

Peter Franz Schweizer (American political consultant and writer. Editor-at-large for far-right media organization Breitbart News. Former fellow of the Hoover Institution.)

“The Invisible Coup” is a popular book that explains why world peace is a pipe dream in today’s world. Schweizer shows why Donald Trump has a popular following that continues to support his Presidency despite ICE tactics to identify immigrants based on the color of their skin, and his attack on Iran without authorization from Congress or cooperation from America’s allies.

Schweizer has written a paranoid polemic on the causes and purpose of immigration to the United States by non-white immigrants.

Schweizer argues immigration is a coordinated “weapon” of foreign governments and American power brokers to influence and ultimately overthrow America’s way of life. He refuses to note people come to America to create a better life for themselves and their families. This is not to suggest there is no effort by immigrants to sneak into the U.S. or to game the American welfare system but to realize abuse of welfare is a problem whether American citizens or immigrants abuse the system. This is an American welfare management problem, not an immigrant issue.

America is founded on immigration.

Schweizer argues immigrants from China, Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, and Brazil are gaming America’s welfare system and undermining the national purpose of a democratic government at the direction of foreign government leaders. He suggests the purpose of these foreign government’s leaders is to weaken the national character of America and destabilize its government. Schweizer writes of anonymous U.S. intelligence officials that say China encourages Chinese nationals with military intelligence to cross into America to gather intelligence. He offers no documentary evidence, no named officials, or verifiable data. He cites anonymous sources for all these countries to make his arguments totally unverifiable

Immigrants are seeking a better life in America.

To believe there is a coordinated foreign attack on American democracy by foreign governments through the use of illegal immigration is a distortion of a primary truth, i.e., immigrants are seeking a better life. Conspiracy to destroy American democracy through illegal immigration is absurd on its face. This is not to say some foreign governments would like to see America fail but for reasons of money, power, and world domination which have nothing to do with emigration. Schweizer generalizes real incidents of immigrant criminals to make the absurd argument that a cabal of foreign governments are using illegal immigration to undermine American institutions. His arguments are based on confidential documents and unnamed sources. He writes of “leaked intelligence” or “internal government documents” that are classified and cannot be produced to prove his point. Anonymous intelligence and law-enforcement officials are frequently used to substantiate his claims. Schweizer makes evidence-free assertions with political points that have no basis in verifiable fact.

Immigrant crime rates.

The history of immigration in America has improved economic growth. America is a nation of immigrants. The truth is immigrants commit crime at lower rates than native-born Americans. There is no denying the U.S. immigration system is flawed. Cartels do exploit illegal immigration to make money and some governments pressure America by increasing migration from their countries to the United States. Immigration is a regulatory problem but viewing it as foreign nation-states’ geopolitical attack is ridiculous on its face. The troubling part of Schweizer’s view is that world peace is an ideal that may never be achieved because of the nature of human beings. Mistakes are made when people correlate undocumented facts with causes. Truth has little value without independent verification of facts.

LITERATURE

Serpell has written an excellent review of Morrison’s work as a novelist. It illustrates the great power and importance of literature to reveal an understanding of ourselves and humanity.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

On Morrison

Author: Namwali Serpell

Narration by: January LaVoy

Namwali Serpell (Author, Zamian/American, professor of English at Harvard.)

Ms. Serpell has written an insightful and informative review of Toni Morrison’s written works. Morrison died on August 5, 2019. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. She also won a Pulitzer Prize for “Beloved” in 1987. Morrison graduated from Howard University in 1953 and received a master’s degree in American Literature from Cornell in 1955. Her writing is partly about racism in the United States, but her story telling is about human beings, regardless of their race.

Toni Morrison (1931-2019, American novelist, professor of literature, and editor.)

Serpell explains how one can understand the brilliance of Morrison as a writer of great fiction. Morrison’s reading of literary classics is a part of her success as a writer. Serpell’s explanation of the many allusions in Morrison’s books show how brilliant both Serpell is in her understanding of literature and Morrison’s success as a literary Nobel Prize winner.

Tolstoy and Morrison are among the great writers of their times

What comes through to this critic is how ignorant one can be about what makes a writer great. Morrison is a writer that in someways removes the color of one’s skin from society by creating stories that are true about every American today. The story in “The Bluest Eye” of a father who rapes and impregnates his own daughter is an appalling truth about world gender discrimination and human degradation. It illustrates the brutality and inequality of gender discrimination in society. Societal inequality is not just about the color of one’s skin but in the false belief of racial and gender superiority.

Like Baldwin, Morrison was a voracious reader of books.

Serpell reveals the many allusions to classic literature in Morrison’s work. From Shakespearean drama to the modern literature of Eliot and Joyce, Morrison draws on behaviors, and social strategies that shape her stories. Morrison gives the same depth to Black life as all human life. Serpell shows Morrison draws on singular heroes and forces that have driven the characters of other famous and successful writers.

Morrison’s Published Books

The Bluest Eye (1970)
Sula (1973)
Song of Solomon (1977)
Tar Baby (1981)
Beloved (1987)
Jazz (1992)
Paradise (1998)

In the last chapter of “…Morrison”, Serpell visits a memorial to Morrison. Serpell explains that reading Morrison is like developing a relationship with her. The author notes Morrison did not shy away from the truth of discrimination. She explains Morrison looks at monuments to discrimination like the statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond, VA. and believes they should be left in place to remind society of stories that show how unjust inequality is to humanity (the statue is removed in 2021). Morrison is shown to be a great Black writer with a clear understanding of what it is to be an American.

Toni Morrison Memorial.

Interestingly, Serpell is highly critical of Morrison’s poetry. Serpell suggests Morrison has great poetic power in her prose but fails when she tries to write poetry. (Not being a follower of poetry, this reviewer is no judge.) What one can read in Morrison’s prose shows an imaginative density that seems the equal of what people say about poetry. It is somewhat surprising that Morrison could not be a good poet. In any case, Serpell has written an excellent review of Morrison’s work as a novelist. It illustrates the great power and importance of literature to reveal an understanding of ourselves and humanity.

SLAVERY

The Seminole Indian leaders, Osceola and Abraham, formed an alliance for multiracial freedom that remains the goal of all rational human beings. They failed and only became free in death.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Free and the Dead

Author: Jamie Holmes (The Untold Story of the Black Seminole Chief, the Indigenous Rebel, and America’s Forgotten War.)

Narration by: David Sadzin & 1 more

Jamie Holmes (Author, writer for the NYT, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Slate. Served in the Peace Corps after receiving a degree from New York University and went on to Columbia to receive a Master of International Affairs.)

“The Free and the Dead” is a book that shows how little this reader/listener knows about slavery and Black history. “The Free and the Dead” is a history of Black slaves in Florida who were descendants of Spanish Florida that became a refuge for enslaved Africans fleeing the English colonies between the 1600s and 1700s. Spain offers asylum and freedom to runaways who could reach Florida in the early days of America.

Louise Erdrich offers a distinctive picture of Indian reservation life and reminds one of American power’s ill treatment of Indian people.

Some former slaves joined the Seminole Indian confederation to become leaders and translators of Indian languages for early settlers of what became American territory. Holmes reveals some of the cultural blending between Seminole and African descendants who had escaped colonial slavery. Separate villages of these culturally blended descendants gained relative freedom in the U.S. South by becoming fierce fighters for Seminole Indian freedom in the Seminole Wars between 1817 and 1858.

Today’s Indian Reservations.

As most Americans know, the Indian wars were lost and the Seminoles like all Indian tribes were moved around the country to reservations that changed with subsequent Presidents’ and American military’ orders. Holmes reveals some of this early history in “The Free and the Dead”. The most famous Black Seminole leader was Abraham who became a co-leader with Osceola, an indigenous Seminole Indian who resisted U.S. policies.

Abraham (A prominent Black Seminole leader in the 19th century.)

Abraham became a Black Seminole chief. He was a former slave who became an influential military leader of the Seminoles. He spoke English, Spanish, and the Creek Indian languages which made him an important intermediary in negotiating with white settlers. Abraham worked with major Seminole war leaders in negotiating agreements between white settlers and Seminole tribes. This twist in the history of American slavery and Osceola’s and Abraham’s alliance make Holmes’ story insightful.

Osceola, leader of the Seminole Indians in Florida in the Second Seminole War.

The point of “The Free and the Dead” seems the only way one becomes free is when they are dead.

Slavery today seems as prevalent as it was years ago. America’s Declaration of Independence says, “all men are created equal”. Ironically, it seems neither men nor women seem to qualify.

The Seminole Indian leaders, Osceola and Abraham, formed an alliance for multiracial freedom that remains the goal of all rational human beings. They failed and only became free in death. Abraham seems to have died in old age while Osceola is captured and dies in prison.

A VIEW OF GENIUS

Like all world changing inventions and discoveries, iPhone came with costs ranging from children’ and adults’ addiction, to rare minerals depletion, to environmental pollution. The long-term effect of iPhones has changed the world with unexpected, often unforeseen, consequences.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The One Device (The Secret History of the iPhone)

Author: Brian Merchant

Narration by: Tristan Morris

Brian Merchant (Author, American technology journalist, writes for The New York Times, Wired, Slate, The Atlantic, and the Guardian.)

Brian Merchant works around the tech world but never quite in it. His understanding of today’s technology has made him a popular writer for national news outlets. Never having been employed by a tech company, his analysis of iPhone history, the role of Jobs, and the history of its development is as an outsider to the process of invention. As a writer about technology, there is a level of objectivity but also reservation about an outsider’s details. Merchant reports what others tell of iPhone’s history rather than as a person being there as a part of its development.

Merchant’s investigation explains the iPhone’s creation is a messy human process entailing the dangers of mining, involvement of other companies and individuals, patent questions, and labor struggles. The impact of the iPhone’s invention is world changing. In a fundamental way, Merchant discounts the mythology of iPhone’s invention by one person or company. There were decades of prior invention before the iPhone became more than an idea, let alone a world changing device.

The scope of manufacturing iPhones made Foxconn the leading international labor subcontractor in the world. Foxconn is estimated to employ 800,000 employees in China alone. Many have been contracted by Apple for iPhone product assembly.

The mining industry and assembly line development were in place before the raw material and labor that would be needed for iPhone development. Merchant suggests Apple became the central orchestrator rather than singular inventor of the iPhone. Merchant argues the iPhone is a synthesis of decades of technological improvement, unnamed engineers, labor and organizations of miners and factory workers, and innovations needed to produce Apple’s revolutionary product.

Genius and invention go hand in hand. However, Merchant explains in the early 20th century, much of the technology that became a part of the iPhone’s foundation were already invented. He notes touchscreens, voice recognition tools, motion tracking, and early iterations of what became Artificial Intelligence had already been discovered. Merchant’s intent is not to diminish the genius of Apple, Jobs, or its employees but to show the public that every extraordinary human invention has precursors and essential earlier discoveries. It took Apple’s leadership and employees to integrate the many technologies that had been discovered earlier to create what has become a handheld window to the world. Merchant explains no great inventions are created out of thin air. He suggests every invention of the present is dependent on thought, labor, experience, and invention of the past.

Thomas Kuhn suggests every revolution in science begins with a paradigm in conjunction with discoveries of the past.

Merchant discounts the idea of the “lone genius” because every genius depends on insight and events of the past to correlate what she/he invents in the present. The iPhone unifies decades of technological progress. The iPhones’ invention reorganizes global behavior, creates a new economic and industrial model, and gives the world a pocket supercomputer. The geniuses of Apple earned their reputations, but they relied on discoveries of the past.

Thinking of Curie, Einstein, Newton, and other giants of science, one wonders how Merchant’s belief about genius is valid. He would argue the brilliance of Curie, Einstein, and Newton are built on prior knowledge, their predecessors, and the tools of their time. Their genius is in connecting past knowledge and discovery of others with the present. Their genius is dependent on predecessors. Merchant is not diminishing Jobs’ or Apple’s genius, but their breakthroughs could only come from groundwork established by others.

INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION ON A BAD DAY IN BEJING,, CHINA

CAPITALISM’S HISTORY

A surveillance society is a choice that can be made with careful deliberation or by helter-skelter judgement to return manufacturing to America without clearly understanding its impact on American society. That is the underlying importance of Beckert’s history of capitalism.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Capitalism (A Global History)

Author: Sven Beckert

Narration by: Soneela Nankani & 3 more

Sven Beckert (Author, Professor of History at Harvard, graduated from Columbia with a PhD in History.)

Professor Beckert defines capitalism as an economic form of privately owned capital reinvested in an effort to produce more capital. In defining capitalism in that way, Beckert suggests capitalism reaches back to 1000 CE, long before some who argue it came into being in 18th century England. Beckert argues the Italian city-states, like Venice, Genoa, and Florence, are the origin of capitalism. That is when accumulated wealth is invested in long-distance trade networks, early banks, and trade by wealthy Italian families. Beckert’s point is that England simply expanded what had begun hundreds of years earlier with trade investment by wealthy Italian families.

Economic theories.

Becker briefly compares many economic theories like capitalism, Marxism, Keynesianism, and Polanyian theories which he calls institutional economics. All bare the flaws of human nature. His economic history is about the addition of slavery to capitalism in the late 15th through 18th centuries. Beckert notes Portugal, Spain, Britain, France, and the Netherlands strengthened their capitalist economies. They were able to secure cheap, controllable labor, expand production, and increase profits with slavery.

However, wage earner respect and treatment, whether in manufacturing, technology, or service industries, are the key to survival of world capitalist democracies.

Beckert explains the monumental changes and expansion that occurs with England’s adoption of early capitalism. As early as the 17th century, Beckert notes England revolutionizes capitalism in good and morally corrupt ways. Nation-state power combines with private capital to create a massive capitalist influencer around the world. With the dominance of British naval power, colonialism expands, slavery becomes part of international trade, and capitalist monopolies grow to dominate economies. England’s industrial revolution with mechanized production, factory labor, and capital accumulation is able to expand market influence and hugely improve their countries infrastructure and legal protections. Creating patent laws raises potential for monopolization of some market goods.

For several reasons, slavery declines during the later years of industrialization. However, Beckert notes its immorality is not the primary reason.

Free labor became more efficient for capital accumulation. The enslaved became discontented with their role as cheap labor. By the 19th century, slavery became politically and legally incompatible with capitalism. Capitalists began to understand how they could gain more wealth by indenturing rather than enslaving workers, offering sharecropping, or leasing convicts. Capitalists found they could get cheaper labor through contracts with prisons, or sharing of income than slave ownership by being more flexible with the political and physical environment in which labor worked. Slavery faded because capitalists found new ways to reduce costs of labor. At the same time, slave revolts were escalating, the U.S. Civil War is being fought, policing of slavery became too expensive, and investors felt their investments would be at risk in company’s dependent on slave labor. Morality had little to do with abolishing slavery in Beckert’s opinion.

Beckert shows how capitalism systematically expands investment of private capital. Capital is put to work rather than hoarded and consumed by a singular family, political entity, or economic system. Capitalism provides a potential for moving beyond slave-based economies, though racial discrimination remains a work in progress. Beckert notes capitalism is different from other economic systems because it invests private capital that theoretically moderates the need for nation-state’ capital investment in the health, and welfare of a nation’s citizens.

The interesting judgement made by Beckert is that capitalism’s foundation was initially based on slavery, colonialism, and state violence.

The violence of which he writes is based on several factors, i.e., historical slavery, territorial seizure, nation-backed monopolies, worker mistreatment or suppression, and global coercion with military backing. Beckert seems to admit no major historical economic system is free of violence. It seems every economic system is imperfect. Violence appears a fundamental part of human nature in all presently known economic systems.

In the mid to late twentieth century, Beckert notes how manufacturing becomes a global rather than local capitalist activity.

This reorganization creates global inequalities that America is late to understand and adjust to in their capitalist economy. The financial and investment industry of America benefited by becoming world investors, but the local economy fails to remain competitive with the production capabilities of other countries. To become competitive seems an unreasonable expectation for America because of the cost of labor. Trump’s belief appears to be that the solution is to force a return of manufacturing to America. To do that, the rich seem to ignore the fact that to be competitive manufacturing has to have its costs reduced. Where will that reduction come from? Reducing labor costs creates a downward spiral in the families dependent on income from labor. Can America capture a larger part of raw materials for manufacturing to offset higher costs of labor? That is conceivable but it will require a more focused American investment in raw materials that other nations are equally interested in capturing.

AI is a tool of human beings and will be misused by some leaders in the same way atom bombs, starvation, disease, climate, and other maladies have harmed the sentient world.

A capitalist’ economy’s violence has multiple drivers but A.I. has the potential of early detection of conflict hotspots, better predictive policing, more efficient allocation of material resources, and improved mental-health triage and intervention. A.I. is not a perfect answer to human nature’s flaws or the reestablishment of manufacturing in America. There is the downside of the surveillance society pictured by George Orwell.

Humans will learn to use and adapt to Artificial General Intelligence in the same way it has adapted to belief in a Supreme Being, the Age of Reason, the industrial revolution, and other cultural upheavals.

AMERICAN IDENTITY

One can appreciate Vuong’s picture of two immigrant Americans lives but his story is too maudlin for this listener.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Emperor of Gladness

Author: Ocean Vuong

Narration by: James Aaron Oh

Vương Quốc Vinh (Author, poet, professor at NYU and the University of Massachusetts, born and raised in rural Vietnam who is now an American citizen.)

“The Emperor of Gladness” is like “Alice in Wonderland”. The author’s story draws one down into a rabbit hole of personal experience and imagination. It tells what life is like for people who become lost to themselves because of advanced age or youthful experiment with drugs and addiction. It begins with a young addict who is teetering on suicide and is rescued by an old woman nearing senile dementia. It is largely the backstory of two immigrants and their lives in America.

American immigrants.

The old woman is from Lithuania. The young boy is a Vietnam immigrant brought to the United States by his family near the end of America’s misbegotten war. Both live in poverty in America. Their stories tell how they survive the grief and trauma of their lives. The elderly woman has lost her husband, lives alone, and had a social services person visit her for a time but is never replaced. Some of the trauma that occurs in the boys and aged mother of a daughter is brought on by themselves, particularly with the young boy. For the elderly woman, it seems brought on by living in poverty in a country that has great wealth but is unable to offer adequate care for the elderly poor.

Story of Stalin’s occupation of Lithuania.

One who has traveled to Lithuania has some understanding of the tragedy of Stalin’s dictatorial control and displacement of the Lithuanian people. That is partly what draws one to stay in the story. However, it is not enough to maintain this listener’s interest in the story. The young boy is raised in poverty and succumbs to addiction which is hard for some to understand because they have not fallen into that addictive trap. The author does a fine job of showing how these two characters meet each other and become a family that cares for each other. The growing dementia of the old woman is managed by the young boy in a way that is endearing and insightful for those who do not have the patience to deal with infirmity and elderly dementia.

There are lessons about being poor in America in Vuong’s story.

Vuong notes immigrants who have reached a certain age in their native countries are faced with learning a new language and culture when they arrive in a foreign country. All human beings gain understanding from the experience of living, but post-infancy immigrants are faced with translating language and experience understood in their home countries that are different in American culture. That by itself is a struggle.

Immigrants often grow up in silence because they are unsure of unaccustomed experiences that native-born children take for granted. Translation seems a matter of survival for an immigrant whereas a native feels experience is just part of living life that one runs from or towards.

The details of being a poor immigrant in America seem the same as a natives’ views of life but Vuong explains why they are not. To those who have been born and raised in a white privileged but economically challenged society, discrimination associated with being an immigrant minority or drug user is too unrelatable. The underlying message by the author is that in the age of “Make America Great Again”, being an immigrant makes one feel even more of an outsider.

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