Arnold Schwarzenegger for President!!

I admit it-- I'm a closet E-bayer. But I have to wonder... do many people who sell on Ebay also give their money right back in the form of other purchases?? It seems as though it would be a hard environment to be profitable in. So many tantalizing choices...

I recently came across an auction for a Coach leatherware handbag (MSRP $800). With one day left for bidding, the bag was at $168. It's my impression the bag will ultimately go for a steal. And, as the seller has no record of previous transactions (Ebay documents this publicly) the bag literally looks like a steal! Why anyone would bid on this, I haven't a clue. Perhaps the Ebay environment appears legit-- what I mean is, although the item must have been stolen, the potential purchaser figures she's paying, and thus the transaction is not ethically wrong, or something But will the auction's winner actually ever receive the bag? It seems to me that Ebay is a wonderful place to fence stolen goods. A thief could certainly have a phony credit card at his disposal! <--a "seller" requirement...

Because Ebay's "environment" makes tracing determined criminals difficult (if not impossible) that's reason enough to be wary. But that's not the only thing that Meg Whitman has transformed since Pierre Omidyar founded Ebay with Jeff Skoll in 1995.

I recently went to a large advertised sale at a Chinese boutique near Horsham, Pennsylvania. Big discounts on furniture! The woman informed us she would only be selling on the Internet from now on because brick-and-mortar overhead is just too high! That's the problem. There's so little human-to-human interaction anymore. We see our families, we see our friends, but this used to be a world where a new day would bring a myriad of unique experiences, meetings with new and different people (from what I hear, this was the case!) I know location plays a role... and this is just another rant against technology that's being posted on the Internet! But really, there's just so little personal interaction anymore. (I noticed the other day that the media has reduced people to color: "Barack Obama is stealing the white vote from Hilary Clinton!" weight: "Angelina Jolie / Nicole Richie / insert name here is skin and bone!" etc--people are all reduced to superficial generalities). What this equates to is a loss of interaction, loss of depth in the world.


It's gotten me to thinking about a guilty pleasure of mine-- those Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, Terminator(s) 1 & 3. (Sorry Edward Furlong, I just don't buy you as a revolutionary...) And in these Terminator movies, people lament impending takeover by the machines. Jobs are being automated, outsourced to foreign countries, people send email instead of writing a letter, making a phone call, or paying a visit!

The "machines" are already in control. The real crime is that most of us haven't taken the time to object, or at the very least notice!

Rose is Rose is Harry

As any mother will tell you, there are days when strangers accidentally refer to the new baby girl as a boy (be it an unfortunate haircut or poor clothing choice). Some days, in fact, Junior may pick up a Barbie Doll and refuse to put it down. Blurring gender lines—that’s nothing new; what has changed, however, is the degree to which it’s deemed socially acceptable.

I sat down with 2 pre-Baby Boomers and 2 Gen Y-ers to determine the current thinking on gender identity. Tom, 65, is a witty shoe salesman, a bachelor whose freezer currently holds 40+ Rita’s tangerine Italian ice and 1 hard-as-a-rock frozen loaf of bread. Carrie, 64, is a former Hess’ model and homemaker who struggles with allowing profanity to seep into her everyday language (and I’ve been told that her homegrown red hot peppers are among “the best looking in the &#$% state!”). Anne, 28, is a single mom and graphic designer. Her current hobbies include dying her hair and updating her MySpace.com page. DJ, 29, is head-chef at a trendy Bucks County eatery. He smokes too much and is overly fond of wearing his chef’s hat while not at work. I spoke toCarrie first, and asked her to describe some of the ways boys and girls were treated differently when she was a child.

“My father taught my 4 brothers each to drive by age 16. I didn’t learn until my husband taught me, when I was in my mid-20s.” She thought for a minute, then continued. “It’s funny. I remember my brother George failed a history test in high school. Father grounded him, took away all privileges for 2 months, and wouldn’t even look at him for a good long while. I failed a math test my senior year. I cried when I showed my parents the big, red ‘F.’ Father patted me on the back. Mom hugged me, said she knew I would try harder next time. I remember being so annoyed that I stayed up all night studying.”

Of the 4 people I addressed this question to, DJ—the chef—had the other noteworthy response. “I dropped out of high school. My dad gave me a job at his produce business. Nothing special. He knew I needed time. He said he’d hit a similar rough patch when he was my age.” DJ laughed. “He didn’t encourage me to talk about it. Just said, you know, ‘Take some time. Clear your head.’ A couple years later, he gives me this restaurant.” In the gift department, some of us surely lucked out more than others. I thought: some parents throw money at a problem. Others throw time. Some are completely at a loss as to what to do. That’s a possibility that never seems to go away, no matter how enlightened we become.

And if Dad’s the good cop, then Mom’s the bad cop—or vice versa—so the discussion turned naturally to who did what inside the home and out? Tom, my favorite shoe salesman, said: “My mother was a homemaker, and my dad worked for the railroad. They had what I think was an unusual relationship for the time. He helped her quite a bit when he was home. They did washing together, knitted together. (I mean, he held her things and assisted as much as he could until his arthritis got too bad). I was lucky. I was very, very lucky.” Pausing for a moment, he shakes his head. “Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t perfect. Dad had a thing for cigars. Smoked all the time. My mother couldn’t stand it. It was the only thing they fought about. She said it would kill him one day, and it finally did. He tripped on a cigar and fell down the steps! No, I’m only kidding…”

All joking aside, I wondered, did the younger generation have anything more poignant to add? Anne, the graphic designer, pondered this at the end of a hectic workweek. I offered to get back to her another time, but she plowed ahead anyway, insisting I take notes. “Doesn’t it seem like men are becoming more like women nowadays, and women like men? Sometimes I wonder if we have our individual spiritual journeys, and then collective societal ones. Like, on a grand scale, men are realizing a need to embrace their feminine sides in order to find more satisfying emotional depth in their lives. And women,” Anne is talking very fast now, “women are seeing that, on some level, in order to gain respect, they must masculinize themselves—is that a word? Look at what Hillary Clinton put up with. I don’t think many women have that in them, let alone to forgive an affair so publicly. And now, she may very well ride her philandering husband’s coattails into the White House. Say what you want about her politics—but think of the doors she’s opening.”

I thank her for that, but add that it isn’t really pertinent to the question at hand. She shakes her head and looks annoyed. “It’s a gender issue. Hillary is opening the door for Pelosi or Condi to run. Or eventually, my personal preference: Oprah.”

Nodding, I respond, “What does your mother do for a living?”

“She started a non-profit that hooks people up who want better jobs. Helps find the money for education.” Anne goes on to say that her father passed away when she was 15, and mom never remarried. “Now, she helps me with little Aitch-ee, thank God.” Haley is Anne’s 8 year-old. She just won some statewide art contest. The women in this family are really something!

Despite leading rather extraordinary lives, it almost seems like most people would alter something in their past, if given the chance. By that, I think I mean people want the chance to complain a bit— (on Mother’s Day 1 year, TV talk show host Tom Snyder noted that he’d asked a staffer to poll 100 people on the street, and have them finish the following sentence: “I love my mother but-“ The finding was overwhelmingly toward the negative, but Snyder noted 1 response that gave parents everywhere a reason to hope: “I love my mother, but I never really told her how much I appreciated her.”) —not the opportunity to actually become a decidedly different human being. In that respect, I feel as though people are, more often than not, pretty content to stay the way they are. Nonetheless, I asked my quartet their thoughts on the matter.


Carrie said, “If I could change something, I wouldn’t have gotten married so young. I’ve never lived on my own. My parents were thrilled with Matt. They were planning our wedding a month after our first date. I love my husband, and I know I would have chosen him had I searched the world over. I just would have waited an extra year or 2 so I could travel a bit on my own, or try college on for size.” I tell her it’s not too late, and she laughs.

The chef had something of a different take. “‘What was expected of me,’” DJ chuckled. “I think I wish more was expected of me. I know that sounds funny after I told you I dropped out. I think I wish Dad had been more upset or pushed me to go back. I missed the cap and gown. Sounds like a cop-out. ‘If they’d only pushed me harder.’ Tell you what—I probably still wouldn’t have.” He pauses. “That’s wicked, isn’t it? Wanting to have the power to disappoint someone.”

Noting gender roles have indeed changed noticeably in the last 30 years, Tom said, “There’s still this idea that you have to get married. But now, you don’t have to stay married. You just have to do it to say that you did it. Then, you move on.”

I take issue with this. “You’re saying marriage is about status only?”

“I just get the sense that younger people now are developing and maintaining better friendships, in spite of a lousy marriage track record. The world is so connected today that we need never lose track of friends. Marriage was the be-all, end-all of intimate companionship—that’s the way it was always sold, you understand. That’s simply no longer the case.”

Anne had a slightly different take on the matter. “A woman raising a child on her own, without a husband today, is not whispered about behind her back. I think 50 years ago, everyone would’ve wondered what was wrong with her. Today, people recognize she was just a poor judge of character,” Anne smirks.

I ask her, “Is Aitch-ee better off, or worse?”

“Maybe kids are not better off, but Haley is.”

Without question, in this generation, changes continue to make themselves apparent—who has any idea what the future might hold? Carrie, Baby-Boomer/former model also mentioned parenting as an issue. “I’d like to see women hit the snooze buttons on their biological clocks. If it became safer to wait to have kids, women could lead ever more interesting lives and eventually become better parents for it. But that’s a long way off, so I’ll settle for greater equalization of pay."

DJ, my chef, made mention of the right-brain/left-brain gender argument. “My niece is really good at math. She’s 13, she has a boyfriend, and she’s an absolute whiz at math. I really think it’s because my brother gave her computer games when she was little. I really think girls might be getting better in math and science than was once the norm. Guys—and I’m even an example, I guess—are doing more things they once would not have. I’ve cooked for as long as I can remember. I only recently learned to really respect it, though.”

Continuing on the subject of marriage, Tom noted he thought the future would hold fewer formal unions. “I think more people will pair up—maybe even stay together for years—without making it official, so to speak, because they just don’t feel a need to anymore.”

Anne thought that perhaps things would swing to the other extreme. “I wonder if more people will decide to try to raise kids minus a spouse or committed partner. I don’t know if there’s enough trust anymore to say ‘Let’s raise a kid together.’ But certainly there’s enough bravado to say ‘I’d like to try my own hand at raising a kid.’ Parent and child, that’s the most important bond, don’t you think? And in the end, when it’s done right, something like that pays absolutely no deference to gender.”

The RH Factor: Regarding John Galt and the Myth of the Sacrificial Savior

Mythology throughout the ages, across every kind of culture, contains themes of divine self-sacrifice on behalf of Man. In other words- the thinking goes- in an ideal world the strong will always sacrifice themselves for the weak. It is easy, then, to see the cunning of Karl Marx in tapping into this innate human sensibility.

The legend of Robin Hood (hereafter, RH) is best viewed as a processing unit, much the same as a computer’s binary bit. RH is one of many avenues by which an average person down throughout history has been able to comprehend the goings on of the world, as well as personal performance (or lack thereof) on an achievement based scale. RH could also be considered a benchmark- an average of other people’s ideas regarding what it takes to be morally good. Does such processing do anything to spark originality? Of course not, but some would argue that originality is one thing, morality another. If everyone chose to exist on a set scale of preconceived notions, the world would be the center of the universe, and flat, besides.

And in the same way that the concept of justice encompasses a notion of illegality, so does the rise of the RH myth insinuate the following ideas: Man placates self over lack of achievement- he has given up on achieving, given in to both resentment and jealousy; Man fears success of others in that it emasculates him; Man fears own success- someone is always hiding just around the corner, waiting to take riches away; Man rationalizes all his wrongdoings in accordance with the collectivist culture. In short, RH is one of many bits, or unit labels, that allow people the luxury of not doing their own thinking. Mythologists claim that, in the long past, symbols like RH would have had important evolutionary significance- but hasn’t the age of folklore and legend passed? Some might say yes- that it has given way to the Equity Ideology, to Christianity, even to Science. Rand, however, accurately proposes that the currency of the 20th and 21st centuries is, fittingly, a rather old idea: Cogito Ergo Sum. She realizes the necessity of what many proponents of a science-only philosophy defraud themselves with regard to- and that is ‘a sense of life.’ Science in its strictest sense is no doubt a value, but it is not an immediate value to a majority of people; perhaps Rand’s philosophy (in wider acceptance) would be a blessed first step in that direction, holding objective reality and Man’s individual rationality as its highest tenet, but also allowing for a necessary bliss component.

If nothing else, people who spend their lives scouring the sky and dark alleys for a holy grail of meaning are either those who A: fall victim to the first charismatic fraud they see and become his most willing foot soldiers; or B: fill out their days wondering why they’ve been left to rot while others live in plenty. Logic, actual perceptual faculties, can be Man’s only guide.

Further, it seems as though a discussion that mentions RH must also mention Jean Valjean, who famously stole to feed his family in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. Yes, society dictates that stealing is wrong because there is usually another avenue through which to accomplish one’s goals. On some level, though, Rand appeared to tacitly condone Ragnar’s actions with the following qualification made to Dagny, upon the two characters’ first meeting in Galt’s Gulch: ‘Neither Francisco nor John really approves of what I do, but we’re all fighting the battle in our own way.’ The difference –what seems to make either a Jean or a Ragnar more tolerable than RH is that Jean’s crime regarded immediate familial survival and Ragnar stole in order to correct a long standing income tax imbalance that had very nearly strangled the industrialists supporting the nation’s economy! RH, however, had no specific purpose to guide his actions (was he righting widespread societal wrongs? by what measure? who gets to decide?) And certainly, the RH story consists of a vigilante type with NO directed action and NO long term goal- such an individual is toxic: has he any loyalties at all? To repeat, RH condones lack of ambition and dulls people into a fog, whereby they await some crack dispensing whore of a savior who will magically alter their circumstances.

…the source of all [Man’s] evils is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think—not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance but the refusal to know. It is the act of un-focusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment. [1017].

It seems reasonable to think that RH could have been an actual man whose legend grew far beyond the scope of his reality in order to suit the needs of various local factions engaged in power struggles- a propagandistic tool. A life is thus lifted to the status of legend so as to dispel localized unrest, to ease the fears of the population (and control their actions) and to remove both the responsibility and the consequence for their actions from the unthinking hand of the populace. Those in power may believe they are saving people the trouble of thinking, but they are acting deceptively, with full malice and forethought, to convince both the local and wider population to substantiate a lie. Any such swindle would result in a false reality and a deluded populace with nothing to do but wait. Perhaps on some level it can be rationalized into a well-intentioned ideology, but no one says ‘well-intentioned’ if they can say ‘efficient’ or ‘capable.’ Well-intentioned does not get things done. Well-intentioned leads to best laid plans gone awry. Well-intentioned leads to excuses, to RH—a man (an idea) not of justice, but of justification. Stealing is stealing is wrong. A is A.

The above is only dangerous if a population refuses to think, or even just carefully consider itself. Folklore, myths and such may control thinking, they may be used to control people, but they also allow for a more directed life purpose. RH was a forerunner to the Equity Ideal; and prior to a time of widespread education, myths and story-telling songs were essential to how people from different families interrelated. The Equity Ideal was a founding tenet of this country which Rand loved so well at its best and, at its worst, still loved better than anywhere else! ‘It is the right (of all) to the pursuit of happiness, not the right to happiness.’

In this way, Mankind emerged from singular family units of hunter/gatherer to a more cohesive, larger society. However one gauges it, Man has always left his mark on society- be it once as a father or a farmer- to now, as a builder of sky scrapers, an innovator, an industrialist.

Within limits, then, such controlling of one’s thoughts may not be a bad thing, provided the receptor always realizes full well the underlying roots of his/her actions. It’s learning to separate the fact from propaganda. Even more, it’s learning to see things in an entirely new way. For example, consider the difference between ancient practices that honored local deities for protection, and the later Christian idea absorbed into judicial systems in many countries, as well as subsequent packagings and re-packagings of nationalism: Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.

RH glamorizes unearned rewards and undeserved praise. People are told its OK to exist in a state of Without. Galt’s radio speech called The Law of Identity an agent of retribution. One who negates this law in thought or in deed negates his very existence, his consciousness. There can be no degrees of wrong doing because what society would be left with are criminal acts rationalized away by the slickest debater/lawyer out there. That is why there can be no ‘RH steals because-’ there is only ‘RH steals.’

Further, the legend that’s grown up around RH allows the poor and impoverished to accept the notion of a metaphysical superman who is on their side. Thus, it becomes justifiable that RH steals from the rich and gives to the poor because the poor need it more than the rich. And it gets forgotten that something justifiable is not immediately right.

Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe once told journalist Bill Moyers the story of an African doctor who lived in a country plagued by a “justifiable” civil war. The man was tired of seeing friends and relatives slaughtered while a community, an entire nation waited for help to come. The doctor closed his clinic, took up weapons, and went into the wilderness to gather fighters. “I will wait no more,” he said. “I am the awaited.” And because no one knows or remembers that man’s name it’s hard to doubt the veracity of the story. But the point is this: he attempted to answer a need with a planned course of action- he ceased waiting around for someone else to act. It is truly a lethal drug that allows people to sit, and wait, and pray while a world falls apart around them.

Stay tuned for part two... why God believes in Ayn Rand