From the Empirical Archives: Aldous Huxley Revisited

Aldous Huxley Revisited

Hugh Mercer Curtler

Originally published in the February 2013 issue of Empirical

A few years before I retired from college teaching, I was asked to direct a freshman course designed to introduce new students to the university. It was a one-credit course that met for one hour each week. I was especially excited about the academic portion of the course which focused on Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. I have always thought the novel was a great book–not great literature, as Huxley himself admitted, but remarkable for its prescience and the well-told tale that holds the reader’s attention and raises so many provocative questions.

My plan was to have a professor from English, biology, psychology, and philosophy each talk about the novel from the perspective of their particular disciplines. I thought this would not only give the students insights into the novel itself, but also give them an idea how different academic disciplines approach problems: killing two birds with one stone.

Well, like a stone tossed into the air, the plan fell with a thud. An astonishing number of the students couldn’t read the novel: they couldn’t understand the words. Many of them bought “Cliff Notes” and some of them complained they couldn’t understand those either. Others simply didn’t bother to buy the book at all; many students just dropped the course. Very few actually seemed to enjoy the experiment. We started with over two hundred students and ended up with a little over one hundred. The course evaluations filled out by the remaining students were nearly unanimous: what does this have to do with me?

I would like to take the opportunity in this short essay to answer that question. I think Huxley’s novel has everything to do with not only those students, members of what some like to call the “millennial” age, but also about all of us and, more to the point, about our culture. The book is set in the future in London, but it applies to all of Western culture and, increasingly, many Eastern cultures as well.

Let me begin by alluding to another provocative book written in 1985 by Neil Postman, to wit, Amusing Ourselves To Death, in which he promises to discuss the question whether Huxley might have been right in his predictions in the 1930s about what was to become of Western culture. In his “Foreword,” Postman contrasts Huxley’s remarkable book with Orwell’s equally remarkable book, 1984. I shall largely ignore what Postman said about Orwell, but will take a quick peek at what he said about Huxley since it is most apt and provides an excellent point of departure.

In America, especially, we love to boast about our freedoms, which we would insist are numerous. But I often wonder if it is possible that this freedom is merely an illusion. Huxley certainly suggests that it is. We have a great many choices, but we seldom think about those choices. Freedom would seem to presuppose some sort of thought process, not just unfettered reaching and grabbing. Is it possible that our conviction that we are a free people is a delusion? Is it possible at the very least that we are bound by invisible chains we are unaware of to the gadgets that make our lives easier?

In Huxley’s view, Postman tells us, “people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” Anyone who claims it is possible to remain free despite their inability to think is indeed deluded. Moreover, “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.” Further, Huxley feared that we would be so inundated with information that “we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalence of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.” Now we don’t have those specific diversions, but we do have Disneyworld and its imitators; and we have countless games, around the clock sports, and “reality” TV. And if you live in the vicinity and have a spare $150.00 you can enjoy a “simulated killing of bin Laden experience” in a Minneapolis suburb that will leave you so jazzed up you will have trouble falling asleep the night after. Or so I am told.

In a word, “As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny ‘failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.’” In 1984, Postman added, “people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate would ruin us. Huxley feared that what we loved would ruin us.” With this as a preface, I will return to the students’ question: what does this have to do with me?

The fundamental similarity between Huxley’s world, and ours is that the sole purpose of human life in Brave New World centers around experiencing pleasure, which we too have come to identify with happiness. As is the case in Huxley’s world everything in our world has been jettisoned that might stand in the way of our enjoying ourselves. Sex is readily available with no strings attached. Marriage is becoming passé. We have limitless entertainment. We are not permitted to suffer. We are rapidly losing the desire to read. History is bunk (or “irrelevant” as the kids like to say); and if we are sick or sad we can just take a pill. . . . or two. Or we party hardy.

The novel predicts a day when citizens can flee from pain and anxiety by popping a pill. The citizens of Brave New World fill their lives with endless diversions and vapid gratifications, immediate and shallow–but certainly not fulfilling. It’s all about doing their thing, whether or not it’s worth doing. Indeed that question is never raised. History is bunk, of course, because the only thing that matters is the present moment and the pleasure that can be milked from that moment. The citizens of Brave New World have “ . . . no time, no leisure from pleasure, not a moment to sit down and think.”

There are no meaningful human relationships, and communities are tied together artificially by means of community sings, free sex, and heaps of Soma. The community matters because the brave new world cannot stand individuals, that is, those who stand apart. If the individual dares to assert himself, he is deported to an island where he cannot bother others who are intent on making sure they never have time to think or experience genuine human emotions.

Let’s consider the dialogue between Mustafa Mond, the Controller of Brave New World, and John the savage, a late-arriver who has spent his early years on a savage reservation in far-off America trying unsuccessfully to fit in and finding solace by reading Shakespeare. In one of the late chapters of Huxley’s novel John asks Mustapha, “Art, science–you seem to have paid a fairly high price for your happiness. Anything else?” 

Mond replies, “Well, religion, of course…” 

And the conversation proceeds apace. But let us pause. Have we also sacrificed science to pleasure or happiness? Of course we have. We have done it in two stages: we first reduced science to technology, ignoring the “why” question that is central to theoretical science and focusing exclusively on the “how” question which is key to the technical approach to solving problems, easing pain, and making our lives easier. Among other blessings, this reduction has delivered to the world in excess of 80,000 nuclear weapons, a fraction of which can end all life on earth. And we have no idea why but we continue to produce them not knowing how we would ever use them. But for most of us the technological imperative translates into reducing stress and avoiding pain at all costs while we mindlessly pursue diversions that will fill our empty lives. In the second stage we have allowed pseudo-science to pass for the real thing and even to be taught in the schools. An alarming number of high school biology teachers, for example, teach their students that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time. And then there is “creationism” posing as science in many schools–officially sanctioned in Texas–and the various biological fictions that lead half-witted politicians who deny climate change to speak with a straight face about “legitimate” rape.

We have also replaced religion with “pop” psychology, the analyst’s couch, and the escapist “religion” of the televangelist, and so many of the “free” churches that have sprung out of thin air. The idea here is to get in touch with our inner selves and to replace the uncomfortable demands of traditional religion–which requires sacrifice and self-denial–with feel-good sessions every week in which parishioners are told that all is well with the world and they should climb back into their SUVs or pickups and go on doing just what they want in the name of Jesus who loves them regardless (though we’re not sure about those damned secular humanists. And we sure as hell can’t stand the homosexuals).

But we need to think seriously about the elimination of all pain and suffering in our version of brave new world. We take it as a given that this is a good thing, but the savage may be right: it’s too easy. We might be much better off if we struggled and suffered a bit more, strange to say. Fyodor Dostoevsky, for one, thought suffering made us more human and was the only possible route to real human freedom. If we don’t suffer, we float along on the surface of human experience and never really feel the deprivations and losses that deepen our perspectives and bring us closer to one another and to our common humanity.

Furthermore, as we are now finding out, a society that revels in animal pleasures will rarely produce a Jane Austen, a George Eliot, a Michelangelo, a Shakespeare, a Dostoevsky, a Beethoven, or a Dante. All of these people suffered during their lifetimes and many of their greatest creative inspirations came as a direct result of some of the darkest moments in their lives. Dante, for example, wrote The Divine Comedy while exiled from Florence where his family was held captive. Mustapha Mond thinks the sacrifice of great art and literature is worth it. The savage who knows his Shakespeare disagrees.

In a word, the brave new world we would create which eliminates pain and suffering is worthy of denizens of an ant-heap (as Dostoevsky would have it); it is not worthy of human beings. That, it seems to me, was Huxley’s point in writing this novel, and the fact that young people could read the novel and wonder what on earth it could have to do with them tells us that the chains Huxley points to which bind them are indeed invisible to them. These people seek amusement and are easily diverted; that is all they ask of the world in which they live–just as Huxley feared.

Among the many parallels with Huxley’s world, we too have become a society of people who want what we want when we want it. I have always thought a major step we took in our culture toward the brave new world was the credit card, strange to say. It came on the scene in a large way in the 1950s and within ten years had pretty much become a necessity in every pocket or pocketbook. In itself it is merely a convenient way to make purchases. But its significance is worth contemplating: it translates into immediate gratification. We no longer have to wait for anything, we can have it now. “Have any of you been compelled to live through a long time-interval between consciousness of a desire and its fulfillment?” asks Huxley. No indeed! It doesn’t matter if we can’t pay: we have plastic. But what have we lost in the process? What price have we paid? Anticipation greatly increases the delight from the receipt of a thing long awaited. And the discipline that comes from postponed gratification helps build character in our children. We tend to forget these things.

In the end Huxley saw clearly what was coming; we have realized in so many ways precisely the delights that those denizens of the ant-heap in Huxley’s world reached out for and grabbed with little or no real effort. And we have become just as shallow. It is ironic (but not puzzling) that many who read Huxley’s book fail to see its implications.

I suggest, however, that it is not Huxley’s fault; it is ours alone. In this regard it might pay us to take a closer look at those students who wondered what this novel had to do with them, the representatives of the “millennial” age (or “Gen-Y”), many of whom find novels like Huxley’s hard to read and/or irrelevant to their lives.

A new study of “Millennials” summarized in the Chronicle of Higher Education tells us a great deal. The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and was conducted by Jean M. Twenge, a professor at San Diego State University. In the minds of many, the newest generation of young people now attending high school and college were the hope of the future, committed to helping others and making the world a better place. They would surely clean up the mess we are leaving behind. Unfortunately it happens that the generation that was supposed to be “we”-oriented turns out to be even more “me”-oriented than the generation that produced them.

The study shows that, contrary to popular opinion, those born since 1982 are increasingly self-absorbed and unconcerned about others or their environment. They are focused on “money, image, and fame” rather than such things as “community involvement or acceptance by others.” Countering the popular image of today’s youth as engaged, high-achieving, confident, and concerned about their world, Twenge rejoins, “I see no evidence that today’s young people feel much attachment to duty or to group cohesion. Young people have been consistently taught to put their own needs first and to focus on feeling good about themselves.”

The article appeared in a recent issue of the Chronicle because educators were being alerted that the students in their classrooms may not be the least bit interested in what they are being taught. This will come as no surprise to the men and women in front of those students who have become increasingly aware that it’s all about entertainment and dumbing down the curriculum to disengaged students. I saw it happening before my eyes in my 41 years of college teaching. I mentioned above my unfortunate experience with the freshman course, but I can readily recall other examples. As the years went by since I started teaching in 1964, I simply could not ask the students in 1990 to read the same material I routinely required twenty years previously.

Their reading skills were seriously lacking and their interest in and openness to new ideas was practically nil, though there were occasional exceptions that kept me hoping. We should not be surprised if the young people growing up today are self-absorbed. After all, theirs is the world of “self-esteem” in which they have been told since day #1 that they are great and can do no wrong.

Indeed, they have developed an iron-clad sense of entitlement that leads them to the conviction that they are the only ones that matter and they deserve only good things. They are the spoiled product of busy families and our child-care and education system that demands little and rewards greatly. The chickens are coming home to roost.

But this study has important implications for more than just the teachers around the country who must figure a way to get through to increasingly disengaged, self-absorbed young people. It has ramifications for society in general. As Twenge says, “Having a population that is civically involved, is interested in helping others, and interested in the problems in the nation and the world, are generally good things.” But this is not happening. These young people are “more isolated and wrapped up in their own problems. It doesn’t bode well for society.” In a word, the individualism that Huxley hoped would save the Brave New World has in our world turned into ego-centrism, which is not the same thing at all.

At a time when we need people who can see beyond the stunted world of self to others and the larger world, it is unsettling to learn that the trend is in the opposite direction. What the world needs now is not more self absorbed egoists, it needs heroes whose attention is directed outward and who care about the world and people around them. Let’s hope enough of them continue to sneak through the cracks the system has put in place to make a difference.

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From the Empirical Archives: Fiddling While Rome Burns by Hugh Mercer Curtler

Fiddling While Rome Burns

Hugh Mercer Curtler

Originally published in the January 2013 issue of Empirical

There is considerable talk these days about climate change and whether or not global warming is a fact or merely an opinion. Well, it is assuredly a fact in the sense that any verifiable empirical claim is a fact. The only thing that can still be debated at all is whether or not humans are part of the problem and that consideration is gradually shifting from opinion to cold, hard fact as well. But, as Diane Keaton recently said, “Climate change, like gravity, doesn’t give a damn whether you ‘believe’ in it or not. It’s happening regardless.

While we sit around and debate its existence, it’s taking full advantage of the situation and using the time we’re giving it to make life miserable.” The problem is that in talking about it we may get the impression we are actually doing something about it when in fact we are not. As Keaton says, it just keeps happening. 

The problem was made very real to me recently as I returned from Minneapolis to my home 150 miles west and south of that city with my two little granddaughters in the car. We passed dried-up drainage ditches and creeks; rivers where the water was barely visible and slowed to a crawl; we saw dust hovering in the air as far as the eye could see; we noted the burned-out lawns and the scattered crop residue in the parched fields now that the farmers have finished their harvest, such as it was. We also noted the small lakes and ponds that have shrunk below the grasses and reeds on the shore leaving several feet of dry shoreline exposed to the relentless winds. The words I have read and written myself about global warming began to be replaced by stark images as the message they convey moved from the head to the heart causing considerable distress and mild anxiety. 

I worried about the future of these two little girls. 

This is no longer an intellectual problem: at the risk of sounding dramatic, if something isn’t done to alter present conditions we will soon face a struggle for survival. In this part of the upper Midwest the farmers have had a relatively decent year. It has been dry, but there were scattered but timely rains earlier in the summer and the farmers in this area will do fairly well–unlike others in the Midwest who have been hit hard by the prolonged dry spell that promises to drag on. However, the signs point to the severe drought spreading into this part of the country as well. And that’s the problem: the drought isn’t just part of the normal “cycle” of weather, as many of the farmers I talk with contend; it is something we are going to have to learn to live with–resulting in higher prices in the grocery stores and even the real possibility of rationing as food becomes scarce.

And we could eventually be dealing with increasing levels of violence as well from growing numbers of hungry people who cannot find food to eat. In a word, the problem is here and talking about it won’t solve it. Unfortunately, as we all know, the issue of climate change has become a political football in this country. Politicians are lined up facing one another and neither side wants to give an inch. Or so it would appear. As it happens, there may be more agreement in Washington on this issue than we might think. Michael Brune, Executive Director of the Sierra Club, has spoken with politicians on both sides of the aisle and is convinced that there is near unanimity in Washington that something simply must be done about climate change. 

As he says, both Republicans (who speak to him “off the record”) and Democrats agree that Congress must address the issue, and soon. One prominent Republican said to him, “Mike, we may not agree on much, but on climate change, there’s not really that much separating us.” As Brune notes in the Sierra magazine, the Union of Concerned Scientists has already adopted “a national renewable-electricity standard that ensures that utilities obtain at least 25 percent of their power from wind, solar, and bioenergy by 2025,” pointing out that this would “create 297,000 new jobs, $13.5 billion in income to rural landowners, and $15.3 billion in new local tax revenues.”

And yet politicians remain encamped with their party opposite one another on the issue of climate change and merely exchange mindless barbs. Publicly, only 26% of Congressional Republicans will admit there is a problem that is accepted by 97% of the scientific community as of this writing. This fact was recently reported on PBS Newshour where it was also noted that Professor Richard Muller of Cal-Berkeley had published an Op-Ed piece in late July in which he had radically altered his view of the problem of climate change. He had been one of the most outspoken skeptics of global warming but he and his daughter, a trained mathematician, had studied the available data and concluded he had been wrong. He said in his Op Ed piece that the data show that global warming is occurring and it is worse than others have portrayed. He added that “Humans are almost entirely the cause.”

The empirical evidence continues to mount even as the oceans rise. The Carteret Islands are slowly being consumed by the sea. Many of the islanders have gone to bigger islands close by in hopes of becoming permanent residents there. These are people who are less well-educated than the average American, yet they are seeing first-hand what is happening to their island and the crops they try to raise. They all speak openly of global warming and it is ironic that these people know more about the phenomenon than 74% of Congressional Republicans as well as the recent GOP candidate for the Presidency who openly mocked President Obama for trying to do something about the rising ocean levels.

A large part of the problem is that massive amounts of money in political donations by the oil/gas industry make it imprudent for those on the political right (especially) to speak out about a problem many politicians may acknowledge in private.

And this despite the fact that the Department of Defense, which the political right wing typically regards as beyond reproach, considers global warming to be one of the greatest threats it faces. Further, the US Coast Guard has requested a $1 billion ice-breaker to patrol the Northwest Passage in the expectation that it will be considerably busier in the years to come. Also as I write this the Navy is taking measures around San Diego to invest in alternative energy. And finally, the insurance industry has begun to take steps to deal with future claims rising from global catastrophes. As Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Sept. 5 issue, “the industry has absorbed many lessons from Sept. 11 about anticipating risk. One is that the recent spate of weather extremes is likely to continue–and the insurance market must reflect that.”

As if to underscore this prediction the recent Frankenstorm by the name of “Superstorm Sandy” demands our attention. A recent article in the New Yorker by Elizabeth Kolbert points out, “As with any particular ‘weather-related loss event,’ it’s impossible to attribute Sandy to climate change. However, it is possible to say that the storm fits the general pattern in North America, and indeed around the world, toward more extreme weather, a pattern that, increasingly, can be attributed to climate change.” In fact Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance company, has noted that “Nowhere in the world is the rising number of catastrophes more evident than in North America.”

And they, too, are taking steps to factor climate change into their computer models. While we may be hesitant to blame climate change for the freakish confluence of three storms coming together over the Northeast of this continent, the evidence is compelling. And, as the Weather Channel reports, we can expect more freakish weather in the years to come, quite possibly including storms like Sandy.

The evidence keeps mounting. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration completed another study earlier in 2012 and said global warming is occurring, it is man-influenced, and it is worse than projected. They even pointed to Governor Rick Perry’s Texas and noted that the droughts in Texas are definitely influenced by man. Perry as you recall is a naysayer and also wants to do away with the E.P.A. Yet, Galveston is slowly being encroached upon by the Gulf of Mexico. There is more than a little irony here.

To put the problem in terms that most people can understand, let’s take a quick glance at what the financial costs will be if we continue to look the other way and ignore climate change. Last year, Mercer, one of the largest investment consultants to corporate and public trusteed assets for pension plans (401(k) and non-US capital accumulation) partnered with 14 global institutional investors (Calpers, Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, Norwegian Ministry of Finance, Government of Singapore Investment corporation, to name a few) to conduct a study on the investment portfolio risk of climate change. Some of the key findings of the study show that by 2030:

• Climate change increases uncertainty for long-term institutional investors and as such, needs to be proactively managed.
• Investment opportunities in low carbon technologies could reach $5 trillion.
• The cost of impacts on the physical environment, health and food security could exceed $4 trillion.
• Climate change related policy changes could increase the cost of carbon emissions by as much as $8 trillion.
• Increasing allocation to “climate sensitive” assets will help to mitigate risks and capture new opportunities.
• Engagement with policy makers is crucial for institutional investors to proactively manage the potential costs of delayed and poorly coordinated climate policy action.
• The European Union and China/East Asia are set to lead investment in low carbon technology and efficiency improvements over the coming decades.

According to Rachel Kyte, Vice President of I.F.C., one of the study sponsors, “That climate change poses significant financial and economic risks has only been accentuated by the tens of billions of dollars in losses due to recent climate related natural disasters such as the floods in Australia and Pakistan and the wildfires in Russia.”

Since that study we have had extreme floods, droughts, and wildfires in other parts of the world, including the US. China and Germany are way ahead of us on eco-energy planning. Brazil is entirely bio-fueled with a mixture of sugar cane ethanol and gas. Denmark has an eco-energy plan that has survived at least one election. When your land is beneath sea level, global warming takes on great importance–as we are about to find out.

The current path we are on will leave us even worse off than we are at present. 

Natural gas is seen as a viable alternative despite the fact that it is obtained by a process known as “fracking,” which is an environmental powder-keg and drains vast amounts of water from our diminishing supply. A major debate is occurring right now between the frackers, government, and farmers in Kansas over water usage during the drought. Fracking takes 4 to 6 million gallons of water per fracking well. So, there needs to be more rational debate with all of the facts and all of the constituents involved before we buy into the “fracking” solution. Further, off-shore drilling for oil is terribly risky as the British Petroleum/ Deepwater Horizon disaster proves–the Gulf of Mexico is seeing continued impact from that spill; the Keystone Pipeline invites a number of environmental disasters; “clean” coal is by no means clean, as we are learning to our chagrin; and nuclear power plants present a permanent hazard with toxic waste that we cannot hide and the ever-present threat of meltdowns.

But above all else our attitudes need to change. We need to get our heads out of the sand and confront the situation honestly and intelligently. The urge to hide from the truth was nowhere more in evidence than in North Carolina recently where the legislature refused to accept a peer-reviewed and revalidated scientific paper which notes the sea will rise 39 inches by 2100. So, with pressure applied from the tourism and real estate industries, they passed a law making it illegal to mention the fact in the public media.

This would appear to be the bottom line: the alternatives to clean energy are not rationally acceptable. The cost of failing to plan for an uncertain global future is staggering and will impact investments in a huge way not to mention the impact it will have on our lives. I have noticed in passing that post-apocalyptic games our kids play always speak of a nuclear disaster. The more likely candidate for causing a disaster will be climate change as our planet heats up and impacts our food and water supply; the toxic chemicals in the land, air, and water brew some more; and the sea consumes key port cities such as Norfolk, Galveston, etc. Scientists like to compare the rising sea level to elevating a basketball court: storms coming ashore will find it easier to dunk a basketball. There is much work to be done.

The news is not all bad, however. Small steps are being taken by thoughtful investors and a number of state legislatures in the direction of changing our thinking about how we treat the planet and they provide reason to hope that more will be done. While Congress largely ignores the problem, people like Warren Buffett and T. Boone Pickens have invested heavily in clean energy systems and General Electric is increasing the manufacture of wind turbines. There are more small steps as well. Solar panels are improving in efficiency and becoming less expensive and more readily available. The proposed Topaz solar farm planned in San Louis Obispo Country, California will produce 550 megawatts of electricity that will benefit 160,000 homes in the state and will also produce an estimated $417 million in positive benefits to the region in the form of new jobs and savings to homeowners. Further, a solar panel firm called Semprius will be opening a manufacturing facility in Henderson, North Carolina which will employ 250 people in assembling state of the art solar panels. These solar panels are based on a concept called Concentrated Photovoltaic or C.P.V. panels which use lenses to focus sunlight cells increasing the amount of electricity produced. The C.P.V. panels convert 33.9% of sunlight energy into electricity as contrasted to the typical poly silicon solar cells which convert around 24%.

The technology created by Semprius was supported by the US Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Siemens which now has a 16% stake in Semprius. Its major customers will be Pratt & Whitney, Rocketdyne, and Siemens. The plant will produce solar panels that generate up to 5 to 6 megawatts of energy with plans to expand to panels that generate 35 megawatts of energy. This is an excellent example of public/private investment in the US It also shows the global nature of business since Siemens, which has a huge US and North Carolina presence, is a German firm. Siemens’ reputation is stellar and their involvement as an investor and key user of the product worldwide will be key to its success. We might also note the new Risk Management program on climate change established by Georgia State University, one of the largest risk management programs in the US.

Another encouraging sign comes from Duke Energy which was reported to have retired three older coal powered plants in the Carolinas and its new subsidiary, Progress Energy, is retiring one of its older coal powered plants and three oil-fired plants. Duke said it has shut down 587 megawatts of coal-powered plants and will shut down 1,080 more megawatts by 2015. It has been replacing these plants with cleaner coal (“clean” coal being a misnomer) and natural gas-powered plants. They still have issues with retrieval of the coal and natural gas–hence the term “cleaner”–but they are far better than the older coal-powered plants. The cleaner coal actually converts the coal to a gas that is then burned with many of its by-products captured.

I mention this as Duke is leading the way by gradually diminishing its use of fossil fuel based power. This process is not dissimilar to what is being done in China. Duke reported in 2011 that only 46% of its energy comes from coal, so they are continuing to make strides. Energy companies in the region announced they have retired 12 gigawatts of coal-fired power since 2009 and will retire 30 gigawatts more by 2015, when two federal air-pollution measures for power plants take effect. It has been reliably reported that the amount retired may be closer to 54 gigawatts.

As noted above, the US is third in the world behind China and Germany in alternative energy development. What developments have taken place have been due to federal pollution standards, the miles per gallon standards, and what independent states and private investors have done. Thus a great deal of the current US standing is based on a smattering of smaller efforts which are unfocused, but replicable. With solar energy on the uptick and wind energy in 38 states, along with various biomass, tidal, and river current efforts,we have much to build on. At this point, we simply lack the holistic, long-term eco-energy strategy which will tie this all together and help us move as rapidly as we can away from our dependence on fossil fuels. In the meantime we must be content with hit-or-miss measures on a comparably small scale.

Ironically, those measures have made a few far-seeing people quite wealthy from investing in clean energy. Let me close by looking at one of the more public figures, Al Gore, who has become a very rich man. The Washington Post recently reported that his net worth these days is around $100 million–50 times what it was after leaving the office of Vice President–mostly as a result of investments in clean energy. This gives the lie to those nay-sayers who insist that investing in clean energy will not pay dividends and that the government should ignore clean energy and continue to pursue such projects as off-shore drilling, fracking, “clean” coal–while maintaining the $2.7 - $4 billion a year in tax subsidies to Big Oil.

Moreover, the success rate of renewable energy companies may be far higher than some opponents of clean energy would like to admit. During the first Presidential debate candidate Romney claimed that over half the green energy companies benefiting from stimulus dollars failed. In fact, just 1.4 percent of the US dollars invested in green energy went to companies that had failed by the end of 2011, according to CleanTechnica.

In this country we need to begin coordinated long-range planning with all concerned parties involved. The fact the European Union and Asia-Pacific regions are leading the charge is telling. We cannot have one of the major US political parties denying publicly what they know privately is perfectly true. They are doing a disservice to their voters, their country and the planet in encouraging us to continue down our present path. As I said above, this is a path that will lead to calamity. To be sure, the US cannot divorce itself completely from fossil fuels. But we need a coherent plan to lessen their use beginning yesterday. The fuel for solar energy is free and harnessing it continues to become more efficient and cost-effective. The same is true for energy from the tides as well as wind energy which blows almost constantly in many regions in the US and off its shores.

The stimulus packages made available by the Obama administration clearly have helped bring money into the clean energy industry, but Congress has been known to play keep-away with those subsidies; both sides of the political aisle need to get foursquare behind the clean energy movement, help create jobs, boost the economy, and head in the direction of countries like Germany and China. The reason this has not happened to this point is a matter of some speculation. But it is fairly clear that the companies that make huge profits from the continued use of fossil fuels would prefer that we not wean ourselves from those sources of energy (despite the damage we are doing to the environment and the planet itself ), and they pour large amounts of money into the pockets of politicians to see to it that it doesn’t happen. One would like to think that these companies will eventually see the handwriting on the wall and come on board the clean energy train: there’s money to be made and theirs are, after all, finite resources. In the meantime the clean energy success stories continue to pop up from time to time and people like Al Gore still believe and their belief is clearly paying off. 

It’s time for the dirty energy industry and the Congress to join people like Al Gore, Warren Buffet, and T. Boone Pickens and stop fiddling while Rome (and the rest of the world) burns. [Note: This paper is a collaborative effort that draws on a good deal of material provided by a friend and fellow-blogger who prefers to remain anonymous. You are encouraged to visit his blog at www.musingsofanoldfart. wordpress.com.]

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From the Empirical Archives: A Rich Country by Hugh Mercer Curtler

A Rich Country

Hugh Mercer Curtler

Originally published in the December 2012 issue of Empirical

In one of his travel notes written in 1788, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “What a cruel reflection, that a rich country cannot long be a free one.” He was even then concerned about America’s preoccupation with the accumulation of wealth as an end in itself. As Jefferson saw it, the reason wealth interferes with freedom is to be found in the captive nature of avarice.

As it happens, Aristotle had the same thought more than two thousand years before Jefferson when he attributed the breakdown of aristocracies to the unnecessary accumulation of wealth; the aristocracy degenerated into an oligarchy, rule by the rich. The problem as Aristotle saw it was that the rulers lose sight of the common good out of a growing concern with their own self-interest.

Jefferson, along with other eighteenth-century American thinkers, came to call concern with the common good “public virtue.” It was supposed to be a republican virtue and should keep men away from the lure of self-interest and the accumulation of unnecessary wealth and luxuries. But both of these thinkers were putting their fingers on a central problem that worried the founders of this nation: what are the effects of unnecessary wealth on a republic?

In The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787, Gordon Wood, quoting from a sermon delivered in 1778 by the Rev. Payson, has this interesting paragraph for us to ponder: Because it was commonly understood that “the exorbitant wealth of individuals” had a “most baneful influence” on the maintenance of republican governments and “therefore should be carefully guarded against,” some Whigs were even willing to go so far as to advocate agrarian legislation limiting the amount of property an individual could hold and “sumptuary laws against luxury, plays, etc. and extravagant expenses in dress, diet, and the like.”

Though a number of the framers of our Constitution were themselves deists, we must recall the prevailing influence of both the Puritans and the Quakers on the minds of those who prepared the nation to revolt against England. This is especially so in an age in which the conservative element among us tends to emphasize the influence of the Christian religion on the founders of this nation while at the same time they promote the conflicting myth of free enterprise capitalism–which was never regarded as an ideal in the minds of the colonists. In fact the early colonists insisted that “commerce. . . had destroyed England’s soul”; it was beneath the true calling of human beings who are at their best when they remain close to the earth and control their appetites and desires.

Much of this thinking stemmed from their reading of the New Testament, of course. But many of them were avid readers of history and were convinced that excessive wealth and luxuries were among the major causes of the downfall of the Roman republic, which they greatly admired. They advocated “enterprise,” to be sure, but there were both legal and moral restraints in many of the colonies against the unlimited gathering of wealth and luxuries–laws against entail, primogeniture, and even monopolies. Indeed, as Wood tells us, “A preliminary draft of Pennsylvania’s Declaration of Rights even contained an article stating ‘that an enormous Proportion of Property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the Rights and destructive of the Common Happiness of Mankind,’ and therefore should be discouraged by the laws of the state.”

The very problems the colonists were most concerned about have come to pass largely as a result of the combination of the role of very wealthy individuals–like the Koch brothers–and multi-nationals, who have bottomless pockets when it comes to playing poker at the political table. The rest of us hope to get by by bluffing. Let me expand. According to the American Association for Justice, the Koch brothers fund the political group called “American Legislative Exchange Council” that involves thousands of legislators around the country who push bills through that favor the corporations at the cost of the health and well-being of the majority of the population.

Judged from the perspective of Jefferson’s America, such people and such groups are a big part of what is wrong with this country today. As of this writing, the Koch brothers allegedly plan to spend $400 million of their hard-earned money to get Obama out of the White House and keep control of the Congress. They might succeed, of course, because money talks; and after the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, the amount of money spent by the wealthy on the November elections could buy a small country–or a large one that’s deep in debt. After all, the family oil business the Koch brothers own rakes in an estimated $100 billion a year. The sky’s the limit!

But note the irony in the fact that people like this will spend millions of dollars to buy politicians who will guarantee that they get to keep most if not all of their wealth in the future. I dare say they see it as an investment. Some of the wealthy 1%, I understand, even buy politicians on both sides of the political aisle. 

That way they can’t lose.

The interesting question is what on earth the founders would say about this turn of events. They were suspicious of capitalism in its raw forms. As mentioned, a number of the colonies had restrictions on the unfettered growth of capitalism. They saw that as a sure way to aristocracy which they distrusted almost as much as they did royalty. Many were still wedded to the comfortable notion of mercantilism, which was what they were used to as British citizens; it favored the involvement of the government in the financial affairs of its citizens. These were men who, for the most part, knew that humans left to their own wiles would get into a dog-eat-dog fight over wealth and they didn’t want to see that either.

People like Jefferson saw the future of this country in terms of a paradigm in which people would remain close to the earth or own small businesses and earn enough money to be content and have whatever they required to live a good life, but no more. “More” was not necessary and it could lead to moral blindness. Initially the founders, especially the Southerners, didn’t even want a federal bank, though Alexander Hamilton finally persuaded them to go in that direction–as a matter of necessity. And many of the wealthy citizens helped support the young nation (and the revolution) with money out of their own pockets. This was the way to practice “public virtue.”

The attitude toward money in this country in the eighteenth century was quite different from ours now. For the most part money was seen as a means to an end, simply. There were remnants of a deep-seated medieval distrust of money and what it did to people–ultimately stemming from Christ’s admonitions regarding the rich in the New Testament. Just read Dante’s Inferno and try to figure out how many of those in Hell are there because of their relentless greed! That attitude took centuries to die out, but it is now pretty much a thing of the past as, thanks to people like John Calvin, we think that wealth is a sign of talent, ability, and even, perhaps, God’s favor. You cannot have too much. If you do, you can always go out and buy yourself a government–like the Koch brothers.

There are lessons here for us to learn. We like to think we live in a Democracy even though the founders saw it as a republic governed by representatives, not the people themselves. The people were not thought to be wise enough to govern themselves, though through education they would learn to practice public virtue and at least come to recognize those around them who were worthy of elected office. And some would become well enough educated to lead the others. This is why Jefferson established the University of Virginia: he saw education as essential, especially in a republic. Those who remained in school long enough would be recognized as especially able and elected to public office. The cream would rise to the top. 

Jefferson envisioned a “natural aristocracy” governed by the brightest and best minds the country could produce. James Madison tended to agree with him–as he did on so many other issues. The idea goes back at least as far as Plato’s Republic. But it is clear that, as Aristotle foresaw, our “natural aristocracy” has degenerated into an oligarchy–given the fact that those with great wealth are the ones who choose those who govern and later tell them how to govern. And the wealthy are clearly preoccupied with their own self interest in the form of maximum profits. So Aristotle was correct in his notion of what factors lead to the degeneration of an aristocracy, even though he saw an aristocracy in a different light than Jefferson did. And Jefferson, echoing the Rev. Payson, was also correct in saying that a rich nation could not long remain a free one. 

Let me explain.

By world standards ours is a very rich country, though it is the top 1% who have the bulk of the wealth. But our conviction that we are one of the freest nations on earth is based on the misperception of what freedom is: that it is a function of the number of choices we have rather than our ability to decide for ourselves what is worth choosing. We do have a great many choices, heaven knows. But this is what Isaiah Berlin called “negative liberty” and it is clearly a part of what freedom is all about–we must be free from restraint in order to act at all. And we must have a variety of things to choose from. But Berlin also focused attention on “positive liberty,” or the freedom to choose intelligently, which comes from knowledge and awareness of implications. To the extent that we are unaware of what is going on about us, we as a nation fail to achieve positive freedom. As long as the wealthy continue to control the governing body, not to mention the media, whereby they are able to divert attention with entertainment and games, we will continue to maintain the illusion that we are free because we have negative liberty. We can choose the channels we want to watch: more is better. But until or unless we also have positive liberty, unless we come to know which channels are worth watching, we are not truly free–not fully free in human terms. Free citizens know which candidates are worthy of public office and will elect them accordingly. 

That was Jefferson’s dream.

It is not likely that the wealthy will give up their wealth. And as long as they can buy politicians who will pass the laws that give them tax breaks and subsidies, they will simply continue to amass photo : Charlie Nguyen wealth–while insisting all the while, incorrectly, that they are realizing the ideals of the founders of this nation. Thus, if the citizens of this nation are to regain any semblance of their full human freedom, the only hope is education whereby we come to know what freedom is and realize that it does not come down to the number of loaves of bread on the shelves at the local box store, or the number of cars at the dealership. As suggested above, freedom is a function of knowing which bread is healthy and which cars are the lemons: it is a function of knowledge and the capacity to think about what we know. Job training certainly won’t get us there, though it is what the wealthy want us to embrace and what the schools are currently focused upon. It is only through education properly conceived that we can realize this capacity to make informed choices. That is why a liberal education is vital to our political system as originally conceived: it sets us free and keeps us free. 

Let us be clear about this.

Liberal education properly pursued leads to the ability to use one’s mind. One would hope, therefore, that everyone in this country, if not the world, would want as much as possible. But we confuse schooling with education, despite the fact that there are a great many people who are well-schooled but who are badly mis educated. They may be well-trained to do a particular thing, but they cannot use their minds and are captives of every intellectual fad that passes their way. This is the result of job training, and while corporate CEOs will complain from time to time that their employees can’t use their minds properly–they can’t speak coherently, write a clear memo, or organize their thoughts–they would really prefer that these people simply do what they are asked to do. Otherwise, why aren’t the corporations taking the lead to make this nation first in the developed world in education instead of being, as it is, among the last? It is not America that leads the developed world in education; it is tiny Finland.

In a republic like ours, it is essential that all citizens acquire the capacity to use their minds, to know whether or not they are being led astray–to keep an open mind, stay on top of what is going on around them, and think their way through all the nonsense to see if there is a kernel of substance at the center. Liberal education properly pursued will assuredly lead to this end. But even if schools do their job and lead us down the path to an education, it does not stop there. Education properly conceived, lasts a lifetime. In the end, it would appear that Jefferson was right. Corporate wealth which controls the political machinery in this country is at loggerheads with both the ideals of this republic, and in so far as it fosters job training in the place of education, it also limits the possibilities that the citizens of this republic can remain free.

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February Excerpt: Aldous Huxley Revisited by Hugh Mercer Curtler

Aldous Huxley Revisited

Hugh Mercer Curtler

Disney World, Orlando, Florida
PHOTO: Lee Bailey

A few years before I retired from college teaching, I was asked to direct a freshman course designed to introduce new students to the university. It was a one-credit course that met for one hour each week. I was especially excited about the academic portion of the course which focused on Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. I have always thought the novel was a great book–not great literature, as Huxley himself admitted, but remarkable for its prescience and the well-told tale that holds the reader’s attention and raises so many provocative questions. My plan was to have a professor from English, biology, psychology, and philosophy each talk about the novel from the perspective of their particular disciplines. I thought this would not only give the students insights into the novel itself, but also give them an idea how different academic disciplines approach problems: killing two birds with one stone.

Well, like a stone tossed into the air, the plan fell with a thud. An astonishing number of the students couldn’t read the novel: they couldn’t understand the words. Many of them bought “Cliff Notes” and some of them complained they couldn’t understand those either. Others simply didn’t bother to buy the book at all; many students just dropped the course. Very few actually seemed to enjoy the experiment. We started with over two hundred students and ended up with a little over one hundred. The course evaluations filled out by the remaining students were nearly unanimous: what does this have to do with me?

I would like to take the opportunity in this short essay to answer that question. I think Huxley’s novel has everything to do with not only those students, members of what some like to call the “millennial” age, but also about all of us and, more to the point, about our culture. The book is set in the future in London, but it applies to all of Western culture and, increasingly, many Eastern cultures as well.

If you would like to read more of this article in Empirical, the February issue is now available at your local bookstore and online at our website.

January Excerpt: Fiddling While Rome Burns by Hugh Mercer Curtler

Fiddling While Rome Burns

Hugh Mercer Curtler

Baldock Solar Highway, Oregon
PHOTO: Oregon DOT

There is considerable talk these days about climate change and whether or not global warming is a fact or merely an opinion. Well, it is assuredly a fact in the sense that any verifiable empirical claim is a fact. The only thing that can still be debated at all is whether or not humans are part of the problem and that consideration is gradually shifting from opinion to cold, hard fact as well. But, as Diane Keaton recently said, “Climate change, like gravity, doesn’t give a damn whether you ‘believe’ in it or not. It’s happening regardless. While we sit around and debate its existence, it’s taking full advantage of the situation and using the time we’re giving it to make life miserable.” The problem is that in talking about it we may get the impression we are actually doing something about it when in fact we are not. As Keaton says, it just keeps happening.

The problem was made very real to me recently as I returned from Minneapolis to my home 150 miles west and south of that city with my two little granddaughters in the car. We passed dried-up drainage ditches and creeks; rivers where the water was barely visible and slowed to a crawl; we saw dust hovering in the air as far as the eye could see; we noted the burned-out lawns and the scattered crop residue in the parched fields now that the farmers have finished their harvest, such as it was. We also noted the small lakes and ponds that have shrunk below the grasses and reeds on the shore leaving several feet of dry shoreline exposed to the relentless winds. The words I have read and written myself about global warming began to be replaced by stark images as the message they convey moved from the head to the heart causing considerable distress and mild anxiety. I worried about the future of these two little girls. This is no longer an intellectual problem: at the risk of sounding dramatic, if something isn’t done to alter present conditions we will soon face a struggle for survival.

In this part of the upper Midwest the farmers have had a relatively decent year. It has been dry, but there were scattered but timely rains earlier in the summer and the farmers in this area will do fairly well–unlike others in the Midwest who have been hit hard by the prolonged dry spell that promises to drag on. However, the signs point to the severe drought spreading into this part of the country as well. And that’s the problem: the drought isn’t just part of the normal “cycle” of weather, as many of the farmers I talk with contend; it is something we are going to have to learn to live with–resulting in higher prices in the grocery stores and even the real possibility of rationing as food becomes scarce. And we could eventually be dealing with increasing levels of violence as well from growing numbers of hungry people who cannot find food to eat. In a word, the problem is here and talking about it won’t solve it.

If you would like to read more of this article in Empirical, the January issue is now available at your local bookstore.