life

Legacies lost.

~ fastcaranalysis ~ Leave a comment

So much fast change is happening right now that it makes me wonder if we are losing more than we are gaining. Let me expand on this idea a little.

I recently watched an episode of Legacy List, a PBS program that delves into American history through family objects. I’ve only watched this program a few times but it seems to me that the usual unfolding of each episode involves the death of a family elder and the subsequent sorting of their belongings in a way that strives to honor that person’s life and contributions to the family’s stories and happenings.

I am a person that values old objects. I like to imagine the effort that went into making or buying the object. And I like to imagine the life that went with the object: the technologies, the habits, the goals, the dreams and hopes of the people that acquired the object. Many ways of knowing and doing are lost in the past everyday. Farming ways have mostly been lost, for example. Most people don’t know how to grow food or drain land so that it keeps its topsoil after a hard rain, or deliver a calf that is being born, or even ride a horse or use one to move a fallen tree. Farming know-how was once essential and common knowledge.

On Legacy List, the family descendants are often coping with feelings of grief and being overwhelmed by the objects of their ancestors. They have to get rid of a lot of objects and they want help finding their family’s stories as expressed by what is left behind when their family member dies. This is a search for meaning. The poignant search for meaning at a time of grieving shows us that the pace of change is so fast that objects fall out of use regularly.

Sometimes objects don’t make sense anymore at all. It may well be that public policies that affect the economy have undermined the ability of families to pass family wealth on because the context that objects once had have been radically altered by social and technical evolution. In earlier times, people preserved the past more. The pace of change was slower. They inherited objects that still had a use in the present and future.

A related idea from a different perspective is the idea that people’s brains are being reshaped by how we now consume information into a lesser caliber of mental concentration. In a book I’m reading called The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr, I’m reading that the way that people take in their information nowadays can reduce our ability to think up new ideas. There are so many interruptions on the way to imbibing new information that it is stored in our minds with less coherency. I wonder if a scattering of our ability to concentrate might harm our ability to plan and assemble new objects that could shape a new future that we will value.

Will people of the future want to imagine and shape their own lives creatively or will they rely on computer technologies to do it for them? Will our partnership with computers inhibit us from working together? Will the legacy of each person’s life be treasured in the same way that the families of Legacy List treasure their own family objects and stories?

I keep hearing that a whole lot of kids graduating from our public schools lack skills to do arithmetic or read for comprehension. I worry that their use of computers has damaged their ability to internalize knowledge that they can carry with them wherever they go and use for their own purposes and plans. How will people who have impaired learning skills become independent and creative adults?

A similar idea about relevancy is the way that some old books in my library are becoming less true especially the ones that talk about social values and social goals. I have a library filled with books that are now from an obviously different era with different ways of thinking and doing things. I regret that those ways of thinking and doing are dying so fast. And those ways of thinking and doing seem to have no defense against the modern onslaught of fast changes.

This fast change may be wasteful.

It may be unwise.

Where will these fast changes lead us in terms of human acheivements and the realization of our dreams for making our lives good?

What do you value in your own life and how will you preserve it so that it can retain some value for the next generation? How can you keep your brain engaged so that you can think creatively and deeply as much as the human legacy shows that we have done in the past?

Buy a copy of Political Catsup with Economy Fries available at Amazon.com.

Philosophy can help us.

~ fastcaranalysis ~ Leave a comment

People I met at the university made fun of those who wanted to study philosophy. It seemed that philosophy had no possible place in the modern industrial and later, the post-industrial world. No corporate behemoth wanted to hire a philosopher to run the company or to do any company jobs. People said that philosophy was dead and no one even cared.

And then soon after, religion was likewise dead. And then an appreciation of beauty in art and architechture was also dead. And now in politics it appears that representational government is perhaps less likely with artifice in voting instead of trustworthy voting with fidelity. And still the SAVE Act hasn’t passed even though 80% of voters think it is a good idea.

Perhaps it’s time to return to philosophy.

Greek philosophy had five branches: Epistemology (the study that answers the question, “What do we know and how do we know it?”), Metaphysics (“What is being and what does it mean to be alive and experienced in this world?), Logic (“What method of reason is the correct one to prove the rightness of understanding?), Ethics (“What is a good life and how does one live a good life?”), and finally, Aesthetics (What is beautiful and how do we recognize beauty?”).

I made a little time to study philosophy. I studied Logic and I have read books about philosophy. I value applying philosophical questions toward living an examined life. Life is so short and I think philosophy can help a person to walk a path toward a happy life.

Some people think that whatever makes a person happy or satisfied in the short term is the best road to happiness. Short-term time tables seem to have taken over all of our lives these days. But many people who live for a longer time into old age can experience a complete change in their thinking about what makes life good and what makes them happy. I think that philosophy can help a person to wander onto a good path and I also think that not every path, even ones that create short-term happiness is a good path in the long term. I think it’s good to prevent regrets later or at the end of life.

Philosophy can help you to discriminate between what will help you and help society and what will harm you and society. Here we are.

Finally spring has arrived. The birds are back. Warmer temperatures call us to enjoy being outside more. But remember that philosophy can go with you anywhere. Think of all the questions it can help you answer. You don’t have to be victimized by the anything goes approach to living. You can use your agency to choose well and philosophy can be a helpful guide. Having a pocket full of questions may give you a better chance at happiness.

Buy a copy of Political Catsup with Economy Fries, available at Amazon.com. It can help you to understand how we got to our political here and now and also how economics and politics dance together to organize how you experience opportunity in your life.

To read an article about philosophy branches try this one: https://www.thecollector.com/what-are-the-branches-of-philosophy/. I did.

You’ve got to create your own bargains in 2026.

~ fastcaranalysis ~ Leave a comment

Do you think that fun matters in life? I think that humans have always enjoyed making life fun. They invent games. They solve problems. They make objects of beauty and interest to enjoy.

A marketplace that supplies solutions to problems, that supplies beautiful objects and fun entertainments can find customers as long as it provides what people want, need and can afford. One of the problems with monetarism is that the over emphasis on making money doesn’t keep affordability in the mix and sometimes monetarists want to provide what people don’t want or need. They keep insisting that you should buy into technology that might not serve you. For example, smart phones are thought by Jaron Lanier to be behavioral modification tools that can also be used to track a person’s location. Healthcare that doesn’t make you healthy is not a useful product, for instance the covid vaccine that didn’t work to prevent covid and appears to be causing health problems in some people. Insurance that doesn’t really pay for dire illnesses undermines the purpose of having insurance.

The U.S. economic marketplace is offering less desireable products and less fun overall. High inflation reduces disposable income to buy extras that can make life fun. Bargains are certainly gone.

In times like these, you just have to bring in your imagination and make your own fun. Try starting with a delicious meal. What do you want to cook that will taste good and that you can share with your friends or family? Yesterday, I made a pizza. It took about an hour of my time to do. It had (precooked) Italian hot sausage, sweet peppers, onions, garlic, tomato sauce and mozarella cheese on homemade yeast crust. I prebaked the crust for nine minutes at 450 F to make it crispier and then added the other ingredients for a 15 minute bake at 350 F. It was delicious and added a little fun to the menu. We also had a green salad with sliced tomato, lemon and olive oil. I didn’t buy something already made by someone else. I made my pizza dinner my way to suit my tastes specifically with 50% whole wheat pastry flour for a healthier crust. I got more of what I wanted and paid less for it.

I can’t imagine making enough money from creating and selling original art to meet today’s financial obligations of high taxes, high insurance and inflation in all necessities. But I can make original art to please myself and my family. Every year we send out handmade ornaments to our close family and friends. No one else has anything like what we send because it is original. I have heard stories that people who receive these invented objects sometimes keep them around long after Christmas. Something about them makes people feel happy. I like to make them and send them out. They don’t come from a store.

Buy a copy of Political Catsup with Economy Fries, available at Amazon.com.

In this financialized neoliberal economy, production has been damaged by profitmaking and financialization. Money has been leveraged to make more money. And money is being misused. It’s being overprinted and oversupplied. Groups have been gaining access to unearned monies from NGO’s. The whole economy suffers from a lack of affordability and variety and a lower quality and inconsistent supply.

Monopoly pricing after investors bought large quantities of real estate has raised the cost of housing to unaffordable levels. Even though President Trump has made a public statement lamenting that corporate real estate investment is bad for Americans who want to buy a house to live in, real estate is still owned by investors and it still costs too much.

Education serves profit-making motives or political motives instead of helping people learn useful reasoning skills and useful information that they can use in a productive life. Recently, I heard Elon Musk commenting favorably about workers in China working long hours but he never mentioned how acelerationist policies and buyouts have undermined the American worker. He sounded like he was saying Chinese work harder than Americans. There are a lot of requirements laid on American workers to get jobs that they can’t keep when buyouts happen or market churn destroys an industry. No one has an infinite amount of time or money to get yet another career off the ground. Many can’t get an adequate return anymore for an investment in education. That is more widely recognized all the time, now.

When products don’t actually serve people’s needs or instead serve an external political objective, people turn away. They are thrown onto relying upon their own ingenuity. They begin creating their own bargains, their own products, their own opportunities that make sense to them.

That’s what making your own fun is all about.