The Plan

There seems to be little doubt that, throughout the world, and particularly in the US, there has been a monumental transference of wealth from the Middle Class to the very highest levels of the Upper Class. Substantiation of this trend is readily available from a wide variety of sources – it is reflected in tax rates, real estate and equities ownership, valuation of net worth, salaries and bonuses. It is happening – it is real. But is this the result of some sort of diabolical plan, a grand conspiracy?

A few years ago I heard a story on National Public Radio’s “ThisAmerican Life” (Act 2, ‘The Plan’) which told of gentrification of neighborhoods in Washington DC. Here predominantly Black neighborhoods were slowly being replaced by upwardly mobile middle class Whites. In one specific instance, an academically well performing school was condemned in order to make room for new housing – housing which was marketed to mostly higher income (White) people.

The synopsis of The Plan: “American cities have gone through a massive wave of gentrification in the last few decades. To some people, it's not a natural ebb and flow of the real estate market, but a plot, by rich, mainly white people, to take over the neighborhoods of poor, mainly black people.”

But it turns out there was/is no “Plan”, at least, not one that can be attributed to a designed conspiracy, that is. These sorts of changes are, of course, happening in neighborhoods all over the country. My own kids recently bought and renovated an old home in an inner city Portland, Oregon neighborhood. Now known as the Alberta Arts District, the neighborhood is frequently the subject of articles in Sunset Magazine featuring its eclectic boutiques and restaurants. To people of our kid’s generation, integration of neighborhoods such as this is a positive for society. But are these changes the results of specific planning or the result of other perhaps not so obvious forces?

In Europe “Austerity” looms threateningly over the customary way of life. In Greece, people experiencing shortages of food.for the first time in their lives. Here in this country the social safety net is being targeted as the source of both our moral and economic decay. Erstwhile CEOs pull in salaries and bonuses that would make the Vanderbilt’s, Carnegies and Rockefellers of their day looking like chumps.

We read that the Koch brothers have convened secret meetings including influential business and political leaders; even Supreme Court Justices. But do these individuals truly have the power to coordinate a conspiracy on such a monumental scale?

Many now grudgingly accept (I among them) that the boom times after WWII in this country was more of an economic aberration than an linearly upward trend into future decades. Is the flow of culture, for that matter, designed or driven through it’s own momentum? Consider the attitude changes over the past decade regarding Gay Marriage, for example. Was this progress cooked up in some elaborate plan or the result of some sort of cultural evolution?

I recall observing large flocks of hundreds of individual birds flying in undulating, random patterns; the whole of which appearing to have some direction. Scientists studying this behavior were curious if, among the individual birds, there might be a “leader” directing the movement of the flock.

Such movements are a prime example of emergent behavior: the behavior is not a property of any individual bird, but rather emerges as a property of the group itself. There is no leader, no overall control; instead the flock's movements are determined by the moment-by-moment decisions of individual birds, following simple rules in response to interactions with their neighbors in the flock. [1]

Rising consumer prices, falling standard of living, the rich becoming richer, may more be a product of individuals or groups taking advantage of opportunities and situations, than any sort of detailed conspiracy – Cultural Evolution through Emergent Behavior? Perhaps.

Source:

1. How does a flock of birds wheel and swoop in unison?, March 2004, TheStraightDope.com

The Dichotomy of Certainty

In my previous post I shared my thoughts regarding how we acquire knowledge about the natural world. My position leans heavily toward science as the best method toward that end. But like many things, even science is sometimes not always entirely adequate.

My father-in-law, Melvin is a retired professor of Agriculture at Oregon State University. He literally “wrote the book” on Pears as well as being the “go-to guy” for encyclopedia editors regarding that subject. Highly published, his research work involved collaborating with entomologists, biochemists, plant physiologists and climatologists, to name a few.

Back in the mid 1970’s Melvin attended a lecture about global climate change; so impressed was he with the speaker that Mel bought his book which Mel then ensconced in his library with his other reference materials. The author was not a scientist but a science writer (unfortunately I cannot recall the title).

This book on world climate explained that data taken from ice core samples in the Polar Regions showed distinct cycles of global heating and cooling over the millennia. The graphs and charts showed the cycle up to the current time (mid 1970’s) and projected the trend into the future. It showed that the earth would enter a period of increasing warming followed by another ice age. Based on this book, Melvin, the acclaimed scientist, is convinced that we are perched on the brink of global COOLING! The coming ice age is overdue.

Mel has talked to me about this coming trend for the last 25 years. I never really formulated an opinion until the global climate change (global warming) issue came to the forefront of public attention in recent years. Always up for discussing things of a scientific nature with him, I found myself, in my support of the indication of Anthropomorphic Climate change, placed in total opposition to his views. I set about to try and bring Mel “up to speed” on the latest science.

Mel had been retired from the university years prior to my meeting him, but he has continued to do his own research. Several times a year he walks through the neighborhood near his home and inspects specific species of plants, recording their “bloom date”. His data shows that bloom dates are occurring later every year – an indication of a progressively cooling climate.

When Al Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth", was released, I took Mel to the theater. After seeing the film demonstrating that we were entering a period of increasing global mean temperature rise due to the influence of greenhouse emissions, I thought it might convince Mel to alter his hypothesis. However Mel’s only comment after the film was that a quotation incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain should have been attributed to Will Rogers.

I dearly love my father-in-law but on this issue we have had some heated discussions. With the wealth of information available on the Internet, I researched dozens of opinions regarding Global Climate Change and printed selected papers for Mel to read.

Mel has read (or maybe just looked at) them all; yet he then returns to the position of his 1970’s book asserting that the earth is instead overdue in entering its next ice age.

He points to his bloom date data to substantiate his view. I point out that Corvallis Oregon is smaller than a pin point on the scale of the entire globe. He points to the 11-year sun spot cycle; I point to contrary data I researched from current climate sources. He remains unconvinced.

I find this situation extremely frustrating. Melvin is (was) a highly regarded scientist, yet it seems as though the science he practiced and learned in 1974 is “stuck” in his brain. That the overwhelming consensus of scientists supports the hypothesis of Anthropogenic Climate Change, cuts no influence with him – Mel is having none of it. At one point in a moment of exasperation I asked him "if he thought that science stopped advancing after 1974"?

Recently on the car radio I heard a biographer talking about Charles Darwin and how much grief his publication of “On the Origin of Species” caused him; not merely from the predictable religious sources but also from his professional contemporaries. Many scientists at the time were completely unconvinced and adamantly opposed to Darwin’s now well proven theory. So then how did Evolution become finally universally accepted among scientists: what caused the opposition to die out? The opposition died when his opponents died!

My son-in-law recently shared with me this quotation by Max Planck:

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." - Or in short: "Truth never triumphs – its opponents just die out."

That new ideas are challenged and held up to scrutiny is one of the core strengths of the scientific method. But we should recognize also that it's practitioners are human and therefore prone to the same bias and prejudices as are we all. Science is a way of thinking - but thinking almost always involves an emotional component as well... it's impossible to separate the two whether we recognize it or not.

Mel and I still talk about a myriad of subjects. But one thing we no longer discuss is the weather.