The Dialectic Of N and Nana: Hegelian Series Part 4

Below is Part 4 of the Hegelian Series. Originally, I wrote this paper for a graduate level class -- Culture and Counseling. At the time, I was working towards earning a MA in Counseling and Mental Health. The assignment was for us to talk about our own cultural heritage. My professor was not pleased with my attempt to infuse Hegel into the assignment. He gave me no credit for the paper. Nevertheless, I'm still proud of this writing and will share it on this blog. 

In this portion of the paper, I discuss how empathy and kindness helped integrate my family. 

                                          The Dialectic of N and Nana

                                               

N now holds one of the most powerful positions in the world, but in his utter inability to use that power to affect positive change he reveals his utter impotence. He is like a wannabe artist who obtains the finest tools but still can’t produce anything. He then flies into an infantile rage and destroys the works of all the other artists he so envies. N and folks like him are the toxin in the soup.

At the other end of the dialectic stands my maternal grandmother, Myrtle – Nana as I called her. I’m sure if N had known my grandmother, he would have held her in utter contempt. Nana was not interested in accruing power, and she was not gifted in making money. As a child, she struggled in school. My family believes that she had a learning disorder, but there was no such diagnosis back then. Instead, the school labeled her as stupid – a label that she accepted for the rest of her life.

As N would have most likely seen it, Myrtle was a person of no power and no worth. To him, she would have been a lowly clerk in her husband’s store and a simple homemaker. Despite her seemingly inferior position to N, she exercised great power as a family unifier and cultural integrator. 

When my parents (Dorothy and Lawrence) announced their plans to marry, my paternal grandparents were horrified. Lawrence had grown up in a small town in Western Pennsylvania. His parents were protestant, and they expected their son would be as well. They told my father that if he married a Jew, they would disown him and never talk to him again. My father had grown up an only child and was devastated that he had to make such a choice. Eventually, he informed his parents that if they forced him to choose, he would choose Dorothy.

Myrtle stated lightheartedly that my parents’ biggest marital problems would be how they kept the heat. I can verify that Myrtle had great insight on this issue. I have many memories about my parents arguing about the heat, but none of them were serious. Myrtle had always told my mother not to be swept away by someone’s party manners. She told my mother that it was how someone behaved in the home behind closed doors that counts. That was fortunate that Myrtle had given my mother that advice, because my father does have lousy party manners. His strength is in how he treats people behind closed doors.      

 One particular story that highlights Myrtle’s accepting and open nature occurred about 40-50 years ago – a time when people were much less tolerant of folks who didn’t fit the typical mold of sexuality. She was sitting on a park bench with my aunt. Also sitting on the bench was a transvestite (now outdated term replaced by cross-dresser). Without a thought, she turned to him and stated that she really liked his dress. To my aunt’s horror, she and the transvestite began to have a friendly conversation.

Afterwards, my aunt said to Myrtle, “Mother, you don’t talk to people like that.” Myrtle was genuinely confused at my aunt’s reaction. She stated that she really liked the man’s dress, so she didn’t understand why she couldn’t tell him that. 

Out of everyone in my family, one could argue that she most embodied the American spirit. While she is special to me, I’m sure that there are people like her in most family backgrounds. Myrtle, and the people like her are the ones who make America great. They are the ones who have the power in American and enrich the soup. They are the ones who facilitate diversity and integration. It is not N and the people marching in Charlottesville chanting “the Jews will not replace us.”

Empathy and kindness are two qualities that I hold in high esteem and are especially prevalent on my mother’s side. Morty, my maternal grandfather was also Jewish, and he was accepting of my father as well. If my maternal grandparents had reacted to my parents wedding in the same manner as my paternal grandparents, my parents’ marriage may have never happened. At the very least, it would have created a toxic situation that would have had a poisoning effect on my entire family. My five siblings and I could have all become corrupt real estate moguls.

Morty’s father Nathan was known for his fiery temper. In his early thirties, he impulsively gave chase to a man who had robbed his store. The man pulled out a gun and shot him dead. Left without a father, Morty had to work full time to support his mother. At the same time, he managed to earn a degree in Law. Unable to attract enough clients, he left the law business after six months. Around 1936, he borrowed some money from a wealthy uncle and opened a store in Mattapan square. With hard work, the store became very profitable and he was able to pay his uncle back.

I have five siblings, and Morty used his financial success to finance the education of his grandchildren. With Morty’s help, my siblings and I were all able to attend private school and go to college.

 Empathy and kindness seem to be especially prevalent on my mother’s side of the family. My mother still has memories of Maurice – her great Grandfather on her mother’s side. Maurice was a Jewish Immigrant who had left Poland to escape the pogroms. Throughout his community he was loved and well-known for his kindness. My mother remembers that at the age of five she used to run into the sun room of her maternal grandmother’s house to visit him. My mother informed me that Maurice used to tell his daughter to make lots of soup. He would then take buckets of soup on the Boston subway to give to the poor in Dorchester and Roxbury. 

He would also buy items for poor people who needed them. One story that sticks out in particular was that he wanted to get underwear for an impoverished woman with a large derriere. When he saw a woman with similar proportions, he went up to her and put his hands on her hips (Nope, not appropriate for today's standards). Startled, the woman jumped up. Maurice informed  her that she need not worry,because he was only trying to buy underwear for an indigent woman of her proportions. The woman told him her size, and Maurice was then able to buy the correct sized-underwear .

Maurice had a daughter named Lena, who I knew as Nana Bloom. Lena married a Russian Jew by the name of Moses, but family members referred to him as Pom Pom. Apparently, his family nickname was the result of my mother mispronouncing Pa Pa as an infant. Everyone thought this was so cute that Pom Pom stuck.

Moses hated his real name. As a child, his classmates at East Boston had teased him mercilessly about his Jewish sounding name. When he was old enough, Moses went to a judge and requested permission to legally change his name to Maurice. The judge stated, “Moses you were born, and Moses you shall die. Regardless of what the judge had decreed, Moses went by the name Maurice. He even signed documents that way.

Pom Pom married Lena around the age of twenty. To make a living, Pom Pom ran a shoe store in Central square Cambridge. His wife Lena stayed at home and ran a boarding house. When she made dinner, she often would cook extra, so she could give her borders a free meal.

Cooking Dialectical Soup for the Self and Others: Hegelian Series Part 3

 

 Below is part 3 of my Hegelian Series. I wanted to post this yesterday, but life happened.

                                 

                              Cooking Dialectical Soup for the Self and Others

As Hegel might have said, “it’s not the individual ingredients, it’s the absolute soup.” The American emphasis on individual uniqueness has resulted in a country with unparalleled diversity. Such a boundless and shifting smorgasbord of humanity creates a paradox of existential security. On the one hand, this fantastic diversity seems to grant us security, for it indicates that we are free to be as we want to be. On the other hand, this very same diversity threatens us; for it also indicates that our way of being is arbitrary and ephemeral.

As Hegel might have also said, It’s not just the absolute soup, it’s the individual ingredients. Whatever one’s particular flavor may be, there is bound to be some in the pot who experience us as distasteful. By the same token, there is also bound to be those who experience us with a sublimity that we could never have imagined. Whether the gaze of our fellow Americans degrades or exalts us depends heavily on a third dialectic: the dialectic of narcissism and empathy.

For democracy to work, its constituents must feel a basic level of security. They must believe that by supporting the uniqueness of each ingredient, they enrich their own flavor in the soup. However, this process cannot happen if Americans don’t practice empathy. With N’s rise in power, narcissism and paranoia have eclipsed empathy. Increasingly, many are seeing others as poisons of the American soup. This increase in narcissistic fear is unmistakable. During the writing of this paper, white supremacists marched in Charlotte chanting “the Jews will not replace us.” I never believed that in my lifetime, I would see something like that happening in America.

The Allegory of Liberty Soup: Hegelian Series Part 2

 Below is the first part of my essay in the Hegelian series -- The Allegory of Liberty Soup. This post is my way of commemorating Patriots' Day.

                                      THE ALLEGORY OF LIBERTY SOUP

The American chefs were the barrel-strength bourbons of humanity. Their life stories express the full flavor of human potential – uncut and unfiltered. Anyone who imbibes their history will detect bittersweet notes of wormwood and Mayflower honey, for the chefs were men of complexity and contradiction. On the one hand, they committed genocide against the Native Americans, enslaved Africans and relegated women to the role of subordinates. On the other hand, they strove to realize their sweet dreams of a free and democratic society.

These chefs so valued the honeyed flavor of liberty that they toiled to extract it from their essence. After many years of such labor, they found success. Unfortunately, they discovered that in the extraction process, the liberty had lost its sweetness. It had become like water – clear, odorless and flavorless. As the chefs were in a land of great richness, they decided to enrich their liberty using the resources at hand. From a nearby mountain range, they extracted metals and fashioned a giant cauldron. From another mountain range, they mined copious amounts of coal to use as cooking fuel. They then poured the liberty into the cauldron and lit the coals underneath it. After a few days, the liberty came to a rolling boil. The chefs sipped it and found it still lacked flavor. They concluded that in addition to the heat, they would need to add other ingredients.

Their first step was to travel to an ancient tree that they greatly valued for its salt-flavored wood. The tree had a symmetrical canopy, which the chefs believed was the secret to its longevity. Accordingly, they took great care in how they harvested the wood. To maintain the canopy’s balance, they trimmed three equal-sized branches from equidistant spots. They then took the branches back to their cauldron and added it to the boiling liberty. After letting the branches simmer for a few days, the chefs tasted the broth. They found it was salty enough to enhance and integrate the flavors of whatever other ingredients they might decide to add. However, the cauldron was far too big for them alone to fill it with ingredients. As a solution, they invited everyone in the land to contribute some ingredients in return for some liberty soup.

As the chefs had anticipated, their friends and associates came from near and far to add their ingredients. What they did not anticipate was that “the other” would also bring their ingredients. Native Americans, African-Americans, and women wanted to add their flavors and eat the soup.

The chefs recoiled against the idea of those others participating. In an attempt to block them, they concocted reasons for why the others ingredients would ruin the soup. Despite such dehumanizing treatment, many of the others stood their ground and insisted that they had the right to add their flavor and eat the soup. With the passage of several generations, many of the others managed to overcome the oppression and partake in the soup. During this stretch of time, the soup developed the epic qualities that it still possesses to this day.

Upon taking a sip, one first tastes the bittersweet of yesteryear. The wormwood and Mayflower honey then unfurls into a sublime orchestra that seems to play upon one’s mouth for an eternity. When the symphony finally draws to a close, one immediately craves the bitter that so powerfully accentuated the indulgence of the sweet. When one takes another sip, the orchestra plays again, but not in the exact same way. Each sip is like a snowflake – although they are all beautiful, no two are exactly alike. Folks who have partaken in the eating of the soup report experiencing a broadening of the mind and enhanced creativity that lasted a life time. Many of these folks credit their success to the soup.

NOTE: I will post the next part of this essay tomorrow.

Hegelian Series Intro: Part 1

The Jews will not Replace us... In August of 2017, that's what white supremacists chanted as they marched through Charlottesville VA. Were the democratic norms that I always took for granted crumbling? I thought so, and I wanted to do something to stop that. Over the next few days, I began writing an essay that I hoped would rekindle the "American spirit" and bring people together.  The introduction to this essay is posted below. The rest of the essay will be posted in parts over the next several days. 

Despite not fully understanding Hegelian philosophy, I relied heavily on his  ideas in writing this essay. As I explained in previous posts, I am a Master Fool with creative licences in all fifty states. Thus, I can legally do that. 

                       UNTITLED ESSAY (as written in 2017): INTRODUCTION

Trump’s rise to power has left me aghast and wondering what I did wrong as an American citizen. This paper represents my efforts to do more as a citizen. These are divisive, rageful times, so one’s proffered ideas can just as easily provoke rancor as spark fruitful debate. Consequently, I have chosen to express my main ideas in allegorical form. My intent in doing this was to give the reader some initial distance to the subject matter before gently pulling them closer.

I intended this paper to be a small step forward towards healing the divide in this country. My strategy was to create a unifying framework that reconciles the clashing perspectives of various American factions on the role that “our founding fathers” played in American history. Toward that end, I found the sublation principle in Hegel’s dialectic to be a fantastic tool. Hegel’s dialectic states that every idea is existentially intertwined with an opposing idea. In other words, an idea cannot even exist without its opposing idea. In Hegel’s dialectic, opposing ideas undergo a paradox of change and permanence. They become permanent, because they become fixed within the web-work of the absolute. At the same time, they change because of their new connections with other ideas.

On a personal level, my goal is to connect this unifying framework with my own cultural heritage. By doing so, I hope to develop a strong sense of self that is sublated with the reality of “the other.” I hope that through this Hegelian process, I will become a counselor who can connect with all of his clients.

The reader should note that this paper refers to our current president (summer of 2017) as N (short for narcissist). This reflects the following opinions of mine: First, his name shouldn’t be associated with any kind of leadership position, because he has no leadership qualities. Second, the rest of the alphabet has better things to be doing.

Entropis Introduces Himself

I am Entropis Demon of Dung

Master of smoke that burns in your lung

Lord of all that is dead and decaying 

Bringer of wrinkles and hair that is graying

My name whispers from wishers of change,

From those who are bored or completely deranged

I send them tornadoes, earthquakes and fire

I reduce their existence to rubble and mire

Whenever lives have reached their worst,

When there is oppression and animals cure, 

My power is what these desperate desire,

To fight the system against which they conspire.

I help them all on one condition

New order built from their volition

If they cannot endure this pain, 

Upon their soul, I make my claim.

Professor Whimsy Cures America: Part Three: The Treetise Part Two

Not only am I a professor of Whimsy, I am also a master fool. This is evident by the fact that when I first  wrote this, I believed that CNN would report on it.  Obviously, they never picked up on it, because this material is too sophisticated for them. That is evident by all the letters after my Name: Dr Noah Clawson Ph.d., MD, RunDMC. 

Anyways...

Below is the final portion of Professor Whimsy Cures America: Part three: The Treetise Part Two.

Instead of Northeasterners focusing on regulations that restrict the coal companies, we need to focus on creating more economic options for folks in the Rust Belt. All Americans would benefit from taking a step back and looking at the big picture. At this moment in history, the economics of energy is undergoing a major shift away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy. Accordingly, we should take this opportunity to facilitate this shift. We should do this in a way that benefits all Americans and unifies the Rust Belt with coastal economies. An obvious idea is to help the Rust Belt transition to a renewable energy economy, but that is much easier said than done.

While the price of solar cells and wind turbines has come down, in many cases, they are still prohibitively expensive. The emphasis on overcoming the barrier to high cost has been to improve the technology of those devices, so they can generate electricity with greater efficiency. While that approach is valid, there is a complementary approach that deserves equal attention: We can recycle the materials used to build solar cells and wind turbines. Recycling can bring down the price of renewable energy in a way that it can’t for fossil fuels.

When we extract fossil fuel from the earth, we ultimately will combust it. This combustion might heat a house in the winter, move a vehicle, or generate electricity. Whatever the case may be, the combustion process forever destroys the fossil fuel. This is not the case with the metals and metalloids we mine to construct solar panels, wind turbines and innumerable other electronic devices. In particular, solar panels and wind turbines utilize large quantities of copper, aluminum, glass and silicon. We can recycle all of those materials with far less energy than what it would take to mine and refine them.

If Americans believed that recycling certain materials helped their country, I’m convinced they would do it en masse. The challenge here is figuring out the specifics of how we can do that to unify the country. How can we grow networks of corporate interests to direct those materials into the Rust Belt? How can we then encourage the solar and wind industry companies to move into the Rust Belt to receive those materials? The best known strategy for influencing corporate behavior is for us to use our consumer power as leverage. I believe we can double our leverage on corporations by organizing our recycling efforts and becoming both corporate consumers and suppliers.

Here is an illustrative example of what such “double leverage” would look like: Suppose I am able to organize a few million people to implement the ideas in this letter. Suppose further that we educated ourselves as to what products contain materials that have value for the alternative energy sector. We learn that two such products are electronic devices and batteries.

Our first major step would be to organize as consumers. We would make a collective decision to only buy batteries and electronic devices from the companies that do the best job building the recycling infrastructure of their products. Naturally, this would give these companies a big incentive to invest in the recycling infrastructure for their products, so they could win us over as customers.

Our second major step would be to organize as suppliers. We would make a collective decision to supply the recycling company that is the closet fit to our ideal. Then, we could work in a collaborative, carrot-and-stick fashion to mold that company into our ideal.

Realistically, we would be lucky if to start we could find a company in the Rust Belt that recycles the right material. We would be even luckier if that same company sold some of its products to other companies in the Rust Belt. If we could form an alliance with such a company, we would be giving them an incentive to stay in the rust belt and continue to sell their output to other Rust Belt companies. Furthermore, we would be creating an incentive for other recycling companies to come to the Rust Belt. These other companies would know that if they formed an alliance with the renewable energy industry, we would be likely to do business with them.

If my hypothetical “Recycling for Renewables” organization actually existed, they would be in luck. BATTERY SOLUTIONS ** in Howell Michigan recycles both batteries and E-scrap. I recently spoke to one of their representatives. He informed me that they sell most of their recovered materials to industries in Ohio. 

In addition, BATTERY SOLUTIONS recently teamed up with Call2recycle – a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the logistics of recycling cell phones and batteries. Anyone can use Call2recycle’s website to find a free drop off location for batteries and cellphones. This means that anyone can become a provider for BATTERY SOLUTIONS simply by recycling their cellphones and batteries in the Call2recycle network. The down side with Call2recycle is that they don’t take all E-scraps; they only take cellphones and batteries.

For large corporations that would like to recycle all their E-scraps, a better option might be to work directly with Battery Solutions. In this option, Battery Solutions will customize a recycling program to the particular E-scrap disposal needs of the corporation with which they have partnered.

I believe that this option would be ideal for an international news organization such as CNN for a number of reasons. First, I’m sure that CNN burns through electronic devices at a far greater rate than the general public. Recycling those electronics would be an excellent way for CNN to demonstrate some stewardship and earn some positive PR. In addition, forming an alliance with Battery Solutions would provide CNN a convenient way to segue into news stories that would give their viewers hope. 

For instance, CNN could report that many of the elements in electronics are sourced from unstable regions – regions that exploit children to do the mining. They could explain how recycling electronics helps the United States avoid the sort of international entanglement that leads to military action. They could use the opportunity to report on how we depend on China for rare earth elements and how recycling could help us lessen that dependence. They could talk about how much landfill space they are saving and the toxic waste they are keeping out of the earth. Most importantly, they could report on how their alliance with Battery Solutions is helping to heal our country from RBCF.

Batteries and E-scraps are not the only products we could recycle for renewables. There are others, but I would have to do more research to learn all of them. The point is that this idea gives us possibilities and positive directions that we can take. Even better, it gives us an opportunity to be solution-focused and not talk about Trump. Conservatives and Liberals can work together without sacrificing their values, because this idea combines stimulating the economy with helping the environment.

** Since this initial writing, the company Battery Solutions was acquired by Retriev. Retriev recently changed its name to Cirba Solutions.

Professor Whimsy Cures America: Part Two: The Treetise Part One

As I promised yesterday, here is Part One of my Treetise. I pray that the Department Of Permanent Records does not learn of this! 

To whomever first reads this Treetise,

I’m just an ordinary citizen who would like to communicate his ideas to Mr. Van Jones. Could you please forward him this treetise?

To Mr. Van Jones, I give you all the credit in the world for your Herculean effort to unify this country. You are the only commentator I can think of who I believe is totally genuine and heartfelt. I can’t thank you enough for the sacrifices you have made for our country. You have inspired me to get off the couch, and do what I can to help heal the divide in this country and support green energy.

My idea is that we should unify the country by focusing on recycling the materials that are essential to build wind turbines and solar energy. I believe that we should funnel these raw materials to the Rust Belt, where they can be used to grow a renewable energy industry and create jobs. I describe exactly how we can accomplish this goal in tomorrow's post Professor Whimsy Cures America: Part Three: The Treetise Part Two.

If you choose to read Treetise Part One, I only ask that you extend me some creative latitude. After all, I am a bonafide Doctor of Whimsy and hold creative licenses in all 50 states. In addition, I have extensive experience working with metaphorical illnesses and am an expert in the American Immune System (AIS). My unique training and credentials make me eminently qualified to offer an accurate diagnosis and treatment of our country’s illness.

Before I offer my assessment, I need to clear up a common misconception of the AIS. Many believe that the term merely designates the physiology of our government institutions. That is simply not accurate. The AIS is the sum total of all systems and mechanisms that the American body employs to neutralize pathogens. As such, it subsumes governmental immunology within a much larger web work of immune responses. It is crucial we understand this, because our government has fallen into a dire level of dysfunction. This particular circumstance has influenced my diagnoses and caused me to formulate a path to recovery that circumvents governmental channels.

My diagnosis is that our nation is suffering from the auto-immune disease RBCF (Rust Belt Coastal Fever). 

My recommendation for treatment is that Americans embark on a non-political, grassroots effort to massively increase their battery and electronics recycling rates. While that may seem unrelated to our nation’s current illness, the connection will become evident after I provide more context.

Let me start by explaining a little bit about the operations of the AIS. When a pathogen (serious problem) infects the American body, our population develops a fever (experiences anxiety). This fever mobilizes the AIS to produce an antibody (a solution).

If the American body has encountered that pathogen before, it will likely have effective antibodies at hand. On the other hand, if the AIS has never encountered that pathogen before, it will not have an effective antibody available with which to neutralize it. In that case, the cells within the AIS initiates a vigorous dichotomous response (divided response) to the pathogen. The dichotomy than undergoes a ramification process (debating the issue) that churns out antibodies in an infinite variety. Eventually, the ramification process will generate an antibody that effectively neutralizes the pathogen.

Should the American body experience that Pathogen in the future, it will quickly reproduce the effective antibody and refine it further into one that is even more effective. With repeated exposure to the same pathogen, the healthy American body will quickly develop immunity to that pathogen.

In RBCF, the pathogen subverts the AIS at the dichotomous response step. Instead of the AIS forming two groups of cells that attempt to neutralize the pathogen in a dichotomous manner, the two sides attempt to neutralize each other. In other words, each side sees the other as the pathogen that it needs to neutralize. At that point, the AIS is at great risk of self-destructing in auto-immunity fashion.

To illuminate this danger more concretely, I’d like to move away from the academic language of metaphorical illnesses and speak about RBCF on a more personal level. After the 2016 presidential election, I was horrified that Trump had won. To me, he was clearly a narcissistic demagogue. I felt that the only way people could vote for such a person was if they were racist and uneducated. The idea that such people had gained political power left me feeling threatened and anxious. In essence, my narrative was “I am not safe unless Trump supporters are powerless. I must neutralize Trump supporters” If I imagine myself as a Trump supporter, I know that being the target of such a narrative would have left me feeling threatened and anxious. My natural reaction would be to protect myself with a counter-narrative: “I am not safe unless Hillary supporters are powerless. I need to neutralize Hillary supporters.”

If we are to avoid that type of auto immunity tailspin, we need to understand the basic pathogenesis of RBCF. In a nutshell, RBCF subverts the AIS by exacerbating these three behaviors: APATHY, DENIAL and COMPARTMENTALIZATION. 

Below are the components of RBF with the correlate behavior they illicit.

1) COMPLEXITY / APATHY 

Both the causes of the problem and its possible solutions are complex. Most people will grow tired of struggling to understand the problem and working towards its solution. The end result is that folks become apathetic and their minds drifts towards problems that at least offer the pleasure of righteous indignation. As evidenced by the high number of Americans that respond indignantly to Trump’s tweets, such a pleasure is highly addictive. In my capacity as a scholar of whimsy, I recommend that Americans exercise great caution while reading Trump’s tweets.

2) GRADUAL DETERIORATION / DENIAL

Slow deterioration facilitates the psychological defense of denial, especially when the deterioration takes place over several decades. Who among us will labor to see the bigger picture if doing so would increase their anxiety? Only people suffering from a serious psychiatric disorder would engage in such masochism. The rest of us rationalize away what we don’t want to conclude. Most commonly, we convince ourselves that slow deterioration is no deterioration.

3) CLUSTERED HARM / COMPARTMENTALIZATION 

A problem severely impacts certain regions of the country, but not others. Those unaffected by the problem are often hundreds of miles away from the folks who are suffering. Such a dynamic facilitates the psychological defense of compartmentalization – “out of sight, out of mind.” If compartmentalization continues long enough, the affected and unaffected regions will develop completely different narratives. At some point, the compartmentalization will become untenable, and the two sides will have to reckon with each other. If their narratives have diverged to a large enough degree, each side will feel invalidated and threatened by the other. The two sides will begin to perceive each other as a pathogen, and the American body will develop RBCF.

The degree of virulence at which RBCF manifests corresponds to the degree of difference at which distinct regions suffer the effects of a problem. If two distinct regions experience suffering of a similar degree and nature, they are unlikely to attack each other. On the other hand, if the degree and nature of suffering between the two regions is highly divergent, they are likely to form narratives that are at odds with each other. In such a case, there is a high probability of mutual hostility. Given this dynamic, the best way to treat RBCF is to focus one’s energy on resolving the clustered harm/compartmentalization component as much as possible. 

Towards that end, I have listed below the concrete factors that led to the especially virulent strain of RBCF that currently afflicts us:

1) Increase in automation

2) Steel Industry moves from the United States to China.

3) The general migration of factories to Mexico.

4) Natural gas outcompeting coal as a cheaper and cleaner alternative for electricity generation

Clearly, all four of these events have characteristics of complexity, gradual deterioration and clustered harm. However, the quality of clustered harm and diverging experience is most prominent in event four (the decline of coal). For instance, the rise of cheap natural gas has devastated the Rust Belt, but has benefited the Northeast. Case in point: The steel smelters that once operated in Indiana and Ohio were at one time all coal-fired. These smelters were designed with extremely high chimneys, so the noxious soot from the coal ash wouldn’t pollute the immediate environment. Instead, the soot hitched a ride in the jet stream and drifted over the Appalachian Mountains. The sulfur from the coal then mixed with moisture in the air and fell upon the Northeast in the form of acid rain. When those coal smelters switched to natural gas, the Northeast no longer suffered the effects of acid rain.

Northeasterners, such as this writer, have never experienced the horrific economic devastation that results from the closing of coal mines. Hence, we tend to overlook the economic devastation that these coal mining communities have suffered. Our experiences have conditioned us to think of coal not in economic terms, but of its negative impact on the environment. Thus, our focus is almost exclusively on regulating the coal industry. For those coal miners who have lost their jobs, it must seem like Northeasterners are constantly pushing a pillow down on their face. They must wonder why we continuously fret about what will happen to the environment at some distant time, but don’t care much about their current suffering.

Part two of this treetise titled Professor Whimsy Cures America: Part Tree: Treetise Part Two will be available tomorrow.

Professor Whimsy Cures America: Part One: Introduction

 

I am a renowned international expert on Whimsy. One can immediately discern that upon seeing all the letters that follow my name -- Dr. Noah Clawson, Ph.D, MD, Run-DMC. In my professional capacity,  I once wrote a treetise (not a treatise). Currently, absolutely nobody understands the differences between a treetise and a treatise. Well the differences are simple.

1) A treetise serves as an addendum to my novel Mandelbrot The Tree, while a treatise does not. 

2) Treetise's utilize whimsy to communicate a point whereas treatises don't.

3) Treetise is a playful term that I coined two minutes prior to writing this sentence. By contrast, the term Treatise is stodgy, was not coined by me and first appeared in the 14th century.

A few years back, I sent a treetise to Anthony Van Jones -- a frequent CNN commentator. To my great shock, Mr. Van Jones never responded back. I know now that he didn't respond, because the DOPR (Department of Permanent Records) blocked him from responding.

 The DOPR has dogged me ever since I was in the 8th grade. At that time, the principal of my school told me, "Noah, if you don't improve your behavior, it will go on your Permanent record" Unfortunately, I didn't improve my behavior, and my principal informed the DOPR. If I had only known the consequences of my bad behavior then, I would have been a much better boy. To this day, the DOPR lurks in the background and does all the little shadowy things necessary to complicate my life. Yesterday, they broke into my apartment and stole my socks. 

Tomorrow, I intend to publish the first part of the above mentioned treetise on this blog. I pray that the DOPR does not find out about it and run interference.