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Thursday, December 18, 2008

How to reposition your boner (and other forbidden secrets)

“Zig Ziglar may be the master motivator, Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield of Chicken Soup for the Soul, the master story tellers; Anthony Robbins may be the guru of personal development, but Bob Proctor is the master thinker. When it comes to systemizing life, no one can touch him.”
~ Attributed (by Bob Proctor) to Doug Wead, former Special Assistant to the President of the United States


I've known for a long time that Scientist Bob Proctor is a deep thinker, but reading the above quotation from author, philanthropist and former Diamond-level Amway salesman Doug Wead just confirms it. "Well, gee, Cosmic Connie, is Wead really a reliable source?" you may be asking. To which I can only respond, "If you can't trust a person who betrayed the trust of a future President of the US by secretly recording conversations and then publishing them, whom can you trust?"

But this isn't about Doug Wead. It's about Scientist Bob, noted quantum physics expert, philosopher and (as you'll see in a moment) also an economist and even apparently an expert on human sexuality.

The first thing you need to know is that Scientist Bob recently dropped a really big bombshell. I hope you're sitting down.

Are you ready?

It turns out that The Secret was just fluff. Listen to what Scientist Bob, who is of course one of the stars of The Secret (and whom The Secret arguably propelled to new levels of fame) has to say:

The Movie Based on the Law Of Attraction is Pop Culture Fluff!

And we have the entire industry to blame for this.

Being true to their sensational nature, they take an amazing truth and they just amplify the “sexy”, less vital bits and leave out all the rest.

As a result, the Law of Attraction brand that you get today is a really watered down version of the real thing.

Needless to say, when you use the Law of Attraction in reduced media-friendly form, you only scrap [sic] the tiniest tip of the iceberg when it comes to its immense potential.

Now, I know some of you might be saying, "Why, Cosmic Connie, that sounds amazingly close to some of the things you have been saying on this very blog regarding the New-Wage/selfish-help industry! At least the headline and the first paragraph sound like you! The rest, not so much!"

So what does Scientist Bob have against The Secret? Simply this: it only touched on one Universal Law, the Law Of Attraction, and it didn't even do such a hot job of that. In fact, it may have made things worse, or at least failed to make them better, as Bob points out:

Barely 3 Years After The Revolutionary Film "The Secret", America & The World Faces Its [sic] Worst Financial Crisis in Decades

Is the Law of Attraction Just Hype?

Why – if the Law of Attraction is being used by millions – did America just face its worst job crisis since 1974, with 602,000 people losing their jobs?
Some of you might be under the mistaken impression that the economic crisis is a result of a whole clusterf--k of economic, social and political factors, but Scientist Bob, aka Economist Bob, knows better. Turns out the LOA just won't work properly unless you pay Bob to teach you about eleven other forgotten Laws.

Here are some of the astounding things that Bob will reveal to you if you fork over $97 (a $200 savings over the regular price of $297!):

  • 1,000 year-old ancient Talmud secret that can steer you clear of materialism and set you on the path to true riches. (Find it in the Law of Thinking)
  • Read the newspapers and DIE. A fatal way to mess up your dreams—and how to avoid it. (The Law of Attraction)
  • Get the Golden Touch—by making bone-headed mistakes? Directions for repositioning boners and transforming them into bounty. (learn in the Law of Receiving)
  • “His sight was getting poor, but his vision has never been better”. The step-by-step blueprint to set crystal-clear goals and achieve them. (Go to the Law of Thinking)
  • A simple yet powerful method to create effectual employees and agreeable colleagues. (Grab it from the Law of Increase)
  • The magic golden key to realizing all the dreams you ever had. PLUS: It also works to boost self-esteem, emotional freedom, and spiritual fufillment [sic], (The Law of Compensation teach you that!)
  • Is guilt corroding your insides like acid? Here’s a mental substance that acts like alkali and washes you clean. (Law of Forgiveness)*
  • And much more!
Naturally, my little cadre of email pen pals and I were most interested in that bit about "repositioning boners." I confess that we snarked about it quite a bit. But then I began to wonder if perhaps we were being too hard on Scientist Bob. After all, he is Canadian, and it's possible that "boner" doesn't have the same meaning in Canadian as it currently does in American. While it's true that the word was used in the past as a slang term for "mistake," that is emphatically not its most common usage these days. So maybe Canada didn't get the memo, eh?

Judging by some of the comments on a recent thread on the Powerful Intentions forum, it seems that at least some Secret fans are a little uncomfortable about Scientist Bob having thrown one of his major fame tickets under the bus. But hey, let's face it: Bob was on the New-Wage scene decades before The Secret was a gleam in Rhonda Byrne's imitation third eye. And he's far from the only "star" of the world's most famous New-Wage moviemercial to use it as stepping stone to further fame and riches.

So let's all cut the guy some slack, okay? And if your boner needs repositioning, or your insides are too acidic and those Tums just aren't working, or you would just like to increase your spiritual "fufillment," hop on over to Master Thinker Bob's new site and avail yourself of his timeless wisdom.

Or at least take a gander at that ad copy. Surely there are lessons to be learned in that alone.


PS added Dec. 22: In the interests of fairness and presenting "the other side," I want to share the remarks of a person commenting on a September 2007 blog post in which I snarked about Scientist Bob. (The comment just came in very recently.) This person, who uses the handle "Navs South Africa," says he owes all of his astounding success to The Secret and to Bob Proctor and his team. He also says, "Skepticism is the deadly enemy of progress & self development." Here's the link to his comment and my response, and then his response to me.

PPS added on 19 April, 2009: While Googling something else, I came across an April 2007 interview in which Scientist Bob praised The Secret up, down and sideways.

Here's the relevant part, in which the interviewer is asking Proctor about the filming of The Secret. It leads into his comments about his reaction when he first watched the stunning final product:

PR.com: Did they shoot you all at one time, and they just cut it up?

Bob Proctor: Yes. The amazing part of this… no one had a script… no one! It was a little hotel room that they were shooting in. Of course there's camera equipment everywhere and lights, shadowing for lights and you had to watch or you'd trip over something in the room, it was so small. They asked a couple of questions and I would answer them as if they weren't questions; just stating things. I talked to them for a couple hours, just explaining everything about the mind, the world that we live in and our relationship with why things happen the way they do. That was it, and I left. She said, "You'll hear from us." That was in June [of 2005] and then the following February of 2006, I got a DVD of The Secret, by Fed Ex. I didn't even put it on right away. Finally, I said to my wife, "Let's see what this is." Well, I just about fell off the sofa, I couldn't believe it!

PR.com: Because you were so moved by it?

Bob Proctor: I really was! I've been in this business and studying this since 1961, and I worked for five years with Nightingale-Conant in Chicago. Nightingale-Conant is the leader in personal development programs and products. I spent 5 years with them in the sixties and early seventies when this industry was really just in its rompers, and I'd never seen anything like [The Secret]. It is without question, the best production, and it gets the idea across better than anything I've ever seen.

Of course, that was two years ago. I guess he changed his mind after The Secret hysteria died down a bit and he had to scramble to find another cash cow.

* Apparently Scientist Bob is not only a quantum physics expert, but is also a chemist. Who knew?

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Another hustledork moviemercial comin' your way

Just in case you haven't yet had your fill of New-Wage moviemercials, you will be thrilled to know that there are more on the horizon. For example, there is Awakeners, which promises to be yet another hustledork showcase, thinly disguised as an exercise in "conscious filmmaking." Expected release date is some time in early 2009.

Not to be confused with Sheri S. Tepper's fantasy/sci-fi series, The Awakeners, this Awakeners, it appears, will have a corny story line, a la What The Bleep. The tale revolves around a woman going through an awakening process and checking into some "spiritual halfway house" where she and other evolved-beings-in-progress can really start evolving. A site I found 'splains it:

Together, they are assisted by 'the other side' in awakening their latent powers. To some, they appear to be lunatics, and to others, wise sages. But through their journeys, they all discover their awakened purpose in assisting humanity through the emerging paradigm shift.

I imagine the filmmakers will find ways to work various talking heads into the plot line. This promises to be really good, particularly if the hustledorks are actually given character roles instead of just talking-head parts. I can't wait.

And there's great news for you marketers who were looking for a handy name for the burgeoning demographic that includes many hustledork-movie fans. They are officially called the "lifestyle of health and sustainability," or "LOHAS" market. (This is not to be confused with the "lifestyle of hedonism and nitwittery," or "LOHAN" market.) LOHAS was mentioned in this blurb about the executive producer of The Awakeners:

Audra Kelly, Awakeners executive producer, exudes a profound and rare commitment to the success of Awakeners in local, national, and international markets. She believes that much is at stake in divisive media and expresses the urgency of delivering a unification of humanity through inspiring films. Audra is not alone in this belief, as 19 percent of adults in the United States have been identified as belonging to the lifestyle of health and sustainability (LOHAS) market, members of which value the mind-body-spirit connection and carry the ultimate purpose of reaching their full human potential...This growing population longs for films such as Awakeners to hit the movie theaters. People are asking for a shift toward conscious filmmaking, which indicates that consciousness-raising films may soon dominate the industry. Audra’s vision is that Awakeners will kick-start this trend, reaching blockbuster status by resonating in the hearts of its viewers.

As it happens, and as my pal Chris Locke at the Mystic B blog reminded me (he had previously told me about this but I'd forgotten it), LOHAS is also the official name of a Colorado-based organization that publishes a slick magazine and has its home on the Web at http://www.lohas.com/:

LOHAS companies practice "responsible capitalism" by providing goods and services using economic and environmentally sustainable business practices. LOHAS business owners and industry leaders from around the world meet each year at the LOHAS Conference to discuss industry trends, share ideas and learn how to run a successful LOHAS business.

LOHAS consumers, sometimes referred to as Lohasians, are interested in products covering a range of market sectors and sub-sectors, including: Green building supplies, socially responsible investing and "green stocks", alternative healthcare, organic clothing and food, personal development media, yoga and other fitness products, eco-tourism and more.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm all for sustainability and progressive business models that take into account that we're living on a fragile planet of finite resources. Actually, the planet isn't all that fragile (as the late George Carlin famously noted), but we are, and we seriously need to stop soiling our nest. My problem with the whole "sustainability" thang is that it almost always comes packaged with a cloying and annoying, although eminently blogworthy, SNAG* mindset.

Chris reminded me that LOHAS had their annual pow-wow in his hometown of Boulder this past summer, an event that, as he put it, "you can see documented in all its perverse glory" in the video on their site (here's the link again). "It's all just soooo Boulder," he wrote.

And if you want something that is not only soooo Boulder but also soooo SNAG-gy, give thanks unto Chris for pointing me in the direction of a guided meditation at the 2008 LOHAS event, led by Max Simon, son of Deepak Chopra's sidekick David Simon. Simon the Younger is Chief Enlightenment Officer of GetSelfCentere.com, which offers something called "Self-Centered Meditation." As Chris noted, you really could not make this stuff up.

So, are ya ready to meditate with the Lohasians? Well, then, here's the meditation. Strip naked if you need to, and try not to picture some of those Lohasians doing the same.

PS ~ Hey, and speaking of hustledork moviemercials, we have an official world premiere date for Beyond The Secret, which seems to be primarily "Scientist Bob" Proctor's brain child (I snarked a bit about it back in August; scroll down to "Scientist Bob is at it again!"). The link I provided on my post still works, but the page has changed; even so, the "movie" that's premiering in January of 2009 is clearly part of the same project I wrote about. Equally clearly, it is one of Scientist Bob's moneymaking (for him) schemes.

PPS ~ This doesn't have anything (directly) to do with hustledork movies, but the other day I promised a Twitter pal, Christopher Jorgensen – creator of the delightful Jackass Letters site – that in my next blog post I would mention a letter he wrote to someone I snarked about on my blog a couple of years ago. Whereas I generally just snark about people, Christopher, in the fine tradition of people such as Don Novello, aka Lazlo Toth, prefers to engage them directly. The guy he wrote to isn't a hustledork so much as he is a lovable kook: Lightworker/Spirit Master Gary Johnson, whom I blogged about in November of 2006.

Here's the letter, and the Lightworker's reply. Enjoy!

* SNAG: Sensitive New Age Guy (or Gal)

Thursday, December 04, 2008

The week's almost over...time to snark again!

Yes, I know it's been a while since I've blogged. After a long and food-filled Thanksgiving weekend that culminated when Ron and I and a couple of dear friends partook of the King's Feast at the Texas Renaissance Festival on Sunday (thank you again, Michael), we spent Monday catching up on work. On Monday night just after sunset, Ron and I went outside to gaze at the southwestern sky. There we beheld a rare astronomical event: a triple conjunction in which the crescent moon, Venus and Jupiter cozied up to each other, looking for all the world like some whacked-out dyslexic emoticon (either a frowny or a smiley face depending upon your perspective, but cockeyed nonetheless). It was really pretty cool. Actually it was cold – too cold for us to stay out long enough to take good pictures. But we did have clear skies and a wonderful view of the event.


In truth, though, triple conjunctions aren't all that rare. Why, here comes another one right now: And/Or/But.

Sorry. I've been dying for days to foist that joke on someone. Lucky you! Anyway, Ron and I spent the next few days putting finishing touches on manuscript edits and getting into the design work for a project, and in between, of course, I've been Tweeting on Twitter. But I decided it's time to take another snark break. So here are a few snippets...

Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind...
A few days ago I read an article about the fact that the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season, which ended November 30, produced a record number of consecutive storms that struck the US. Further, it ranks as one of the more active seasons in the nearly six and a half decades since comprehensive records began. Many of us are all too aware that
Hurricane Ike – the storm that some of the wind whisperers were bragging they successfully "reduced" to a Cat 1 storm – was a Cat-2 when it made landfall in Texas but actually produced Cat-4 level surges, destroying much of Galveston and chunks of Houston and other surrounding areas. All in all, it was such a crazy season that forecasters are considering modifying the way they categorize hurricanes.

So let me just say, "Hey, great work, wind whisperers. You have truly made a difference."

Speaking of Hurricane Ike, the other day I came across a September blog entry by a person named Wendy Gail Young, who does something called Prosperity Posturing...er, I mean, Prosperity Postures. On September 12, the day before Ike hit Texas, she wrote:

I have been consistently saying that my power is staying on during and after the storm. What you focus on [you] create, right? Well so far so good...During this short blog post there have been 3 power surges. The last one turned all the lights off too and then they came back on. I have been holding a strong intention to have my power stay on.

I wrote a comment on her blog, asking her if her power did in fact stay on throughout and after Ike, but she has yet to answer.

A foolish [in]consistency?
Joe "Mr. Fire" Vitale has said that his latest book, Expect Miracles, will probably be his last book. He seems to be getting a lot of mileage out of this, having mentioned it several times on his blog and on Twitter. And on November 18, according to a correspondent who is on his email list, he sent this explanation out:

People are writing to me, asking what I meant when I said 'Expect Miracles' is my final book.

Well, I mean just that.

I have no more books in the works, no contracts for any, and no desire to write any more.

It's time to stop and let you catch up with all my titles. (I've written over thirty books.)

I'll still write my blog posts, and record new audio programs (my third comes out February, 2009), and do whatever else I get inspired to do, from speaking gigs to Rolls-Royce Master-Minds.

But for now, 'Expect Miracles' is it.

Yet here are two of his recent Tweets on Twitter, written a couple of days before that email blitz was sent out:

"Writing a book proposal - this one would save the world, heal all money problems, and cause lasting peace. But I might be dreaming big." 9:37 AM Nov 16th from web

"Going to work-out, finish up new book proposal, and run errands." 7:48 AM Nov 17th from web.

Either someone hacked his Twitter account and wrote those Tweets...or Joe is living in two parallel worlds in which he is both actively planning to write another book that will save the world, and not planning to ever write another book again...or he just really needs to learn how to keep his stories straight. Or maybe he simply has mood swings like I do.

Sometimes the inconsistencies are more subtle. F'rinstance, another correspondent told me that Joe recently sent an email out to his list, promoting his Awakening Course and his Miracles Coaching program. The hook in the email was something Joe calls "Transformational Vocabulary," which he says is one of many things he teaches in the Awakening Course. Transformational Vocabulary is basically New-Wage doublespeak to help you put a positive spin on negative situations. "These subtle changes can make all the difference in how you handle issues as they arise," Joe wrote. Here are just a few examples [with my comments in brackets]...

  • Refer to problems as "opportunities." [Now, there's a new one. Or maybe it was new way back in the late 1970s when corporate America latched on to it and tattooed it on the forehead of every smirking young exec they could get their hands on.]
  • Instead of saying, "I have to," say, "I get to." ["Next week I get to have a root canal, lay off five of my top employees, have my dog put to sleep, and hand over most of my life savings to my auto mechanic." Yeah, try saying that without sounding sarcastic.]
  • A setback is really a "challenge." ["Challenge," as anyone who has hung around a Unity Church courtyard for any length of time knows, is the all-time favorite New-Wage euphemism for everything from a harrowing divorce to a near-fatal car accident to a terminal illness.]
  • Tormentors are really "teachers." [See, Joebots, I do perform a worthy service on this blog. The teacher will appear whether the student is ready or not.]
  • Instead of saying "I demand" - say, "I would appreciate."

"Hold on right there!" I said out loud, to no one in particular, when I read that one. "What about that Psychic Demand program that Joe and his buddy Pat are selling? You know, the one where you say to the Universe, 'I DEMAND [however much money you want to fall from the sky]'? Joe swears this works and says the program is one of his best-sellers. But isn't that 'I demand' stuff inconsistent with the Transformational Vocabulary strategy of replacing 'I demand' with 'I would appreciate?'"

But then I thought about it some more and realized that these are two completely different situations after all. The Transformational Vocabulary was created for dealing with people – and with people, let's face it, you often have to resort to subterfuge to get your way. You even have to b.s. yourself at times to convince yourself that you are deliriously happy, or at least not a hopeless loser. The more you muddy-up your language, the better chance you have of persuading reluctant people to do what you want them to do, even if it's not in their best interests, and the more successful you may be at convincing yourself that you're not a royal screw-up.

With the Universe, on the other hand, you have to get tough and real. There's no b.s.'ing with the Universe because it knows what you want. But it's kind of stubborn, or maybe it's just hopelessly distracted by hearing billions of people begging for stuff all the time, and it won't give you what you want unless you get in its face and demand it. (Yes, I know we've been over this before, but sometimes a refresher course is in order.) If you don't demand what you want, the Universe will more than likely continue to heap crap upon you. And the only way to stop this process is to buy products from New-Wage hustlers.

At the very least, all of this talk of Transformational Vocabulary can serve as a reminder of something some of us have known for many years: With New-Wagers, as with bureaucrats, you really do have to read (or listen) between the lines. You just can't expect clear and precise language from that lot.

Wanking...er...walking with the wise
A new book came to my attention a few days ago. I forget how. Anyway, it's called
Walking With The Wise For Overcoming Obstacles, and it features inspiring stories from all sorts of New-Wage gurus who...well...overcame obstacles. The book features the expected line-up of luminaries, most of whom became famous and wealthy by putting in years and years and years of work and effort. But let's face it: work is such a drag. And who wants to wait years or decades to get rich and happy? Fortunately there's an alternative for those who want the world and want it now. Here's what it says on the new book's promo page:

Which Way Do You Want To Learn?
Experience or Education?

They say that there's 2 methods to learn from... Experience or education. The problem with experience is that it takes too long to get and the price is too high... That's not to mention that the obstacle might eat you up...Plus, without the insight of a capable teacher or mentor to assist you, you might miss the lesson altogether, and not be any better off for the wear.

No, you won't develop any supernatural powers that will allow you to "sidestep" Natural Law in this book - you will still experience storms in life. Sometimes devastating storms. But, led from the experience and insight of the 50 speakers, authors, experts, ordinary people, and millionaires who have contributed to Overcoming Obstacles you can discover how to harness Natural Law, assert your inner Eagle, that soul spirit within you, and overcome any obstacle on the road to glorious success as you define it.

Well, at least the publisher is somewhat honest about the fact that there are no magical panaceas in the book. But I'm concerned about this "Inner Eagle" thing. Does that mean that if you buy the book and take its lessons to heart you'll become like Don Henley or Glenn Frey? If so, is that necessarily a good thing? Or was the WWTW copywriter talking about that darned bird again? Sigh...haven't we been over this issue already? Why on Earth do so many people still want to emulate eagles, when eagles are fierce predators that put out large amounts of really gross poop and, despite their preference for fresh prey, have also been known to gobble carrion the way vultures do?

Iffy metaphors aside, you can't argue with the fantastic New-Wage celebrity lineup in WWTW for Overcoming Obstacles. The featured face is that elder statesman of the New Wage, noted quantum physics expert Bob Proctor. Not only did he graciously agree to pen something for the book, but he took the time from his busy schedule to write a stunningly brilliant testimonial as well:

When a person picks up something to read, generally the first thought that comes to their mind is; 'I hope this is a good book.' Linda Forsythe has made sure this is a good book.

In Walking With the Wise for Overcoming Obstacles, Linda has brought together a number of wise mentors with heartwarming stores [sic] you will want to refer back to a number of times. It's stories likes [sic] these that provide the motivation and inspiration required for us to meet and overcome every challenge.

You will especially appreciate the inspiriation [sic] from a number of mentors that you personally recognize and the true stories from people you may never have heard of.

All achieved the impossible. All share how they have overcome enormous challenges and show you how to do the same!

Bob Proctor
Best Selling Author,
You Were Born Rich
and philospher [sic] in the movie
The Secret
.

And there's plenty more where that came from. Walking With The Wise seems to be just one huge heaping eagle-created pile of "inspiriation!"

Walking With The Wise For Overcoming Obstacles is actually part of a series of books compiled by Linda Forsythe (the publisher of Mentors Magazine) and published under her imprint, Mentors Publications. Everything about the books, from the elegant and understated cover designs to the stellar lineup of the planet's brightest minds, screams "quality." Or screams something, anyway.

The first book in the series, simply titled, Walking With The Wise, has earned an impressive five-star average from reviewers on Amazon. So far three people have weighed in: two are coincidentally named "A Customer" and one is named "linda17365." If you follow the link to the page where all of "Linda17365's" reviews appear – all two of them – you'll see another review in which she reveals that she is none other than Linda Forsythe, the publisher of the Walking With The Wise series. She doesn't admit this in the review of the Walking With The Wise book, but it's right there in black and white in her comment on another book by one of her authors, Susan Gilbert (more on her in a moment). But at least she comes out and reveals her identity instead of pretending to be someone else. I'll give her points for that.

Linda reveals even more about herself on her Amazon profile:

I am a 32 year old divorsed [sic] white single mom trying to find information on how to make my life better. I'm also trying to start my own business.

All righty, then! I guess she succeeded with that business thing if she got all those hustledorks on board. I sincerely hope she was able to hire some good editors too.

I did see something that concerned me. Apparently Linda aged quite a bit between the time she wrote her Amazon profile, where she is 32 years old, and the time she created her MySpace page. On her MySpace page she reveals that she is 101 years old. Publishing can do that to you. It's a tough biz.

With age has come wisdom, however. In a recent blog post entry Linda revealed the truth about why things are so bad now for Light Workers. Apparently that post hit a nerve with several people, including a 97-year-old born-again Christian entrepreneur who lives in the Kingdom of God, California, and a hot 97-year-old tranny (or drag queen, or desperate woman). In truth it's difficult to tell just who or what "Divaz Hot Chocolate Blonde" is; the one thing that's clear is that s/he is the "Diva Wit A Million Dolla Swagga". Still swagga-ing at 97...now, that's pretty incredible. It appears that there's lots of senior action on MySpace. Who knew?

But I digress. It looks as if Linda has a pretty good scheme going with her Walking With The Wise series. The books seem to be "Who's Who"-type anthologies that you have to pay to get into, at least if you're not a big "name." That was my impression, anyway, when reading this one-star review on Amazon, which was written in July of 2006 about Walking With The Wise For Health & Vitality:

1.0 out of 5 stars As Seen on Judge Judy, July 25, 2006

Turns out many no-names paid $5k apiece to have their articles appear alongside Deepak Chopra's, Wayne Dyer's, etc. "Mentor" Susan Gilbert was ordered to repay Dr. Howard Richmond $2500 for the many telephone coaching sessions she conducted in which she facilitated his participation. He also got a $5k judgment against the publishing company, Mentors Publishing House and Linda Forsythe (Her name was bleeped out - I read his lips.) Writers & readers beware!

There's more about that Judge Judy episode on this discussion on a writers' forum. And you might be interested to know that Susan Gilbert, a self-described "serial entrepreneur" who also happens to be the Mentors author for whom Linda wrote a five-star review on Amazon, turned lemons into lemonade and wrote her Judge Judy story in the Overcoming Obstacles volume. Truly inspiring.

Let's get motivated!
And speaking of inspiration, my friend Tony, who actually publishes quality books, recently sent me this very inspiring link. Trust me, it's well worth following. Unless you are easily offended.

So...do you feel motivated, Dear Ones? Good! Now go out and Dare Something Blogworthy. Or at least Tweet-worthy. See you again soon!

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

The bee-yotch is back!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Saturday, November 08, 2008

Musings on the Presidential race

Okay, I admit it: Over the past few days I have been touched, even to the point of tearing up on occasion, as I've watched footage of the jubilant celebrations in the streets and parks and on college campuses across the country – and indeed across the world – in the wake of Barack Obama's election. While I agree with those who say the United States needs to work towards a post-racial society, I really can't fault anyone for wanting to "linger over the moment" as long as possible before reality sets in and the real work begins.

For Obama the real work has already begun, of course, but even on election night he appeared to have deliberately chosen to err on the side of seriousness rather than triumphant giddiness. He has said repeatedly that change isn't going to come overnight, or even within his first term, but that memo has yet to reach the cheering masses.


The media are having a field day with the historical and symbolic significance of this Presidential election. Martin Luther King's famous 1963 "I have a dream" speech in Washington DC has been invoked repeatedly, and the talking heads have mentioned a few times that Barack's next residence, the White House, was built partly by slave labor.

It has also been noted more than once that for over a century after slavery was abolished in the US, black people in this country were, in countless ways, shamefully regarded and treated. I mentioned in a previous post that I'd recently begun reading William Manchester's massive 1974 work, The Glory And The Dream: A Narrative History of America 1932-1972. I was struck by this snippet from Manchester's description of Washington D.C. in 1932, the year the country hit "rock bottom" in the Great Depression:

The District's five daily papers were crowded with news of social unrest in 1932, but none of it was about Negroes. Although 26 percent of Washington was black (the highest ratio of any American city), Negroes accepted their appalling lot with remarkable unanimity. "Dark-skinned children of the South," a government guide explained, were confined to domestic service and "manual work." Department stores, movies, and government cafeterias were closed to them. Black workmen digging the foundations of the new Justice Department building on Pennsylvania Avenue either brought their lunches or went hungry; even if they wanted a glass of water they had to walk two miles out Seventh Street to find a restaurant which would serve them. The president of Howard University, a Negro college, was a white man. When President Hoover sent Gold Star mothers to France, black mothers were assigned to a second (and second-class) ship. And the most popular radio program in the country, Amos'n'Andy, was a nightly racial slur, with its Negro parts played by two white men affecting minstrel show accents ("I'se regusted"; "Dat's de propolition")....

Our nation's capital was indeed built on the sweat and blood of thousands of black laborers. And although I'm not literally a believer in spirits, I find that it is not too difficult to imagine the ghosts of those nameless multitudes lining the streets of Washington on the day of the Inaugural Parade.

It has, indeed, been a long time coming.

Race is alluded to in Leonard Cohen's song "Democracy," the video of which I linked to in my post the other day, as did numerous other bloggers in a celebratory mode:

It’s coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin’
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
The lyrics reflect the fact that this song was released while the country was still reeling from the shattering events of the early 1990s, such as the first Iraq war and the LA riots. Now, of course, we're in yet another war in "the desert far away," one which has dragged out considerably longer than the first effort, and the sad fact is that even today there is an appalling amount of racism of various types in the USA. It surfaces here and there in ways that always dismay but rarely surprise me. While I think it's safe to say that most people who were against an Obama presidency simply didn't care for his politics, I've heard some actually say that when it comes right down to it, they "just don't want a n----r in the White House."

Yet as Steve Salerno pointed out numerous times on SHAMblog, anyone, black or white, who supports Obama BECAUSE of the color of his skin is also indulging in a form of racism. (And by the way, I recommend that those who dislike Obama for racial reasons (or any other reasons) read Steve's November 5 blog post. Among other things, Steve points out that because his mom was white, Obama will be not only our first black president but our 44th white one.)

It's time to get past all of the racial stuff, and I like to think we're on our way. But even though I'm sure that eventually I'll get sick of hearing the talking heads natter on about the momentousness of it all, I am, like so many Americans of all colors, savoring it for now.

I'm not some starry-eyed cultist, as some have accused "Pro-bamas" of being.* My eyes are open and free of stars...well, other than those billions I see when I gaze up into the clear night sky here at The Ranch. To tell the truth, I was automatically a bit turned off by Obama at the beginning because of the famous "Oprah connection." While I admire Oprah's taste in contemporary fiction (though not in "nonfiction"), I've never been able to get over her wholehearted endorsement of The Secret, not to mention her gushing over Esther and Jerry Hicks and their imaginary pal(s) Abraham. She has shown poor judgment in the past in other ways as well (can you say, "James Frey," boys and girls?). Notwithstanding my long-time support for Presidential candidate Dave Barry and, more recently, my support for my friend Lana Walker-Helmuth's Presidential race, I actually thought Ron Paul had the most sensible ideas to get our country out of its slump.

But I came around to Obama, not because of Oprah but in spite of her, and not because of the throngs of his frenzied admirers shouting slogans at rallies, but because in the end, he seemed to me to be the best of the available choices. I know that I have several friends, some of whom are regular readers of this blog, who disagree vehemently with that opinion. But they are still my friends, and I'm still theirs.

I don't look upon our new President-elect as the savior of our nation. And I know that if Obama lives up to all or even most of his promises it will be because he is a truly exceptional man. If he fails to meet our expectations, it will no doubt be because he is just another politician after all, and, of course, the detractors will be out in force to say, "We told you so!" Odds are that Obama is somewhere in between "exceptional" by the definition above, and "just another politician," though right now my opinion is that he seems to be closer to the "exceptional" end. Either way, from a practical standpoint the color of his skin isn't relevant, and I think most of us know that.

But from a symbolic standpoint...well, that's something altogether different. Obama may be half white, but he "looks" black. And the symbolic significance of this is huge. We know it. The world knows it too, and much of the world is excited for us. I wonder if it's too much to hope, at this point, that Obama represents just enough of a "face for change" to give pause to even our enemies, some of whom might actually gain, or regain, some respect for America.

I know the euphoria will wear off, that at some point it will dawn on some of the idealists that Obama's election is really not "proof" after all that anyone can be President. It still takes, more than anything else, boatloads of money, a genius for marketing, a considerable ego and yes, a certain amount of ruthlessness, to reach that lofty position. (In Obama's case it also helped, as has been discussed elsewhere, that he is youngish, nice-looking, educated and eloquent.) Still, I do hope the momentum that was begun during this campaign – the energy that brought out younger voters as well as older, disillusioned ones in unprecedented numbers – can continue, and that it will translate into something truly good for all of us.

I am also more than aware that the pundits and hatemongers are poised at their keyboards and microphones and cams. One can feel their sharp eyes and hot breaths on Obama. They're not going away any time soon, because there is an enormous market for what they have to offer. (There's a good reason that Rush Limbaugh recently nabbed a $400 million contract from Clear Channel!) But look, we need those folks around too, for balance, or at least comic relief.

Besides, if Barack and the Democrats really screw up, I am not above switching parties. I've done it before and I will do it again if I have to.

For now, though, I find myself smiling over this election the way I haven't smiled over a Presidential election since, oh, 1996 or so. I find myself exhilarated in a way that I haven't been since the fall of the Berlin Wall (an exhilaration that, I must admit, is somewhat tempered not only by some of the events since then, but by thinking about another prescient Leonard Cohen song, The Future). As I mentioned in the "comments" section of my previous post, I have suspended my normal cynicism long enough to allow myself to feel a new kind of hope for the US – and maybe even for the world.

Oh, but don't worry, Dear Ones. I will be back to snarking in no time. I'm already simmering the ingredients for my next snarky soup. But for the moment, I am, as a friend of mine put it, still "basking in the afterglow."

* Yes, yes, yes, I do see that Obamamania has its cultish aspects, although the same could be said of, say, the recent mania for Sarah Palin (remember her?). But you won't catch me chanting slogans or hanging huge posters with Obama's likeness. Regarding Sarah, I have to agree with Steve Salerno when he wrote that selecting her as a political candidate/role model represented a setback for true feminism. As Steve put it, " It says that if you look right and dress right and wink and smile and have a nice shape--and have shown your ability to pump out babies by the handful--that's really all that matters in a woman/candidate. Very unfortunate."

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

"Sail on, sail on, o mighty Ship of State..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU-RuR-qO4YI'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country, but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left nor right
I'm just staying home tonight,

getting lost in that hopeless little screen...
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay

I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

~Leonard Cohen, "Democracy," from The Future (1992) *

Congratulations to US President-Elect Barack Obama.

Kudos to John McCain for a gracious concession speech.
And to commemorate the occasion, here is a song I've loved for years, from a man I consider to be one of the greatest living songwriters in the world. It has been widely played at various times, after various victories. (You can also get to it by clicking on the graphic above.)

PS ~ Another blogger who is also obviously an LC fan had the same idea, as I'm sure countless others have and will...

* One of my favorite CDs of all time.

Monday, November 03, 2008

The ultimate wacko bailout plan?

Today's post, besides being quite long-winded even for me, is a bit of a departure from my normal fare, particularly of late. As the US Presidential race gets down to the wire, and as the buzz continues about a financial crisis that is either (a) potentially the worst thing to happen since the Great Depression or is (b) no big deal, I thought that a little trip back in time might be in order. Accordingly, this post contains some real history and actual facts – not enough to hurt you, but some. (But don't worry; I'll try to get in some snarking anyway.)

* * * * *

It had many of the elements of a New-Wage money-making scheme: the promise of generous compensation for little or no work, the bold vision of a Utopian society and a new era for humankind, the public statements from its creator that could just as well have been nothing more than a bunch of words strung together randomly, for all the sense they made to the average person. (Apparently, however, the obscurantism did not prevent large numbers of folks from hopping aboard the promised gravy train.) There was even a yin-yang symbol that surely would have appealed to today's conspicuously enlightened consumer.

It was called Technocracy, and the only thing missing from the grand marketing plan, at least in those early days, was the Internet.

There's a good reason for that: Technocracy as both an intellectual fad and a mass movement was a spawn not of the Internet Age, but of the Great Depression. Actually it had its roots in the Technical Alliance, a think tank formed at the end of World War I to assess physical economic indicators of the day. That gave way to Technocracy, Inc., which published a home study course, not only to inform citizens about the results of the think tank's studies, but also to lay out a new "scientific social design" that promised a brave new world of abundance for all. Technocrats envisioned a society designed to operate with a minimum expenditure of energy for maximum social gain. Its sophisticated scientific notions were probably a big part of what attracted the forward thinkers of the time, but it became a fad during the Depression for one simple reason: it promised to offer a way out of the dismal economic situation.

Great Scott!
As an intellectual movement, Technocracy centered around Columbia University for a while, but as a mass movement its center was in California. The movement was spearheaded by one man,
Howard Scott (1890-1970), a practicing engineer who didn't actually have an engineering degree, reportedly because his father's death had cut his college education short. Although online diploma mills, that favorite tool of some of today's New-Wage superstars, were still a few generations in the future, this didn't stop Scott from embellishing his education until he apparently got called on it. According to the late journalist and popular-culture historian Paul Sann, writing in his 1967 book, Fads, Follies and Delusions of the American People, Scott at one point claimed he'd attended universities in Europe, had graduated from an engineering college in Berlin, and then had held executive posts in the engineering field in Europe and Canada. "Later, under oath, he admitted that he held no college degrees," according to Sann, who added:

In the mid-Twenties he was operating a little floor-wax plant in Pompton Lakes, new Jersey, and espousing far-out economic theories in the Greenwich Village watering places at night. He told some rather elaborate stories about flying for the British during [World War I] and then serving as an engineer at Boulder Dam and Muscle Shoals, but only the last item stood up. He had indeed been at Muscle Shoals – in a clerical job.

Another source implies that he was an engineer at Muscle Shoals, but not a very good one:

As documented by [William E.] Akin in Technocracy and the American Dream, Scott seems to have had little formal education, and his most notable work as an engineer was at a Muscle Shoals nitrates project during World War I. A postwar government investigation charged him with “gross waste, inefficiency, and shoddy workmanship.”

In any event, Scott was certainly no dummy; he had been a child prodigy who read about and understood evolutionary biology by the time he was four years old. Or maybe that's just another story he told about himself, but it's a pretty good one, as stories go. What seems indisputable is that he was an intelligent guy with some big ideas, and he was able to get a lot of people, including prominent politicians and literary figures, excited about those ideas. The Howard Scott that came into the public eye in the 1930s was, as Paul Sann put it in Fads, Follies and Delusions of the American People:

...tall and taciturn and vaguely mysterious and bearing that most wondrous tonic of all – $20,000 a year for every able-bodied citizen over twenty-five years of age willing to work a soft four hours a day for 165 days of the year until he's forty-five. And then? The most golden of all retirements: the money, like Old Man River, keeps rolling along.

The name of the game was Technocracy, and at those prices you had to be pretty dumb to wait around for the man in the White House to produce his miracles...

Sann's description is perhaps a bit misleading, as in Scott's Utopian scenario, actual money would no longer be used. But perhaps those early promises were framed in terms of money because that's what people understood, and as $20,000.00 back then was the equivalent of well over $300,000.00 now, you can see why it would get people's attention. In any case, Scott knew he had a ready-made market in the Depression-weary masses who were tired of waiting for the government to turn things around. For six bucks a year, you could be a member of Scott's organization and help create that bright and shining future.

Truth be told, Scott wanted to do away with the US government altogether, along with the Constitution and the whole mess. He was quoted as saying that "democratic methods are obsolete," and that "the Constitution and our concepts of social order ought to be wrapped in cellophane and put in the Smithsonian Institution for future generations to look at." He thought of those fine American concepts of liberty and justice as "empty baubles of the social epoch of yesterday." Further, he had no love for politicians, stating, "We could take any home of defectives, pick their inmates' names from a hat and so select our House and Senate, and they couldn't do worse than we're doing now." (Okay, I realize that many folks today might agree with that last part, notwithstanding the fact that it's no longer politically correct to refer to special-needs people as "defectives," but as for the rest...well, I don't know about you, but I'm kind of partial to the Constitution, old-fashioned gal that I am.)

Scott and company had in mind something far superior to the quaint conceits of the Founding Fathers of the United States: a society based not on noble principles such as freedom and truth, but on rigorous application of engineering principles. This ideal society would be run not by politicians or community leaders or even by the clergy, but by engineers, scientists, and technologists. Rather than the United States, Technocrats envisioned something called the Technate State of North America, which merged the US and the rest of North America, as well as Central America, the West Indies, and Bermuda. (Actually the TSNA included Hawaii as well, which wasn't a state at the time; at least it could be said that the Technocrats got their wish about that part in 1959.) Regarding the TSNA's interaction with the rest of the world, that huge non-Technate chunk still operating on antiquated economic and political systems, the Technocrats were a bit more cloudy about that, although Scott seemed to be a dedicated isolationist, bent on creating a Technate that was impervious to "alien cultural intrusions," and, presumably, had no need for trade with the backwards aliens.

Equality for all (just don't ask too many questions)
Although disclaiming anything so mushy as altruistic motives, Scott and other advocates of Technocracy contended that their way offered the only real antidote to inequality and injustice. (Technocrats today still make this claim.) Under Technocracy, everyone would be equal, at least on a material level, and no one would lack for basic necessities. Since in the Technocratic view modern technology was (and is) capable of overcoming the problem of
scarcity, the Technate design would include such post-scarcity perks as free housing, transportation, recreation, education, and consumer products as a right of citizenship.

If that sounds kind of like socialism, it's not, as Technocrats will hasten to explain, because socialism and communism, and for that matter capitalism, are based on market economics and the price system, whereas Technocracy proposes a non-market economy based on a non-monetary system called "Energy Accounting." (And no, we're not talking about the nebulous "energies" that so many New-Wagers are constantly nattering about.) The theory went that the Technocrats could determine a product's value by the amount of energy consumed in production, and could hence create a monetary system based on "energy certificates" that would be good for a given amount of consumption.

The Social Security Online site, in its overview of various economic reform movements of the past, explains that technocracy was neither a political nor an economic system:

Technocracy held that all politics and all economic arrangements based on the "Price System" (i.e., based on traditional economic theory) were antiquated and that the only hope of building a successful modern world was to let engineers and other technology experts run the country on engineering principles. Technocracy's rallying cry was "production for use," which was meant as a contrast to production for profit in the capitalist system. Production for use became a slogan for many of the radical-left movements of the era. Upton Sinclair, among others, affirmed his belief in "production for use" and the Technocrats briefly made common cause with Sinclair, and even Huey Long, in California. But the Technocrats were not of the political left, as they held every political and economic system, from the left to the right, to be unsound.

As for that yin-yang symbol, Technocrats called it the "Monad." It was chosen because it symbolized the balance between distribution and consumption, an integral part of the social program designed by Technocracy.

Though they didn't think of themselves as a political party, that didn't stop Howard Scott and friends from some rather unsettling talk about "taking over," as this consummately run society could only be created and maintained by "an elite of engineers and scientists." In January of 1933, according to Paul Sann's account in the book cited above, Scott spoke of his big plans to an audience of 400 bankers, industrialists, artists and economists who had gathered at New York's swanky Hotel Pierre to honor him. He said that within the next eighteen months he expected to have no less than 20 million adherents, which, he said, would be more than enough to "sweep out Washington and let the technicians get going," as Sann put it. Scott also made this statement in 1935:

If our numbers continue at the present rate of increase we shall not be a minority when we take over. It looks as if we shall have sufficient numbers by 1940 to carry out our plans, perhaps by popular mandate.

"Perhaps by popular mandate?" Hmmm....

Yet Scott himself claimed he had no ambitions, political or otherwise; he merely wanted to whip society into shape and get all Americans that promised $20,000.00 per year. He later joked that the only job he wanted was "custodian of the bears in Yellowstone Park. The bears hibernate in winter and are tourist-fed the rest of the year." Disclaimers notwithstanding, he apparently had an ego that was every bit as imposing as his physical presence. The late Langdon W. Post, who later became a federal public housing administrator in California, was briefly associated with Scott at Columbia University. Post remembered Scott as "an egotist who thought of himself as a kind of Messiah come to earth in the midst of a deep Depression with orders to remodel a decadent and demoralized economic and political system." He said Scott had a phenomenal memory and a genius for explaining complex principles, but he alienated everyone around him with his high-handed methods. According to Sann, Post said, "He was determined to run the whole show himself, but he really had very little idea what the show should be."

He also didn't seem to think transparency was all that important. This was evident even back in the days before Technocracy became a mass fad. In a 1921 interview with Scott, Charles H. Wood, associate editor of the New York World, asked him, "And suppose you draw up a seemingly workable plan. What are you going to do with public opinion?"

To which Scott replied, "It is all a technical matter. It makes not the slightest difference whether the public knows about it or not. The steam engine didn't need a press agent. The Einstein Theory doesn't require any special legislative enactment. If the only people who can bring order to our present industrial chaos find out exactly how to do the job, we needn't worry about the next step."

More than fifteen years later, when Technocracy had undergone considerable growing pains, Scott announced that Technocracy's ranks had skyrocketed "by 461 percent in the past year alone." As Sann wrote, "The natural question was, 461 percent of what? And the answer [from Scott], as ever, was, 'We have never told and we never will.'"

Scott apparently didn't even find it all that necessary to explain exactly what Technocracy was, at least not in a way that the average person could understand it.

The word "technocracy," as representative of a new body of thought, means governance by science – social control through the power of technique... Technocracy is a new approach to social phenomena. As such, a governance by science is one which would proceed from a methodology of determination and which would operate under a balanced load control of all function sequences.

Did you get that? Good, maybe you can 'splain it to me. On second thought, never mind.

Damn the critics; full speed ahead!
While many of the literati, intellectuals and even a few politicians became advocates of Technocracy, there were, not surprisingly, critics, many of whom had honest questions about just exactly how the Technocratic Utopia was supposed to be created and sustained. Scott's attitude, according to Sann, could be summed up thusly: "We don't have to answer our critics. Time will tell who is correct." But the critics continued to hammer away at Scott and his vision. Political columnist, author, and magazine publisher
Walter Lippmann, in a piece that could have just as easily been written about some of today's mystical/scientific "experts," wrote:

The prestige of science, the mystification of scientific jargon, the prediction of disaster, and the promise of salvation have proved to be an ideal combination to impress a people who are disillusioned, frightened, and eager for guidance. It is a heartless pretense...It is a vast inflation and pyramiding of generalizations and theories on a small base of substantial truth...the prophesies and promises...are scientific hocus pocus.

The delusion of grandeur which causes him (Scott) to look upon himself as the innovator of a new era in human thought and to say that "all philosophic approaches to social phenomena, from Plato to – and including – Marx, must functionally be avoided as intellectual expressions of dementia praecox" should not impress anyone. That is nothing but the pretentious ignorance of a crank.

Hmmm.... "pretentious ignorance"... kind of reminds me of some of those quantum-physics "experts" in the New-Wage industry. (Hey, I promised snarking, and by golly, I deliver.)

Technocracy had a bit of a setback when the Technocrats were ousted from Columbia University in 1933; according to Sann's account, Scott was told by Columbia's president, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, never to set foot on campus again. Several other followers also left the Technocratic fold, and for a time it appeared that Technocracy's heyday was over. Scott was "dismayed but defiant," according to Sann. He withdrew from public life for a short time, confining himself mostly to a friend's Manhattan apartment. He always said that Technocracy was a labor of love for him and that in truth he had no money. "But the work will go on," he said, and it did. Scott claimed large membership gains from a tour he made through the western United States in 1934.

Here's where it gets kind of creepy. Paul Sann writes:

By then his Youth Brigade had flowered, complete with a military salute, and some of the grown-ups were in uniform. The model technocrat wore a double-breasted gray suit, in gabardine serge, gray hat, gray shirt, gray socks, navy blue tie and matching handkerchief, and plain-toed cordovan shoes of reddish horsehide. (Underwear was optional.) The outfit cost twenty-five dollars and you had to get permission from your local [Technocratic] board of governors to wear it. The rule was that once you draped yourself in that Howard Scott gray you had to stay in it. And if you happened to be overweight you had another kind of problem. Scott, always lean himself, kept you in civies because he felt that fat technocrats didn't look good in double-breasted suits. The women weren't neglected, by the way; for twenty-two dollars they could hide their charms in drab single-breasted gray suits with blouses of gray or blue.

Scott insisted this was not a military uniform: "It is not a uniform for parading. It is a uniform for living and working." That's unsettling enough, but even more unsettling is Scott's reply when asked whether he thought Il Duce, Benito Mussolini, was for all practical purposes setting up a kind of technocracy in Italy. Il Duce was, after all, famous for "making the trains run on time" (or at least that's what people widely believed, and still do to this day). To the question about Mussolini, Scott responded:

Mussolini has demonstrated his capacity for initiative and leadership. His position in the vanguard of European social action places him as probably the only figure in the Western European political world who has both the vision and the dynamic will to initiate the first national move away from the old traditional structures in the management of human affairs.

Kind of makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, doesn't it?

As World War II heated up and the United States became involved, Scott continued to push his agenda. In the spring of 1942, no longer the isolationist but now keenly interested in what was going on in Europe, he took out full-page ads in daily newspapers across the nation, urging FDR to name him his "Director General of Defense." Scott apparently had a plan for certain victory, as bold as his blueprint for a perfect society. He also bought time on nearly a hundred radio stations, published several slick magazines and pamphlets, and even set up a "continental headquarters" in a Manhattan skyscraper. By that time, the uniforms were not only much more in evidence, but Technocracy had a motorcycle corps, "disaster squads," and a fleet of gray sedans. It had branches in San Diego, San Francisco, Detroit, Phoenix and numerous other cities. Scott was now called "The Chief," and when asked how he got that title, he replied, "I got here first."

Despite his implied admiration for the world's most famous Fascist, Scott did have an issue with Hitler and the Nazis. He said Technocracy's opposition to the Nazis was "not merely on the basis of ideology, but because Germany is built largely on human toil and ours is a power and extraneous energy society."

It seemed, though, that ideology didn't enter into it at all for Scott. Regarding the millions of Jews and others who were being systematically eradicated by the Nazis, that wasn't even an issue for The Chief, who stated, "Technocrats are not filled with any love of humanity or influenced by any ethical idea, but are primarily concerned with function."

I suppose there's no better evidence than this statement that the the well-oiled machine Scott envisioned was just that: a machine. With all of its parts working perfectly and according to plan, there was no actual need for a warm beating heart or a functioning soul. Or a conscience, for that matter.

The big "yeah-but..."
It's not that matters of the heart and soul had no place in the Technocratic vision. With all of the bothersome problems of survival and sustenance finally taken care of through the application of sound engineering principles, there would presumably be ample time and opportunity for creative pursuits and pleasures. Technocracy at least seemed to recognize that humans are, after all, creative beings.

But from where I sit, there were other aspects of human nature that the Technocrats apparently didn't take into consideration.

For example, there's that primal need to own stuff, a need that seems to have grown more powerful in the decades since the Great Depression, and, thanks to influences such as The Secret, has attained a pseudospiritual cachet in today's New-Wage consumer paradise. Under the Technocratic plan, alas, individuals would own nothing beyond their own immediate personal belongings and apparel. They couldn't buy enormous mansions to advertise their elevated status to the world, for living spaces would be huge multi-story, multi-use affairs, partitioned off as needed for individuals or families, and encompassing retail and office space. Perhaps even worse, people....gasp...couldn't own a stable of overpriced cars, or even one car; they would merely "pay" for "energy units" for the use of transportation on a time-distance basis.

Something tells me that this kind of stuff wouldn't set well at all with many of today's hustledorks or their fawning followers. To tell the truth, this kind of stuff wouldn't set too well with most of us.

Technocracy, in short, fails to take into account that all-too-human desire to have more, more, MORE. It also seemingly neglects to consider the human need to be "superior" in some way to one's fellows.

There are numerous other arguments in opposition to Technocracy and its system of "energy accounting." Some contend that under such a system, people would not work because the money incentive would be lost. Technocrats contend that "work" as we know it wouldn't be necessary under their system. Others say that people need hierarchies, so Technocracy's basically structureless society just wouldn't be feasible. There's even the argument that Technocracy would create too much equality (see that bit above about the need to feel "superior"). And some point out that no matter how efficiently Technocracy distributes resources, some resources are finite, and furthermore, there will always be scarcity. Technocrats argue that without the profit motive people would be more motivated to protect resources for our future survival. And so on. In a nutshell, Technocracy is bursting at the seams with ideas that could make even the most non-New-Wagey capitalist's head explode.

Whatever you might think of Howard Scott and his ideas, however, the issues touched on above are important ones and aren't going to go away any time soon. At the very least, Technocrats then and now have made a serious attempt to address them.

Whatever happened to Howard Scott?
World War II ended with an Allied victory, which occurred despite FDR's refusal to recognize the genius and military acumen of Howard Scott by naming him Director General of Defense. The US entered into an era of unprecedented prosperity, and Technocracy pretty much fell by the wayside. In 1948, a former assistant director of Technocracy, Inc. brought suit against Scott in Manhattan Supreme Court, accusing him of pocketing "excessive compensation in the form of an expense account without proper authorization." According to the former Technocrat, Albert W. Atwater, the organization had a mere 8,900 dues-paying members at the time, but Scott had made no financial reports on its annual income. It seemed that Scott's claims of memberships in the millions were hugely exaggerated. Where the money had come from for the big media blitz in 1942 was anyone's guess.

Of course, Scott wasn't the first and would be far from the last faddish "visionary" to be a little dodgy about money matters.

"After a while," concluded Paul Sann, "it didn't matter. Technocracy, perhaps the most ominous of all our fads, receded into history without a formal burial."

Technocracy may have receded, but make no mistake about it: it is still alive and well and in no apparent danger of being buried any time soon. It still has its passionate advocates in North America, Europe and other parts of the world, and many look upon Howard Scott as a hero and a man ahead of his time. Though he died in 1970, his ideas live on.

I realize that in this lengthy post I've quoted rather extensively from Paul Sann's work, which is not readily available, and I further realize that many apologists for Technocracy and Howard Scott would argue, with some justification, that neither Sann nor I have done justice to the depth and breadth of Scott's vision. Indeed, I have not even scratched the surface of all of the material available on Technocracy, and certainly have done nothing to explain how a Technocratic state would theoretically be created and sustained. To tell the truth, I barely understand it myself. So I leave you to follow the various links I've provided above and below, or do some Googling of your own, and draw your own conclusions.

I will say this, though: From the perspective of today's New-Wage hucksters, it's really too bad that Technocracy still exists as a viable organization, with proprietary copyrighted material. Otherwise, it probably would become yet one more long-hidden, recently rediscovered "ancient secret" for rapacious Internet capitalists to repackage and sell to a gullible public. (I have a very strong feeling that they would find some way to exempt themselves from that no-car-ownership stipulation.)

As for the larger lessons in the tale of Howard Scott and Technocracy, there are several, I'm sure, but I'll leave that up to you to determine for yourself, if you're so inclined. In any case, I wish you happy Googling. Just don't get so distracted that you forget to go out and vote on Tuesday (well, provided you're a US citizen and all that).

Some resources...

PS ~ According to the Social Security site linked to above, the classic 1941 Frank Capra film Meet John Doe, staring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, depicts the Depression-era period of mass movements through the story of a fictional "John Doe" who represents an amalgam of many of the ideas of various movements, including Technocracy. (Apparently it's nearly impossible to find a decent-quality reproduction of this movie, at least on Amazon.)

PPS ~ Being in a popular-history state of mind lately, I recently picked up my old book club edition copy of the late William Manchester's fine work, The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America 1932-1972. Although there's not a peep about Howard Scott and Technocracy in all of its 1,400-plus pages, there is some pretty eye-opening stuff about what was going on in America during the Great Depression. Definitely worth reading.

PPPS ~ My pal HHH recently pointed out a couple of relevant items to me: (1) The conspiracy-porn flick that's making the rounds on the Net now, Zeitgeist: Addendum, will seem strangely familiar to anyone who knows about Technocracy (and vice versa); and (2) M. King Hubbert, originator of the peak oil theory, was a Technocracy Inc. co-founder with Howard Scott.

(I wonder what my late father, who was a geophysicist with Exxon, would have thought about today's peak oil/scarcity hysteria. I would have asked him what he thought about the peak oil theory in general, had I known of its existence when he was alive...)


Previous "history lessons" on my Whirled (inspired in part by the aforementioned Paul Sann):

  • Everything old is new again: Emile CouĂ© and his twelve-word tonic were once all the rage with earnest self-improvers.
  • Orgone conclusions: Wilhelm had the Reich stuff to get himself in a whole heap of trouble with the US government.