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Filibuster

Care for a minority group is a moral issue for majorities. There is no universal solution to the problem of power, which lies at the border between minority and majority.

There is a current issue of whether or not to keep the US Senate filibuster. What started as a way to deal with a legislative timeline of business being completed the same day it rose could use the personal stamina of an individual of a minority view to control the majority.

As time goes along, timelines change, along with a shift from a view to an identity. A filibuster’s major use has been a control mechanism for racial identity politics and enforcing a minority status on Blacks even where they had a majority.

We now have voting blocks that don’t talk to one another. This separation enhances the issue of power over that of a particular view on a legislative matter. There is very little room to operate in a zero-sum situation. Mechanisms that allow political minorities to have a veto mean there is no need to give either compromise or consideration.

Suppose the matter was about identity, then some process could be designed, such as the Uniting Church in Australia granting their Indigenous Peoples a special veto right to stop any legislation that involves them until they are satisfied with it. Unfortunately, political processes are not as clear, and allies shift and reshift.

The current US Senate choice seems to be between keeping a filibuster that protects racism (benefiting the minority) or placing more responsibility upon the majority to be accountable for their decisions (raising the stakes for the majority). Both choices have a tendency to obscure the motivations behind legislation (hiding little nuggets of doom within legislative speak). Neither choice works well in the short-run; they have long-term consequences.

If asked, I would favor getting rid of the filibuster and making the majority party accountable for their decisions. Hopefully, they would consciously and openly incorporate the strong points of the minority. The emphasis would be upon actionable items that can reenergize the “general welfare” of its citizens. Consequences would have to be faced for misreading the facts-of-life.

The standoff between Democrat and Republican parties may have reached the point where both are captive to a desire for power. There seems to be no desire for anything other than a filibuster based on identity politics, grievance, and personal economic power. In which case, both parties will choose the blame game over the risk of responsible governance.

Statute of Limitations

moral responsibility
is not limited
by limits

there is no
statute of limitations
applicable to morality

an ability to care
does find restriction
in common fatigue

such a human condition
time and energy bounded
cannot end in excuse

for ancestoral failure
we must enlist
repentance by descendants

charity is too small a frame
direct action too little too late
moral choice continues

Fractal Background

Two recent articles have been playing in my mind – one on Fractals and one on Background Noise.

Both articles find strangely attracted structures within what at first says there is nothing to attend to here.

Their import includes but goes beyond specific ways in which we shape our lives. I expect there will always be one more window to open and, before that, yet an additional curtain to pull back before even locating a window to open.

I’ll not say more today, in hope that readers will spend a moment with the articles and a moment more to see what they suggest about new revelations in their lives, personal and partnered with so many.

Blockage

Blockages come in more ways than can be imagined and be set loose in equally surprising ways.

Some blockages we know about include the following: Physical blockages can be painful – bowels – or death – arteries. Mental blocks can also be painful – phobias – or death – anti-vax. Emotional blockages can be painful – baggage – or lead to death – revenge. Communal blocks can be painful – poverty – or lead to death – poverty.

Blockages are present in every aspect of living. Intellectually, we can live out of yellowed lecture notes of obsolete best practices. Relationally, we know weaknesses and push buttons.

Wherever we look, even at protocols and processes or Robert’s or Senate parliamentary procedures, there are innumerable ways to weight decisions in favor of a status quo that favors the already privileged. A simple thing like a zip code can further disadvantage the disadvantaged – think banks and realtors.

One resistance model with some positive track record is continuing to bring pressure at blockage points until it is released. That might happen quickly with a chiropractic adjustment or traction over a more extended period. 

When dealing with a legal block, it is critical to keep pushing the letter of the law. Every law has a point at which its internal separation from lived reality has to come to a screeching halt. This approach’s downside is the number of people who will have a harder and more difficult time as the pressure to change builds.

A current blockage to a more robust economy, healthier citizens, and fulfillment of constitutional “general welfare” is being blamed on a procedural matter. There is nothing magical about $15 per hour. Considerably more or a bit less is the wrong question. A standard amount will never be right for every situation at the same time. Keep showing the long- and short-term stupidity of perpetuating disposable people. Unless we can find a way to stop such blockages, we will have earthquake after earthquake of reduced progress. Income and class gaps will expand, productivity decrease, and more grievance politics will skew violent. 

Quest Question

To seek – to wonder – both come from ye olde Latin, quaerere — quest/question.

Both “quest” and “question” can cease prematurely. Seeking easily fades when a finding occurs. Questions all too easily stop when an answer is given.

To hold “quest” and “questions” together begins to move in the direction of a fabled perpetual motion machine. Somehow or other, gravity and friction, be they ever so slight, eventually exert their presence. In like manner, “found” and “answer” clog the cogs of wonder.

Throughout a quest, there come new questions. A quest need not be at its conclusion before a new question sets the original quest on another bearing that will hopefully better triangulate an expected destination. Since a worthy quest feels like a Delphic Oracle has set it, there needs to be continual refinements of the initial directive. It is always possible that the quest was completed days or years ago and simply not recognized at the time.

Presuming a quest goes straight through from its setting to its completion, if it doesn’t automatically result in a new question and its implied quest – it was too small a quest.

The same holds true for questions that go beyond a first or incomplete answer. A worthy question looks for responses that will stimulate a finer quest. Answers get in the way.

Try phrasing one of your questions in the form of a quest and see if it increases your interest in more fulsome living. If a quest has drifted away, rephrasing a question may reinvigorate it.

Redundancy

Airplanes build in redundancy lest one failure condemn the well-being of the whole. “Safety first!” allows passengers to arrive back on earth in one piece.

American society and economy also build in redundancy (job loss) for labor. A long line of under-employed and unemployed await their “opportunity” to feed the wealthy as they are plugged into the drudgery required for corporate profit.

Job redundancy keeps stress on laborers to keep them docile. Always there is the promise of better and the fear of other workers conspiring against them for their little cog.

A zero-sum game is a set-up for those who have little, putting that little at risk. This allows those who have much to ride content as their more appears to increase of its own accord, automatically.

Until people are accorded the safety concern given to airplanes, they will continue to crash and crash. In such a scenario, it becomes only a matter of time before there is no safety anywhere and the whole system comes tumbling down.

Blindness to the long-term effect of employment erosion leads to treating labor like any other natural resource – disposable and irreplaceable. This double-whammy has consequences. A plane can fly with half its engines, but not with none of them.

Institutions are famous for responding to a problem with the lowest percentage of an answer as they can. Disposable and irreplaceable is not a complication with only one vector. If applied to a job without including all other components, the problem has not been solved – it will return multiplied and be the more challenging to resolve.