Ortega Y Gassett Had It Right On The Nose

The other morning my friend, Alex, and I were having breakfast.   As do most friends these days, between nibbles of French Toast we discussed the present economic debacle and society’s ability to recover.   We talked about the general mind set out in the world and how our nation of consumers was in for a rude awakening and a major lifestyle change.

Alex is a Mexican National.  For those who don’t realize it, most middle and upper class Mexican Nationals are extremely well educated and quite often better read than their American counterpart.   There are exceptions to every rule, although upon sitting with educated Mexican and Latin Americans I have seldom if ever thought their formal knowledge lacking.   I can’t say the same for many products of American schools.  but then I have met considerably more American college graduates than former students from other parts of the world.   I dare say, however, in Latin America greater value is put on a more liberal arts education than it is here in the States.   It just seems to be the way of things, for one reason or another.   But I digress.  Or maybe night.

Eventually, Alex and I discussed the current state of civilization and that led to a discussion of Jose Ortega Y Gassett.   For those who are not familiar with him, he was a Spanish writer and philosopher who in 1930 wrote his seminal work, REVOLT OF THE MASSES. For those who are familiar with his writing, many find him to have predicted the present state of society and civilization with uncanny accuracy.  Mind you, he is not always kind in his assessment, and given the passage of times, certain elements the writer alludes to have taken on a different form.   Among the forms that were taken on are political and social leaders, various supposed icons who are revered not for their transcendental ability but for their being, “just like us.”

There is also the matter Ortega Y Gassett addressed back in the thirties, about everyone being entitled to an opinion.  True, but not all opinions should be weighted equally.   It always helps to have formal knowledge about the subject you choose to address.

Anyway…here are some of his more pointed excerpts.  Some will enjoy then, and some will find them discomfitting.   But such is life…which is one of his points.

Here ya go…

“There is one fact which, whether for good or ill, is of utmost importance in the public life of Europe at its present moment. The fact is the accession of the masses to complete social power. As the masses, by definition, neither should nor can direct their own personal existence, and still less rule society in general, this fact means that actually Europe is suffering from the greatest general crisis that can afflict peoples, nations and civilization.

Strictly speaking, the mass, as a psychological fact, can be defined without waiting for individuals to appear in mass formation. In the presence of one individual we can decide whether he is “mass” or not. The mass is all that which sets no value on itself — good or ill — based on specific grounds, but which feels itself “just like everybody,” and nevertheless is not concerned about it; is, in fact, quite happy to feel itself as one with everybody else.
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The mass believes that it has the right to impose and to give force of law to motions born in the café. I doubt whether there have been other periods of history in which the multitude has come to govern more directly than in our own.

The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will. As they say in the United States: “to be different is to be indecent.” The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated.

It is illusory to imagine that the mass-man of to-day will be able to control, by himself, the process of civilization. I say process, and not progress. The simple process of preserving our present civilization is supremely complex, and demands incalculably subtle powers. Ill-fitted to direct it is this average man who has learned to use much of the machinery of civilization, but who is characterized by root-ignorance of the very principles of that civilization.

The command over the public life exercised today by the intellectually vulgar is perhaps the factor of the present situation which is most novel, least assimilable to anything in the past. At least in European history up to the present, the vulgar had never believed itself to have “ideas” on things. It had beliefs, traditions, experiences, proverbs, mental habits, but it never imagine itself in possession of theoretical opinions on what things are or ought to be. To-day, on the other hand, the average man has the most mathematical “ideas” on all that happens or ought to happen in the universe. Hence he has lost the use of his hearing. Why should he listen if he has within him all that is necessary? There is no reason now for listening, but rather for judging, pronouncing, deciding. There is no question concerning public life, in which he does not intervene, blind and deaf as he is, imposing his “opinions.”

But, is this not an advantage? Is it not a sign of immense progress that the masses should have “ideas,” that is to say, should be cultured? By no means. The “ideas” of the average man are not genuine ideas, nor is their possession culture. Whoever wishes to have ideas must first prepare himself to desire truth and to accept the rules of the game imposed by it. It is no use speaking of ideas when there is no acceptance of a higher authority to regulate them, a series of standards to which it is possible to appeal in a discussion. These standards are the principles on which culture rests. I am not concerned with the form they take. What I affirm is that there is no culture where there are no standards to which our fellow-man can have recourse. There is no culture where there are no principles of legality to which to appeal. There is no culture where there is no acceptance of certain final intellectual positions to which a dispute may be referred. There is no culture where economic relations are not subject to a regulating principle to protect interests involved. There is no culture where aesthetic controversy does not recognize the necessity of justifying the work of art.

When all these things are lacking there is no culture; there is in the strictest sense of the word, barbarism. And let us not deceive ourselves, this is what is beginning to appear in Europe under the progressive rebellion of the masses. The traveler knows that in the territory there are no ruling principles to which it is possible to appeal. Properly speaking, there are no barbarian standards. Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.

Under Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions. This is the new thing: the right not to be reasonable, the “reason of unreason.” Here I see the most palpable manifestation of the new mentality of the masses, due to their having decided to rule society without the capacity for doing so. In their political conduct the structure of the new mentality is revealed in the rawest, most convincing manner. The average man finds himself with “ideas” in his head, but he lacks the faculty of ideation. He has no conception even of the rare atmosphere in which ideals live. He wishes to have opinions, but is unwilling to accept the conditions and presuppositions that underlie all opinion. Hence his ideas are in effect nothing more than appetites in words.

To have an idea means believing one is in possession of the reasons for having it, and consequently means believing that there is such a thing as reason, a world of intelligible truths. To have ideas, to form opinions, is identical with appealing to such an authority, submitting oneself to it, accepting its code and its decisions, and therefore believing that the highest form of intercommunication is the dialogue in which the reasons for our ideas are discussed. But the mass-man would feel himself lost if he accepted discussion, and instinctively repudiates the obligation of accepting that supreme authority lying outside himself. Hence the “new thing” in Europe is “to have done with discussions,” and detestation is expressed for all forms of intercommunication, which imply acceptance of objective standards, ranging from conversation to Parliament, and taking in science. This means that there is a renunciation of the common life of barbarism. All the normal processes are suppressed in order to arrive directly at the imposition of what is desired. The hermeticism of the soul which, as we have seen before, urges the mass to intervene in the whole of public life.”

Economic Meltdown, When You Finally Get the Memo

The economic meltdown came so fast and so furiously, most of us weren’t sure how to even reaction.   With the markets plummeting, housing prices on a steep decline and people getting laid off left and right, we were left with mixtures of anger and grief.  To at least some degree, life as we knew it was over.

What I mean by this is that most of us having been living over our heads for years.   We all believed we deserved certainly luxuries, everything from the pricey wines to the trendy wardrobes.   Men were having their shirts custom made, and women just had to have the bag of the season.  Designer, shoes, suits, shirts, dining out,  lavish vacations, were no longer anything special but just another part of our regimen.

We made money and then we borrowed more.   We bought houses that were way over our heads, automobiles that offered status but at a very high cost.  We leased cars we couldn’t afford.   We took lavish vacations, ate out in cutsey restaurants.  We bought gourmet food and fine wine.   We were massaged on a regular basis.  We went nightclubbing and sat around over expensive vodka and a bowl of caviar, playing with our electronic gadgets.  We actually thought that none of it would end.
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And then it did.   Now it’s time to tell ourselves and our families that life as we knew it has at least temporarily been put on hold.   The level of disbelief is considerable.  Husbands and wives are fighting.  The childen, spoiled from years and indulgence, simply can’t believe they have to cool it with the designer jeans and trips to the maill.   As for the gourmet foods, it’s the big box store for most of us.   Restaurants?   Yes, some of the top of the line steak joints are still doing well, as are the lower priced coffee shop.   As for that cute little storefront bistro. let’s just say it’s rare that you need reservations.

So after all those years of indulgence, the bottom has now fallen out of the economy.   It’s a bitter pill to swallow.   A sad but unique experience.   Ironic that it comes at such a price.

Real Experts and Phony Experts. In the Media, It’s Hard to Tell

There is an old saying about people believing what they read in print.   With so many people blogging on the Internet and selling self-published books and periodicals, there is a surfeit of information.  But the fact that there is a lot of information doesn’t make most of it particularly accurate or authentic.   Websites like Snopes.com is forever confirming of invalidating alleged articles, facts, studies, whatever.   Nevertheless, specious information still gets out there, and people take it as truth.

For instance, Martin Eisenstadt, a self-proclaimed senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy declared that former Vice Presidential Candidate and current Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, did not know Africa was a continent.   People believed it.  News outlets carried the story.   It came from an authority, after all, an expert source.   The only problem was there is no actual Martin Eisenstadt, and the Harding Institute only exists as a website domain.  In short, it was a hoax.   But people still believe that Sarah Palin does not know that Alaska is a continent.

Now Sarah Palin may believe a lot of things we may view with concern.   Believingshe has valid foreign policy expertise because she can see Russia from her window or wherever, does not make for credibility.  And her alleged adherence to the theory that humans co-existted with dinosaurs some 6,500 years ago, makes here more of a candidate for Alley Oop than a Vice President of the United States.

But she is not the only spurious story.   There is the Obama missive about his being raised a Muslim.   There is the story that Bill Gates is giving away money for passing along a chain letter.   There is no end to the nonsense people will buy.   There is no end to the rumors people will spread.

In a democracy everyone is entitlted to their opinion.  What becomes quesitonable is the steadfast belief in far too many that every opinion should carry equal weight.   This I’m afraid is more of a product of a dumbed down culture than it is a model of democracy.   It is far better that those who have actual background experience, knowledge of the subject, be accorded greater credibility than those who don’t.   Even then there is a chance the experts will get it wrong, but they will be less apt to float out some crackpot theory on the Internet in hopes that by virtue of spreading it will carry some authenticity.

Inexpensive, http://www.jealt.mx/construccion.html levitra 10 mg drug can be bought from any internet or local pharmacy at discounted prices. But about 400 men in every 100,000 suffer from the most common viagra online mastercard sexual disease known as erectile dysfunction. So don’t waste any more time and cheap brand levitra start to work faster than Kamagra tablets would. One important thing is don’t use this medicine more than once per day. buy cialis canadian can help you have an erection when there is a foreplay. The fact is we have so diluted our pool of experts we can’t tell the real ones from the phonies.   Worse, perhaps, we can’t distinguish the real experts from the pundits who parrot a lot of garbage under the guise their mediocre thinking has substance.    In all, there is so much information, the chronically uninformed do not become informed.   Instead they become confused as they are unable to discern truth from fiction, or at least intelligent conjecture from abject idiocy.

If you are looking for proof, look to the news media.   Every now and then you get someone who actually knows what he is talking about.   The rest of the time we get pundits who are posing as experts in order to make a living.     Most of the time they will write a book, which is really a few paragraphs expanded into a volume.   This is called expertise.  And you wonder why the literacy rate is somewhere near a third world country.   You wonder why the economy has been run into the ground.   Well, surely, there are legions on the media who will wax considrably as to why it all happened.   But they will never get to the point.

For one thing they are incapable of getting to the point.   Reference points are limited and insight is myopic.  It is like finding the cure for a disease rather than developing drugs that will just pay for the maintenance of a disease.  Once you get to the point you really have nothing more to say.   Your story is over.  You can no longer milk it.   You have killed the proverbial goose that is laying those golden eggs.

So rather than reach a conclusion or make a solid point, we manufacture new experts.   We don’t manufacture much anymore in this country, but we produce our experts by the dozen.   And what do they have to say?   Too often they have as much to say as the mythical Martin Eisenstadt.   Eisenstadt at least knew he was a joke.   Can’t say the same for the majority.

Between the rumors, the legends, the emails and the expert insights we find on the media, we can surmise that there is not that much to learn from them.   At the end of the day it is up to you to educate yourself and go by your gut.   Bear in mind that educated gut is a lot more rewarding in its results than just gut without education.

It is a tough economy in a hard world.   To be armed is to keep learning.  Learning means reading source material as well as the opinions.   It is difficult to find the time.   But spending this life and all eternity in confusion is not an attractive alternative.   Unless you don’t care where your information comes from and how accurate it is.   Just keep your chain mail to yourself.

Christmas Shopping from Santee Alley to Beverly Hills

As I do every holiday season, I make the rounds and watch people do their Christmas shopping.  I not only find it interesting, I believe it is among the best barometers to tell what is really going on in the economy and in society in general.   It is not only a matter of how much people buy, but what they buy that can tell you quite a bit about the general state of things.  With frivolous items, times are good.   Foods and times are bad.   Stuff like that.

Every year we stroll down Rodeo Drive which boasts of twenty-odd Baccarat Crystal Chandeliers, all suspended above the street in double lantern frames.  Each chandelier is unique and they certainly cast a rich and classic glow over the street famous for the most upscale designer brands in the world.   But things weren’t the same as the previous years.   Where shoppers were seen in past years parading around with five, six, seven shopping bags, this year I would see more shoppers with just one bag or in many cases no shopping bags at all.   There was, however, a lot of looking and drooling, remembering no doubt the good old days when people had money.

Despite the pricey stores and the upscale clientele, you could see the anxiety on the faces of shopkeepers and store clerks.   Business was off and time was consumed being nice to those who strolled into the shops to look around.  Hope springs eternal, and in this case there was hope that shoppers would change their minds and buy something on impulse.

Down at the opposite end of the spectrum, Los Angeles has Santee Alley.  Santee Alley is just that, a bustling narrow street in and about the failing garment district where goods can be bought from open air stores.  Cheap.  You can find anything from toys and clothing, to pet Iguanas and Parrots in Santee Alley.   People visit there from all walks of life from all parts of the city.   Shoppers are largely Hispanic, as are many of the shopkeepers,  and it does help a little with the bargaining if you can speak Spanish.
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But it is money that does the most talking in Santee Alley.  If you have some cash you can bargain.   You can buy knock off designer brands from the different stalls or Callejones, as they are known in Spanish.   You know, counterfeit Louis Vuitton or Prada Bags, counterfeit designer jeans, even fake Sony electronics.  Ed Hardy Fashion has been the big counterfeit opportunity for the past few years. Some are on display, but with most cases you just have to ask.  If the shopkeeper determines you are not a cop, he will pull out from the back storage area a large canvas or plastic bag filled with bogus designer handbags.   Some are made better and look more authentic than others.   Quality control in the counterfeit industry is pretty much free form or nonexistent.

So while business was quieter than most years, it was still pretty brisk in Santee Alley.  People were buying colorful outfits, toys for their kids and the proverbial smuggled Iguanas and Parrots.   And then the police came.  Forty-five of our city’s finest raided Santee Alley, as they have done for a number of years in a row.  Like other things, the police raids in Santee Alley have become a holiday tradition.  Dozens of cops swooped down on the shopkeepers and confiscated whatever counterfeit merchandise they could find.   Twenty eight people were arrested and an estimated haul of close to $3 Million in merchandise is now in police custody.

So much for looking upscale on the cheap.   Bogus or not, there are always plenty of buyers for the counterfeit merchandise.   Perhaps a live Iguana will have to do for Aunty Jospehina.  But then there is a bright spot.  After this dismal holiday shopping season maybe the real stuff will be reduced and affordable.   Just to get rid of it, authentic designer merchandise will be given away at firesale prices.   Who knows?   For the designers who don’t wish to besmirch their brands, some of their own merchandise may make the trip from Beverly Hills to Santee Alley.   That would be something.

Sex and the Christmas Season

Nobody likes to be alone.   At least most people don’t like being alone.   Especially over the Holiday Season.   Even more especially during over the Holiday Season during a rotten economy.   Because there is nothing like the Holiday Season to make your being alone feel really, truly lonely.

It’s shopping alone for gifts for friends and family but not for a special lover or significant other.  It’s tough knowing that families are coming together, lovers coming together, and  you are either going alone to Holiday OParties, seeing the family, or watching TV with a quart of seasonal egg nog that you can only share with your cat.

Small wonder that during the holiday season sex becomes a major factor.   Reports and studies will tell you so.   Single folk have the wandering eye.  People feel romantic, want to be intimate.  With someone.  Even, at times, if it is wrong.   The alcohol ingested during the holiday seaon only serves to fan those flames.   Normal restraint can go by the wayside.   If nothing else, hot sex on a cold night is one of the better ways to pass the time.

I wrote some years back about how I noticed women in particular look at you differently during the holiday season.  There is that certain glint in their eyes.   They flirt both subtly and overtly.   You are a prospect, and the holiday season can be overwhelming.   All that sentiment, so much nostalgia floating about, it is small wonder people are looking for a date, someone to do something with.

And then I suppose there is the consideration of family life.   Most of us are around families, sometimes more than we care to be.   But we are there nevertheless.   In an economic downturn it is, for better or for worse, one of the constants, the sense of intimacy and understanding, coupled of course with the usual neuroses and jealousies.   We start think about perpetuating that famiily life.   Which means having kids of our own.  Which means having sex.   What better way to have sex than for a worthy cause, the perpetuationof life as we know it.
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So here we are in the midst of another holiday season.  A good many of us don’t have the bucks to go anywhere, so we are stuck in our very own version of reality.   We are up to here in snow in a particularly cold season.  Even the west coast is experiencing a chill.   That is a chill for the west coast.   So there isn’t much of an escape.   Even our shopping this year is probably limited.  Gifts?  don’t expect many.  Still, we must do what we must.

Well, not all that long ago in this country, most people didn’t visit St. Bart’s for holiday vacation.   They didn’t go much of anywhere.   They stayed where they were, hung out with friends and family.   Went to parties.   They had a few drinks, and they had sex.

Well here we are back to go in some ways.  We are a different country, but we are facing economic restrictions.   We can be drinking at parties, but we are a much more sober country.   So much for having a field day on our credit cards or home equity loans.

But we can still get together.  We can still couple.  We can still have sex.  It’s free.  Well, most of the time.