JIGSAW PUZZLES

Back when I was a lad, the notion of a gestalt was hot in moral philosophy.  [I associate the term with Franz Brentano.  Is that right?]  As opposed to the associationism of Hume and his followers, who viewed perceptions as agglomerations of separable atomic individual sensations, gestalt theory taught, roughly, that certain perceptual presentations made seemingly objective demands on us.  For example, it was said, when presented with a line drawing of most of a circle, with a small arc or segment omitted, one experiences a demand that the circle be completed.  This fact showed something or other about the objectivity of moral judgments [I may be misremembering this – it has been sixty years, and I was never much impressed with the argument in the first place.]

Which brings me to jigsaw puzzles.  The Continuing Care Retirement Community where Susie and I now live has six apartment buildings, each with twenty-seven apartments, and in addition several hundred little one-story dwellings rather grandly called “villas” [use and mention, as Quine pounded into our heads.]  We live in Building 5.  On the first floor of building 5 is a lobby, in the lobby is a table, and on the table at any given time is a jigsaw puzzle of between 500 and 1000 pieces.  Residents stop by the table to chat, to gossip, and, if they are so moved, to try to put a piece or two in the puzzle.  I have never done jigsaw puzzles; my tipple, as I have mentioned, is crossword puzzles.  But the damned things exercise a demand on me that would warm a gestalt theorist’s heart.  Susie seems to be similarly afflicted, and we have quickly become known in the building as relentless puzzlers.  It is not uncommon for me to say to Susie, “I am going downstairs to do the puzzle” [we live on the third floor,] and like as not she will join me.  The only other thing in the world that exercises that sort of objective pull on me is an apple pie.  I feel it to be a sin to leave an apple pie only partly eaten.

We are now in the very last throes of a 750 piece puzzle, and there is serious trouble.  We are down to seven remaining pieces, none of which fits comfortably into the remaining spaces.  Clearly, somewhere, there are some wrong pieces, but I have not yet managed to find them.  The maven of the puzzles, a woman a bit older than myself who has lived in our building for eleven years, says one must simply move on, but I return to the table again and again, trying to spot the misplaced pieces that can be swapped out for those remaining.  It just seems wrong to leave the puzzle uncompleted.

Maybe there is something to gestalt theory.

WHEN THE WELL RUNS DRY

When I began blogging eight years ago, I was quite unprepared for the Internet’s insatiable craving for content.  I was accustomed to sitting quietly in my study, unhurried and unharried, writing another book.  Only when a book was completed would I venture into the public square to publish what I had written.  Because I had all but died to the world, no longer attending professional meetings or giving invited talks, I felt no pressure to produce.

In 2009, my pen had been silent for almost two decades, save for a short book about my experiences in UMass’s Afro-American Studies Department, the endless new editions of a textbook written in the ‘70s, and the unpublished first volume of my autobiography.  But with the announcement of The Philosopher’s Stone, I launched into a frenzy of writing on all manner of things, posting my words for all to read virtually as they were written.  Over the next two or three years, I wrote about Marx and I wrote about Freud.  I wrote about Kant, and I wrote about Hume.  I wrote about Kierkegaard, about Mannheim, about Durkheim, about Erich Auerbach, about Emily Dickinson.  I wrote on line an entire book about Rational Choice Theory, Game Theory, and Collective Choice Theory.  I even wrote about myself, completing and posting daily the second and third volumes of my autobiography. 

When I looked up from my keypad, I discovered that I had unwittingly become committed to an endless production of daily short essays, asides, and animadversions at the passing scene.  If I failed to post something for two or three days, I would get worried messages from friends and family:  “Are you all right?”

I am reminded of Kierkegaard’s ironic and mocking remark in the Preface to The Philosophical Fragments, a work to which I return repeatedly:  “It is not given to everyone to have his private tasks of meditation and reflection so happily coincident with the public interest that it becomes difficult to judge how far he serves merely himself and how far the public good.”

For most of my life, words have flowed from me almost unbidden.  I leave it to others to judge whether they emanate from a bubbling spring or a suppurating wound.  But lately, the endless horrors of the world threaten to make me run dry.  Oh, I imagine I shall continue to blog.  After all, I seem to have no difficulty finding something to say about the fact that I have nothing to say.  But the joy threatens to leave me.  In my earlier days, it was different.  As Wordsworth said of the French Revolution, “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/But to be young was very heaven.”

Perhaps I should say something about jigsaw puzzles.

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF

David Palmeter's comment about disparities in household wealth is exactly correct.  If you wish to see its causes illustrated by a hypothetical example, take a look at pp. 91ff of my 2005 book Autobiography of an Ex-White Man, which is available on Kindle from Amazon.  Needless to say, I am very far from being the first person to point this out.

A FEW FACTS AND FIGURES

My remarks today are a corollary to, not an argument for or against, the essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates to which I posted a link.  There has been a vigorous debate about whether the progressive wing of the Democratic Party should focus its attention on what is called identity politics or should advance policies targeting the needs and interests of the working class.  I find this debate unhelpful, and Coates’ essay helped me to become clearer about the reasons.

My theme is a simple one:  The great preponderance of Black and Hispanic Americans are working class.  Their race or ethnicity is not a substitute for their class position.  It does not somehow make their class position politically irrelevant.  There are long standing reasons, reaching back to the period shortly after the Civil War, why here in America white and black workers have so rarely formed a united front against capital, reasons about which I have several times written on this blog.  But the simple objective facts remain.  Let me take a moment to offer a few numbers, by way of setting the stage.  These data come from 2015 and 2016, but very little has changed in the intervening time.

Median household income in the United States is somewhat more than $56,000 a year.  For those who are utterly innumerate, this means that half of all households earn less than $56,000 each year, half earn more.  [Average or mean household income is about $17,000 higher, basically because when Bill Gates walks into a neighborhood bar, the average net worth of people in the bar goes up to several billion each – beware of numbers.]   The median income of White households is almost $63,000.  But that of Hispanic households is about $45,000, and that of Black households is about $37,000.  [That of Asian households is better than $77,000, by the way.]

It doesn’t take much brains to figure out that most Black and Hispanic households are working class.  The median weekly wages or full-time Black and Hispanic workers are $678 and $624 respectively, which means that fully half of all fulltime Black and Hispanic workers are earning roughly fifteen dollars an hour or less, and most of course are earning a good deal less.  A national minimum wage of fifteen dollars an hour would dramatically improve the economic fortunes of large portions of the Black and Hispanic population.  The median wages for fulltime White workers are significantly higher -- $862 – which means that the fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage would benefit a much smaller share of the white working class [although perhaps numerically more people.]

My point is that Black workers are workers.  Hispanic workers are workers.  A progressive political program targeting working class voters will necessarily target large segments of the Black and Hispanic communities. 

I have many times observed that educational credentials are, in this country, the royal road to the middle and upper middle class.  It is worth reminding ourselves therefore of the wide racial and ethnic disparity in the proportions of the population holding a four year college degree.  When I was a teenager going off to college, only 5% of American adults 25 years old or older had a four year degree.  So few young people went to college that high schools in New York graduated students twice a year, in January and June.  The G. I. Bill, the explosion of public higher education, and the Cold War [which led the Federal Government to pour money into universities “for the struggle against godless communism”] produced a sharp upsurge in college attendance, so that today, roughly a third of adults 25 and older hold college degrees.  But two-thirds of adult Americans do not have four year degrees, which means that a large majority of Americans have no hope at all of becoming doctors, lawyers, professors, corporate management trainees, college professors, high school teachers, elementary school teachers [!] or, for that matter, F. B. I. agents.

These are the figures for all Americans.  As we might expect, the figures vary considerably by race and ethnicity.  Here are the data:  32.5% of all adults have four year degrees.  For Whites, the figure is 36.2%, for Backs 22.5%, for Hispanics 15.5%.  This means that fewer than one in four Black men and women and one in six Hispanic men and women can even aspire to be elementary school teachers or corporate management trainees.  Thus, a political platform calling for free college education will benefit young Black and Hispanic men and women even more than young White men and women.

A political platform targeting the needs of working class men and women, and demanding an end to racial and ethnic impediments to decent work, is a winner.  That is what we on the left should be agitating for.

THIS IS SOMETHING YOU MUST READ

This essay by Ta-Nihisi Coates, is the best thing I have ever read about American politics.  Reading it is irritating because of the slowness with which it comes up, but be patient, it is well worth the effort.  I tried to say many of these things in my book, Autobiography of an Ex-White Man, but I did not say them as well.

FREE LUNCHES, GIFT HORSES, AND OTHER IMPLAUSIBLE EVENTS

Several friends and relatives have contacted me, asking whether I am all right, seeing as how I have not blogged for several days.  I am fine.  I have just been so angry and depressed by Trump’s attack on the 800,000 or so young people protected by the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrival, or DACA, program that I could not gin up the animal spirits to write something.  That, together with the horrific news about these two hurricanes, Harvey and Irma, has left me hiding out a bit.  But the news has unaccountably taken a turn, and I wish at least to say a few words about the weird events of the past twenty-four hours.

First, however, I must take note of the reports of Hillary Clinton’s attack on Bernie Sanders in her forthcoming book about the election.  Apparently, if the leaked portions are accurate, she claims that Sanders’ criticisms of her during the primary season did “lasting damage” to her and “paved the way” for Trump’s victory.  I understand that one must be forgiving and charitable toward someone who has suffered a great loss, but this is a load of hogwash [what is hogwash anyway?].  It is transparently an effort by the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party to reassert its accommodationist politics and prepare the way, God help us, for a 2020 Clinton run for the nomination.  There is nothing especially surprising about this attack.  Despicable, to be sure, but not surprising.  Nobody said it was going to be easy.

Or so I thought.  But then came Trump’s bizarre, unanticipated, incomprehensible surrender to Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi yesterday.  I have no idea at all why this happened, so I shan’t speculate, but I do think, as Willy Loman’s wife says in Death of a Salesman, that attention must be paid.

My American readers will all be aware of what took place [not what transpired – that means literally breathed about, or more colloquially, what came to light.]  But this is all a bit of inside baseball, and my overseas readers may be somewhat mystified, so a brief summary is in order.  The Congress has been unable actually to prepare, debate, and pass a budget for the Federal Government for longer than my younger readers have been alive, so periodically, to keep the government functioning [or pretending to function], they pass what is called a Continuing Resolution, or CR, which for a specified time authorizes the government to keep doing what it has been doing at the same level of expenditures.  The time has arrived for another CR.  Also, since the Federal Government regularly runs a deficit, periodically it approaches the limit placed on the national debt by previous legislation.  So long as the debt falls under that limit, the Treasury is authorized to borrow money by issuing Treasury Bills and other instruments of debt, thus allowing the government to pay its bills.  Once that debt limit is reached, as a consequence of the Congress failing to raise revenues sufficient to cover the expenditures it has already authorized, either the debt limit must be increased by the Congress or the United States government will be forced to stop paying the bills.  In short, the USA will default.  That time has also arrived.

This ought to be a no-brainer, and when the Democrats control Congress, it is.  But there is a sizeable minority of House Republicans who are desperate to cut government spending, and who use the advent of a debt limit increase to threaten to vote against the increase unless they get their way.  This is transparently self-destructive behavior, but they are convinced that they can work their will by threatening to hold their collective breath until they expire, as it were.  Because of this behavior, the leaders of the House Republican caucus are compelled to seek Democratic votes to pass a debt ceiling rise and a CR.  This gives the otherwise powerless Democrats a brief moment of leverage which they could theoretically use to win some sort of legislative concessions from the Republicans, such as, perhaps, a regularization of the DACA program.

Meanwhile, the devastation caused by Harvey [and about to be caused by Irma] creates a politically unstoppable demand for federal relief funding.

The Republicans, understanding all of this, proposed to combine the CR and the debt limit increase with hurricane relief funding in one grand package, to be passed this week.  They proposed an eighteen month CR and debt increase, figuring, quite rationally, that the Democrats would have to agree so as not to be seen as voting against hurricane help.  The 18 month extensions would take them past the midterm elections, leaving them free to work on such tasty items as tax cuts for the rich without there being any time soon when the Democrats would again gain leverage during a debt limit/CR crisis.  The Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer, and the House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, publicly proposed a three month CR/Debt increase, obviously designed to give them leverage again, after the hurricane season is over, to get some concessions otherwise impossible to obtain.

O.K.  Got that?

So, yesterday Donald Trump, still nominally President, called all the Congressional leaders to the Oval Office to arrive at some sort of deal.  Schumer and Pelosi offered their three month proposal, which House Speaker Ryan had scornfully rejected in a public appearance before the meeting … and without blinking an eye, Trump agreed to it.  As the Republicans sat there, stunned, blindsided, betrayed, aghast, Trump invited his daughter, Ivanka, into the room, presumably as light entertainment and to signal the end of the “negotiations.”  It is not reported whether she performed a belly dance.

What is going on?  Nobody knows.  It is reported that as the Congressional Republicans left the White House, staffers who were caught as off guard as the Republicans quietly apologized.  Will the agreement stand, or is Trump, as I write, tweeting that he never said it?  Who knows?  Can the Dreamers be saved?  No one knows that either.

Should the Democrats accept a package of concessions in return for a vote to fund the wall?  I shall leave that debate for another day.

THIS IS WHAT REAL COMMITMENT LOOKS LIKE

I have talked on the blog in the past about my old friend, Judith Baker, who, after a career in the Boston school system, has devoted many years to promoting literacy among African children.  Some of you may recall my description of her brainchild, the African Storybook Project, for which I was privileged to raise some money through my USSAS network.  I just received this circular e-mail letter from her about her current trip to Southern Africa.  It offers a fascinating insight into the on-the-ground problems she and others face in bringing literacy to African children.

"Hello Family and Friends,

I didn’t have decent enough email in Nigeria to communicate but now I’m in South Africa with a very good connection so I want to write and see how you all are and tell you a bit about my last week.

Travel to Nigeria was very exhausting for me and travel from there to Johannesburg almost as bad. We left the hotel yesterday at 10am and I only got into the B&B here at 6am. Ethiopian Airlines is one of the few that seems to fly to Nigeria these days and it’s certainly not what one calls comfortable, and the food isn’t really edible, so even though I got in at 6, I stayed awake to have breakfast.

But the time in Nigeria was very good. I worked very hard for most of the conference, because even though the host, Reading Assoc of Nigeria, is very capable, conference logistics are sort of a nightmare. People arrive late or not at all, visa problems abound, things begin hours late and the schedule has to be rewritten every half day to accommodate everyone. I think there were over 150 papers scheduled in basically 5 sessions, so I really couldn’t attend many of them because I was too busy assisting. I did manage to get to a few though, and they were quite fascinating. People study all sorts of uniquely African problems in the schools - no books, teacher shortages, no buildings, no electricity, on and on, plus each clan or area has very definite cultural expectations.

Here is one story, shortened, that my friend from the Karamoja area is grappling with: When the British ruled Uganda, in the 1880’s there was an outbreak of cattle disease among a large tribe of herds people so the British decided to vaccinate the cows and wrote down every cow that was vaccinated on paper. However, the cows died anyway. Then in WWI, the British recruited members of this tribe, a very strong and sometimes warlike people, into the army to fight in Europe, and again signed people up on paper using pens. Most of those young men were simply cannon fodder and never returned. So the Karmajong people decided that ink was deadly to them and held a ceremony in which they broke and buried the pens. They vowed never to allow their children to go to school.  Now, the educators are trying to convince them to change their minds, and it has been very difficult to do that.

Another story: Many deep rural cultures have agreed to send their children to school and become educated. But the problem that very often arises is that those children go off to higher education and of course they never return to their home villages. This means that the tribes or clans have been losing their most talented children, the ones who should become the leaders and eventually elders.

So African educators try hard to find better ways to educate without destroying cultures and communities.

Anyway, things are always more complicated than outsiders, even well wishing ones, imagine, and many foreign interventions can be unexpectedly quite negative.

My own experience with the Pan African is that I have made many good friends in many countries by working on this conference. My volunteer job for over 10 years has been to run the google group that sends out announcements. We have almost 1000 people on this list. But when we set it up, it didn’t occur to me that my own name would be what appears on the ‘from’ line - so there are many people who think of me as a friend who haven’t even met me. I did not intend that and I tried to change it so that the conference itself appeared, but I couldn’t figure it out, and now it’s too late.

The conference committee gave me a lovely special thank you for all these years of work, really took time to honor me, and I was very embarrassed but will send a photo - well I guess I’ll have to put photos on FB since I can’t get this to send them by mail.

This week I’m working in Joburg, and Brook arrives Thursday. Next week we go to Zimbabwe to each do our own work, then we’re on to Durban which is too far in the future for me to think about at the moment.

Feel free to share this since I don’t have unlimited bandwidth.

Judith"