The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Elusive Trope's picture

    The Human Scale

    By Elusive Trope on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 6:32pm |

    There is the basic concept of human scale which asserts humans interact with their social and physical environments based on their dimensions, capabilities and limits. We generally encounter the concept in architecture and city planning.  But it is just as important in the political and social realm. 

    One of the problems faced by the United States is that it is just too damn big.  When things are going relatively well, the problems of its size can be ignored.  But when the stuff hits the fan as it has in the past few years, the issue rears its ugly head. 

    It's tough enough to get people on side of a county to identify with with people on the other side of the county, let alone on the other side of the country the size of the US.  Why should someone in Portland, Maine sacrifice for someone in San Diego, California?

    During this recent economic meltdown, much of the discussion in the blogosphere tends to fixate on solutions coming from the federal government.  In part this has to do with the fact that this is what most people have in common.  Again, people are not going to find local politics and intiatives very compelling if they are not connected to that local area.

    Yet this is where is much of the work is going to be done.  Currently I am involved in a local initiative on early childhood education that is bringing together local business leaders (including those evil banking executives) with content experts.  The goal is to find not only new programs and projects to improve early childhood education, but also to find the best way to rally the community around this issue, both in terms in focus and financial investment. 

    In the end, real grassroots movements is the path to many of the problems we are facing.  The fragmentation of our society begins at the neighborhood level.  There is a role for the national government, but it is definitely not the solution to all of the problems we face.  In part because we have never been able to truly form a nation of Americans.  It was always fragile, and as we diversified and became more inclusive, it easily broke apart.  One can keep banging one's head against the wall trying to regain that unified sense of being one people.  But it is going, going,... 

    Time to turn our attention to our neighborhoods, our counties, our regions.  Maybe someday we will build on these achievements and find we can create a new American nation.  Right now, it is beyond our human scale.

     

    Comments

    All I keep thinking is that we are third.

    We are third in mass compared to Canada and Russia.

    We are third in population compared to China and India.

    We are most probably third in natural resources. I mean they abound!

    And yet we are 25th or worse as far as educational achievement and health care!

    But we are first in guns, we are first in incarceration/probation/parole.

    We are faced with a dumbing down by the Christian Right just as Middle Eastern nations are dumbed down by the Muslim Right.

    Of course we have a world economy that demands allegiance to foreign corporations which is why our fascistic Supreme Court calls those corps people.

    My last readings demonstrate that we are first in manufacturing right now; now per person but by sheer numbers.

    States compete to give these new corporate peoples' sanctuary in our country and of course other countries attempt the same.

    I have already written about (as have many experts who know more than I ever will) that my distain for the international corporation. Corporations are supposed to receive charters from the king or the ruling class. Instead they have become the ruling class.

    Krugman and Reich know what I am talking about! ha

    I mean we (Americans like me) cheer Microsoft and Apple; but Microsoft and Apple have no allegiance particularly to US. Anymore than Exxon does.

    Water flows downhill and so does capital.

    This is all very complicated.

    We can reach a new age of nationalism which is what the repubs really promise but will never deliver because they receive too much money from international corporations.

    That is all I got right now.

    You sure have me thinking as always!

     

     

    This is complicated.

     


    by Richard Day on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 7:20pm

    It seems that the only people who don't have sanctuary in our country are we the people.

    By the way, I think that capital flows up and out, not down hill. Up the line to a Chase bank account. Then out to world markets to drive up the price of a barrel of oil.


    by Oxy Mora on Sun, 09/18/2011 - 6:44am

    Nice post, Trope. I think that early childhood education effort is a great program; hope you'll write more about it.


    by Oxy Mora on Sun, 09/18/2011 - 12:45am

    "All Politics is Local." - Tip O'Neill

    Working with evil banking execs isn't a bad thing.  It is often the one way to wring real good out of evil; by persuading them it's their own self-interest to appear to be concerned with issues which affect their customers at a grass roots level. 
     

    I don't know that I agree that unified sense of being one people is going, going ... I think that is what many Repubs want us to believe, because it serves their state's rights, kill federal government agenda.  I think most people, however, are proud to be Americans with a capital "A" and, just as in the days after 9/11, want to feel unified and have a stronger sense of "Country".

    P.S.  What happened to my prize from the 'Run Lola Run' quiz?  LOL


    by MrSmith1 on Sun, 09/18/2011 - 10:34am

    Just as I was about to award your Lola Rennt quiz prize, the lawyers got involved.  It's all very complicated, but I am hopeful you will receive your just rewards.


    by Elusive Trope on Tue, 09/20/2011 - 10:37pm

     

     Damn.  Lawyers again.   (sigh)   ;-)

     


    by MrSmith1 on Tue, 09/20/2011 - 10:53pm

    So goodbye yellow brick road

    Where the dogs of society howl
    You can't plant me in your penthouse
    I'm going back to my plough
     
    Back to the howling old owl in the woods
    Hunting the horny back toad
    Oh I've finally decided my future lies
    Beyond the yellow brick road
     
     
     
    Music your post brought to mind.  

    by EmmaZahn on Sun, 09/18/2011 - 10:51am

    Editorial note: The use of "you", in the following,  is not an attempt to associate the author of this post with anything.

    The gap between the communitarian and global perspective is a big thing. But it is funny how the founding statements of these different views rely upon the other as a given thing. They exist in a space that is only possible because the opposite negates them.

    But nothing is given. There are just the things that happen to be happening when they happen.

    The limits required for people to talk sensibly about what is happening right now make other problems of thought look like a puzzle put in a journal to give your mind something to do.

    So the dissociative quality of present discourse has a very negative side:

    Because there is nothing to work upon and you are not the one who could do anything about it even if you decided it was worth doing, the imbecile thoughts of others who give even less than you do become a value, of a kind. Or a unit of measure where the structure overpowers the inhabitant.


    by moat on Tue, 09/20/2011 - 10:12pm