Welcome to my self-serving corner of cyberspace. Rather than have dozens of comments posted to blogs around the web, I finally decided to keep them all in one place here. This serves not only as posting board, but also as a whiteboard for various ideas I have for books I’m currently working on.
My interests are varied and include politics, religion, psychology, economics, and popular culture (to name a few), so I’ll enjoy entertaining thoughts on and discussing anything that you might find worthy of posting. I look forward to your input.
I am very new to blogging, so any comments, feedback, suggestions, whatever – don’t be shy!
Sincerely,
V.R. Kaine
I’m new to this blogging stuff as well, so I have to agree with most of what you have posted on your blog. What I would add or question is that could Michael Moore and his Catholic back ground, might be mis directing the truth.
What he really is talking about is GREED. The Down side here is that capitalism is the tool of choice for those that are self serving Greed freaks.
It goes back to the age old question is money evil? Let me answer that NO, money has no thoughts, feelings, or flesh. It’s the idea that money is evil via religious view points and that you must suffer to get ahead in today’s world and I don’t deserve to have mentality.
The other thought is that all that we have to gain is that we are in competition with others, in other words the Money pie is finite?
I personally believe this can’t be Columbus found that the world wasn’t flat so how can the financial pie? If we create value in our system or a service that solves a problem society has. People trade us something for that, value or service we offer. Today’s world its money, back in the day it was bread, chickens, and gold. I just don’t understand why we ( the people in power) must create so much fear in the world today. People just are like cattle, the people in powerful positions are herding those that cant make a rational decision. They pray on them with False Evidence Appearing Real (FEAR) to lead them in the direction that they want.
Steve – thanks for your comments. Contrary to popular opinion, Moore makes movies that are entertainment laced with truth, not the other way around as evidenced by the slant he has taken and his careful selection of facts in all his films. Ironic (hypocritical?) that Moore did not get a government grant or public donations to do this film, he got it financed through a capitalist system and public companies. Certainly he has to admit he has had a love affair with capitalism – look at how rich he is!
I like what else you say about creating value, and being paid for it in some way (Randian?) There will ALWAYS be “cattle” in every society, social system, or economic system. There will also always be those who feel called to direct them, whether for intellectual, emotional, or spiritual reasons. The message more seems to present in this film is that we were misled, lied to, cheated, and blindsided by these “evil” capitalists. I don’t entirely agree – I think we met them half way.
Just stopped by to see what’s up and now find I must ask WHERE ARE YOU VERN? No posts in two weeks.
Also, re Moore (above), wasn’t his latest movie called “capitalism, a love story”?
Hi Moe! Been traveling a lot with work so less time for picking fights on the blogs (haha!)
Re: Moore, yes, you have the title right but he seems to show corporate America’s love affair with Capitalism, which I find somewhat hypocritical because he benefits from capitalism just as anyone does, if not moreso. Imagine if they put a high tax on his film revenues, or a 95% tax on his income.
The way I read Moore is he advocates for reform by showing abuses.
Not hypocritical to make a buck or drive a car. Can still advocate for reform while making the best of our world hte way it is.
Travel safe.
It’s like Edwards talking about poverty – the message can be the right one, but his lifestyle didn’t give him much credibility. Moore lives in Manhattan just like a lot of those rich brokers did.
If he’s anti-big-bank and anti-derivatives, he made a good point but he seems to me to try and come off as anti-rich (ex: the way he seemed to gush over the 95% “rich tax” being the good ole days).
For me, Moore is always the guy in his first film, Roger & Me. Roger being the chairman of General Motors and Moore being a native – and in those days resident – of Flint Michigan. Flint was dying – in those days I think it was cuz GM moved Flint’s factory to the South.
The film told the story of Flint and followed Moore’s attempts to talk to Smith – a film gimmick he’s used a few more times.
But you know? He was friggin’ right. A terrible wrong had been perpetrated. All for shareholders and screw the stakeholders. And Flint died. And later on GM committed suicide.
Perhaps we should have listened more closely.
Once I stopped looking at him as a documentarian and considered his films from more of an “op-ed” point of view, I appreciated him more even if I disagreed with some of his points. To me, we need all those views out there so we can make up our own minds, and he deserves credit for that.
Btw, I think the shareholders in GM got screwed prhttp://vrkaine.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=2&action=edit#comments-formetty bad, and I’m guessing there were a lot of pension funds that had GM in their portfolio.
I agree. When I say stakeholders, I mean of course the people and institutions who were invested in Flint. After all, GM probably enjoyed incentivizing tax policies offered them by the city.
I mean the local suppliers to GM, in fact an entire city and all its interests – the retail sector, schools, hospitals etc.
GM pulled out and it may as well have pulled the plug on a living organism.
[...it may as well have pulled the plug on a living organism.]
Interesting metaphor. Doctors are taught detachment in med school, but also taught to do no harm. CEO’s are somewhat like doctors – they are experts who are supposed to read charts, take temperatures, diagnose, prescribe, and monitor treatment for those in their care, and yet some seem to forget that they’re also supposed to “do no harm”.
Once upon a time, most manufacturing companies or other big co’s (like insurance etc) made that connection. But in those days, they were pretty much American owned and shared values and shared a sense of investment in the prosperity of the citizenry.
I remember the rise, in the 70′s, of what we called at the time “the multinationals’. It was an entirely new beast, corps doing business worldwide – having foreign partners etc.
And today, they have no allegiance to all. No sense of investment.
If that plant in the south didn’t produce enough profit for GM, they could have (may in fact!) just moved it to another country.
There’s certainly been a change in culture, hasn’t there? Imagine back in the 60′s (I wasn’t around then, but I imagine!), telling Americans we were going to let the Chinese or Japanese build our cars? Or worse, let them build their own on our soil?
People talk often about greed in our culture, but perhaps not enough about the competitiveness within it as well. Reading a book on Narcissism at the moment, and this “win at all costs” mentality we seem to have and what it’s costing us.
“Winning” in our culture has basically come down to dollars and toys. Jail time, for example, is no longer an example of “losing” anymore (Martha Stewart, Paris Hilton, Michael Vick), nor is doing something actually great for the country an example of “winning”. Rappers get more glory than Olympic Gold Medalists do! As long as you have the benjamins, it doesn’t matter which flag you live under, what moral code you subscribe to, or what stupid or even illegal things you’ve done. As we say in business, “Revenue hides all sins.”
The people who crashed the White House State Dinner a few months ago? They are celebrities now – were on Letterman last night. Rewards for rudeness. Great.
Remember what Andy Warhohl said: “in the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes”. He was of course right.
When I was growing up, it was still about ‘building’ the country – there was agressive and constant investment – in hard infrastructure as well as technology (mostly phone and tv), teletype (yikes, that’s ancient alright !!) – we were breaking the sound barrier and dreaming of space. We opened new academies, like Air Force in Colorado. Calilfornia was creating the most amazing absolutely best public university system the world had ever seen. New national parks were opening left and right. And someone found out that 2+2 actually could equal something other than 4 (that was for you Vern) It really was a different time. All about possibility.
I dont feel any of that now. We fight wars and foul our planet and run up debt and close our schools.
Yes, we’ve become much more competitive with each other than collaborative, that’s for sure.
You were asking Ben to Draw you an avatar because you did not like your high-heeled tree anymore. If you go to settings tab in your wordpress dashboard in the general sub category there is a option to upload a picture that will become your avatar.
Cheers,
Arb.
Thanks, Arb. It’s not a big deal for me, but I thought it would be interesting to see Ben’s interpretation of us visually, being that he is a cartoonist.
I sure hope that if he comes up with something, you’ll have a ‘roll out’ so we can all see it!
I’m new to this blogging stuff as well, so I have to agree with most of what you have posted on your blog. What I would add or question is that could Michael Moore and his Catholic back ground, might be mis directing the truth.What he really is talking about is GREED. The Down side here is that capitalism is the tool of choice for those that are self serving Greed freaks.It goes back to the age old question is money evil? Let me answer that NO, money has no thoughts, feelings, or flesh. It’s the idea that money is evil via religious view points and that you must suffer to get ahead in today’s world and I don’t deserve to have mentality.The other thought is that all that we have to gain is that we are in competition with others, in other words the Money pie is finite? I personally believe this can’t be Columbus found that the world wasn’t flat so how can the financial pie? If we create value in our system or a service that solves a problem society has. People trade us something for that, value or service we offer. Today’s world its money, back in the day it was bread, chickens, and gold. I just don’t understand why we ( the people in power) must create so much fear in the world today. People just are like cattle, the people in powerful positions are herding those that cant make a rational decision. They pray on them with False Evidence Appearing Real (FEAR) to lead them in the direction that they want.
+1
Hi Shirl,
Was going through some old blog posts and comments and realized I didn’t a) thank you for stopping by, or b) reply to you!
I agree with what you’re saying about people being cattle, and motivated by fear. Seems like rational thought, data, facts, etc. aren’t enough anymore – we’ve become to numb or desensitized to it, so now it’s only fear that moves people off their butts.
I’ll check out your blog as well. Once again, thanks for stopping by mine. I hope to see more of you!
Vern my blog is one month old today. If you have the time please come check it out and any advice would be appreciated. Lastest blog post is about Doreen Van Assen’s Life experiences in nursing school, the point being to do your best no matter what and most likely you will succeed or at the very least happy that you at least went for it. Also about memories if you look back and see sad memories start making happy ones cuz the brain will remember the long term memories the older you get. So like me I try my best to remember every happy time during my sad childhood and when recollecting the sadness image a happy outcome from that experience. This exercise over powers depression and keeps me sane in an insane world. The older I get the happier I get lol.
Congrats on your blog’s 1 month birthday! I’m probably not the best person to give tips on how to create a better blog, since I’m far from a pro. I will certainly head over and have a read through every now and return the same courtesy you have to mine, though.
Here’s to many more months! 