Wealth Bondage

Postmodernism Pays its Respects

Posted by The Happy Tutor

Via Wood S Lot: "Theory is endless suspicion and mistrust. But it is not the jaundiced eyed mistrust that believes nothing and does nothing and that slanders everyone who tries, but the kind of felicitous mistrust that somehow finds a way to cohabit with faith, which mistrusts the present in the name of the future."

From After Jacques Derrida Comes the Future 

John D. Caputo
Villanova University

Right, well, at least they are gesturing in the right direction -- "compassionate conservatism," "affirmative deconstruction." We call it in sales, "Bragging on the objection," making lemonade out of lemons. Clearly, the insufficiency of pomo theory has become apparent even to its leaders, and now we are in the stage of creating epicycles to account for the variance between what theory gives and what the moral life demands. (Thanks to Stan Finley for an email with this link.) After Derrida, I am afraid, comes three more generations of pomo grad students, walking like Acolytes with candles, through the empty church. Whatever philosophy is, it is not dogma and reverence for the Fathers. Those who revere Derrida betray his practice and their own discipline.

 

Stamping Out Pockets of Resistance to Our American Way of Life

"Candidia"

 "We're talking about pockets of resistance here, not taking over the world. Part of good market research (sorely lacking in most non-profit ventures) is analysis of demographics, consumption habits, geography, etc." Michael, these are all valid points. However, as you will note if you compare the dates, this post of yours was taken, literally cut and pasted! from an earlier comment you left at Wealth Bondage. Now, my site clearly states that all words on my site are and will forever remain the sole property of Wealth Bondage. Funny! Am I losing mind? I don't recall giving you express prior written permission to repurpose the Wealth Bondage comments for your site, under your presumed copyright. See you in court. And have a nice day with your pathetic 1% margin and your granola eating friends. Sit in a circle and sing Goombaya for me.

Labor On Adjuncts!

Posted by The Happy Tutor

For Invisible Adjunct and fellow sufferers. Say that all adjunct positions were converted on 8/1/2003 to tenure track. What would be the repercussions?

1. Cost of education goes up.


2. In 2004 very few openings are available for newly minted PhDs. Why? Because the PhD class of 2003 are happy, none are dropping out. The attrition rate among adjuncts is now almost zero. New openings will occur only when the current 30 year old adjuncts hit 65 or 70.


3. 2010 grad schools are almost a thing of the past. No need for adjuncts. No turnover. Word has gotten around among college grads about no jobs until the great 2003 Adjunct Cohort dies off.

The current system is better and fairer all around. Instead of you hogging an academic slot for thirty years, it is only fair that you fill the berth of those who have gone before, committed hari hari, gone insane, gone bankrupt, or committed mayhem and gone to jail. Fill the slot for your one to three years until you are burned out, cynical, despairing, bankrupt and starving, then move along and let someone else have a turn. That way we have healthy movement into the profession, well skilled, low paid, high spirited, optimistic young ajuncts, and business gets the benefit of the highly talented broken hearted new hires who can readily be converted to writing flagitious sales copy -- much as I have done here. Most importantly, we have a cadre of future writers, thinkers, activists, volunteers and citizens, who, while filling various menial roles, can understand the system of which they are a part and work for constructive change, if not in academics then elsewhere.

Class in America

"M"

In America we have wealth, power, bad taste, corruption, and low-minded opportunism. We have Elvis, Donald Trump, Ken Lay, Sly Stallone, and Madona. If we had class, that would be a relief and an improvement. We have plenty of crass, but no class -- watch tv and you will see. To be high class -- that is what Mummy is. You should see her in pearls! The problem with America today, Mike, is not class but the lack of it. Those in power are most often vulgar pushing arrivistes, or pretending to be. With manners, morals, mores and taste we might have a real high culture. But look at GW. Born high class, raised high class, good manners, good mores, came from good stock, old money and old school. Skull and Bones at Yale. What did he do? Fell asleep face down in his own vomit, moved to TX, found Jesus and got elected President. That, alas, is class in America.

On the Poetic Method of Philosophizing

Posted by The Happy Tutor

There is a reason why authentic speech is often veiled. Do not tug too hard at her garments. Naked truth is ashamed.

That Saturnalia should be the Law of the Land

Posted by The Happy Tutor

In Defense of Fun

First Carnival, then Lent. During Lent, the priest's vestments are specified by the Church. At Carnival he appears in a mask of his own choosing. During Lent we fast, pray, and abstain. At Carnival we feast, curse, and fool around. Throughout the middle ages, the Church sanctioned these days of license, as did Rome during Saturnalia, and so drew into itself the energies that would otherwise have destroyed it. Carnival is fun, but it is also good policy. 

Please, Sir! A New National Holiday

In today's world, none can contest corporate power, or the hegemony of the American Brand, but when are the Company sanctioned, and Government sanctioned days of poetic license? When will we have the Mardi Gras when all copyrights and trademarks are suspended, when the busty newscaster will flash her tits as the drunken audience tosses beads? When will the President land for a photo op not at MT Rushmore or an Aircraft Carrier, but dressed in a toga at a College Beer Bash? When will the Brands, all those mascots, appear like a Priapus and Venus, or Pasiphae and the Bull, in licentious mergers and acquisitions? When will Attorney General Ashcroft lighten up and flash us a good-natured moon?

We will be Good, if you Give us this One Day

We are not asking to subvert the Empire, for History, we admit is ended. Godless Communism has been defeated. We are rich and wise. We set a high moral tone 364 days a year. As the sole Superpower we subdue Evil, in ourselves and around the world. We are only asking in the cycle of the seasons for one day a year when we can all lighten up. At Carnival, let Death dance with the Maiden, and the Fool Masquerade as the Head of FCC. Let Doxies and Dunces sit at a high bench dressed as the Sages of the Supreme Court. Let a CEO dressed as Croesus run through the Senate strewing hundred dollar bills as the Solons grasp and grovel, like kids beneath the Pinata. For one day a year, back off on the superego, and let us have our fun.

Let the new American Empire learn from Rome and the Church so that our sway will extend, not for an American Century but for millennia, or the return of Christ, or the death of the planet, whichever comes first. Friends we are just a bunch of nobodies! Let us embrace joyously what we cannot change. Come! Pick a costume from the supply room. You be the President and I will be the Rev Dr Jerome Jowells. You be scary Dick Cheney and I will be a Black Pirate who has captured his ass off the Barbary Coast. Who will dress as Death or Pestilence? Who wants to be Greenspan, in this bald head of paper mache? Who will dress as a species now defunct? Or as poor person begging for alms?

To the High and the Mighty: Grab Yourself a Beer

Come turn up the music. Help yourself to the food! Pass the Nachos and Cheese. The pizza is here and its hot. Drink deeply, my friend, of Premium Beer. Guzzle and spare not. Pig out! Well belched, my friend. Now, let loose with your famous fart, for tomorrow we will dress as Auditors and must be as solemn as thieves. Don't act of so stuck up. Yes, we know you are moral, Mr. Bennnet. But rattle the dice and show us the game. Anne Coulter,  your mouth must be dry from all that talking. Chug the whole bottle. Up on the table; now, Blondie, shake that thing. Tomorrow you are our Masters and Mistresses. We will listen humbly as you opine on teevee. Today, just this one day, let us be friends for soon we will all be dead, in any case, and the maggots are no respecters of rank, net worth, or dignity. So, please, no Chaperones. No Lurkers. No Homeland Security out in the Van. No secret cameras. No wiretaps and no government dossier. Come on in guys. Beer and pizza on WB, all you can eat. POTUS is up stage with the Band. For this one day what the American Public needs to know, is Looey-looey. Reminds me of the old days. Give the President a hand. He is going sign Saturnalia into law. Yes. Give the man a beer.
 

The Fragility of Goodness

Posted by The Happy Tutor

Trevor Bechtel on Understanding an Ethical Practice

Trevor:  The bible can certainly be illuminated through the best tools and practices exercised by higher criticism, but understanding only happens when one attempts to perform the text in one's own life or see it performed in someone else's life. I want to argue that understanding is dependent, almost entirely, on performance.  By performance, Trevor, seems to mean living a truth, witnessing to it, living in consonance with a moral understanding, not as an idea only, but as a practice for which one might be called to question. To traditional rhetorical categories, like place and occasion, Trevor adds "risk." The ethical person bears witness, perhaps in silence, perhaps under interrogation, or beneath contumely and contempt, and so wagers his or her own skin. It will be fascinating to see how Trevor applies his schema to the Bible, to preaching, and to life faithful to an ideal cultivated by a specific embodied community. A way of life always fragile and at risk, dependent for its preservation and transmission on the faithful who profess that faith, and bear witness, if need be, unto death. Those of us outside that covenanted community, can, perhaps, stand outside the door, in the hurly burly of the marketplace, among the indifferent or hostile throng, and learn fidelity, and courage, if not faith. (The title of this post is from the title of a book on the liberal arts by Martha Nussbaum who took the phrase from Pindar. What Trevor is saying seems very close to Pindar's view of ethics as fragile, as cultivated, always at risk, dependent, as was even the Garden of Eden in the Christian story, on the good farmer. The farmer for Pindar is the poet who praises what deserves praise; for Trevor it might be the saint, or the preacher whose words and live are exemplary.) There is much more to Trevor's post, than I have conveyed. I wish I could see to the bottom of what he has already written, for to understand it would be to have become a better man. To read such writing is also to wager yourself.

Wealth Bondage Case Study # 2

The Blogger's Inheritance

Fact-Pattern

Talia is 32, educated, married. No children. Her husband is an independent writer who makes very little money. Their primary means of support is her teaching job, at $50,000 a year. Her interests include literature, blogging, and women's issues. She is at home in both academics and business.  Income has never been her priority, and her lifestyle is frugal. Her parents were successful businesspeople, owning a 7-11 franchise. Her mother died of cancer. Talia has no brothers and sisters. She was the first person in her family to go to college. Her father died last month. Although she never thought of him as rich, it turns out that the 7-11 is worth $1mil. That and a house were his only significant assets. Her father left her as the only beneficiary of his estate. After all is said and done, with cost of selling the business and settling the estate, she has $1 mil inheritance in cash.

Planner's Suggestions

Talia goes to see a number-crunching financial planner, licensed to sell a wide variety of products, who gives her the following recommendations.

1. Consider life insurance to replace your lost income to your husband if you should die. 5 time income, or $250,000 face amount. Premiums of $4,000 a year. 

2. Consider a disability policy, to pay if you can't work. Premium of $2,000 a year.

3. Consider putting $250,000 into a single premium deferred annuity to partially fund retirement at 65.

4. Maximum fund 401(k) at work for $5,000 a year.

5. Put balance of inheritance into growth and income mutual fund. Use income to fund recommendations above.

6. Reinvest any excess income. Or, use as "mad money." Make charitable gifts if you insist.

Her Perspective

Talia is a proud and independent person. Hates to think she is going to live on Dad's money. She says she was happy with her life before her inheritance and she wants to give it away in a good cause, either during her life or at death. She goes to see a philanthropic consultant whose practice is limited to giving.

Philanthropic Advisor

The "values-based" advisor could isolate Talia's key values, her sense of what is wrong with the world, areas where she might want to help. The advisor could examine whether she wants to be actively engaged in her philanthropy, perhaps starting a venture and being involved herself as a leader. Or, would she prefer to keep her current job, and fund others? Does she prefer big or small nonprofits? Established or grassroots? Where is she giving or volunteering today? What gifts have given her the most satisfaction? Would she be interested in networking with other donor and activists engaged in similar causes? Does she want to make a difference now or later? Stage her donations? Diversify? Or make one big splash? Does she want recognition? Does she want her charitable initiative to have permanent life, as with a foundation? Or should it be a project that runs its course? Is she interested in social ventures that might do good but also generate revenue?

Analysis

All of these questions from a philanthropic perspective, are quite different from those answered by her traditional financial advisor. Given her mood, Talia would probably ignore her traditional financial advisor, make the gifts and never look back. What is the philanthropic advisor's responsibility, though, to slow her down and to help her keep her own needs in view?

How idealistic is too idealistic? Should she be counseled to take her giving a little at a time, and reserve the lion's share of her inheritance until she realizes that $1 mil is not all that it is cracked up to be? $1 mil at 5% is just her current income. $1 mil, you might say, is FU money, just enough, maybe to walk away from her job and whatever she pleases. "Charity," as they say, "starts at home."

For Discussion

Rather than saying what you would do if you were she -- which you aren't, how would you want to be treated, if you were she? Would you want the advisor to give you the plan he or she would want in your place? To give you the plan that you asked for ("Give it all away!")? Or would you be best served by a process that remains open-ended, recursive, and Socratic? Would you rather be served or challenged? To what extent are the questions here financial and to what extent are they ethical?

Caveat: The numbers in this example are made up. This is not a solicitation to buy anything. The idea is to provoke discussion of the role of the humanities in financial matters. For advice as to ways and means clients should consult their own professional tax and legal advisors. For applied morals they should.... what? Talk to a rabbi? A professor of ethics? Meditate? Read Bill Bennett?

The Importance of Being Earnest

Posted by The Happy Tutor

On the Disjunction of Style and Content in Postmodern Discursive Practices (zzzzzzzzzzz)

Vitia: Speaking through a carnival mask, which is why Wealth Bondage came to mind. It's a nice change from my usual self-halting stumbles and rationalizations and equivocations. I notice, also, that it's easier for me to write when I'm channeling someone else....  The discourse that comes from Truth and from Authority, is this not what the second rate postmodern scholars give us, even as they question the nature of Truth and Authority? They give up the content, but retain the manner of the Schoolmaster imparting knowledge. "Write this down class; Foucault says....." To have given up Truth as Dogma is to find it in art. And how can the artist, like a child, not play with masks? You could write a postmodern essay about it, and put a hard word like "Ludic" in the title, or you could ease up and play. That is what de Man and Derrida, or Culler, or Geoffrey Hartman, and Foucault too, were doing way back when. How can you have studied them, and still write like a Schoolmaster? (Schoolmaster, actually was an insult that Hartman hurled at the New Critics, and it shut them up but good.) The point made here has caused pain for AKMA and David Weinberger. To call someone on their prose, feels like an insult, as if you are calling their very self, their integrity, into question. But friends! That is what we all should have learned from the early days deconstruction! Insolence was the founding gesture. All I have done is to change the locus to satire, so as to disintermediate those French followers of Mallarme, and the inscrutable Germans. If we are to have art, let it come by way of the Augustans, via Horace, like our own Constitution.

Self-Made in America

Posted by The Happy Tutor

Gerry Gleason:  The Happy Tutor takes Madame G to task (in his friendly, jesting way with his whip), and I responded to his questions with a 30,000 foot picture of my financial life.  For the benefit of those readers at Individual Adjunct, and elsewhere. Gerry talks about salaried jobs versus starting your own venture. Madame G is an entrepreneur who made her wealth in her own businesses, such as a lingerie shop and leather goods company. Most of the wealth in small towns, but even in big cities, is found in that kind of main street infrastructure. Many a blue collar businessperson is worth millions from owning several car washes, or a fast food franchise, or a lumber yard, or diesel remanufacturing business. Rich Dad/Poor Dad by Richard Kiyosoki is a "how to" book on making it big in blue collar businesses. See also The Millionaire Next Door, by Thomas Stanley. Money and class, Vitia, are not what you think. The well-educated in towns all across America are providing professional services to blue collar businesses and making a fraction of what the the high school educated owner makes from building houses, owning a Rotorooter franchise, or putting up billboards by the side of the road. I hope we always have such a foundation for American democracy. When Wal-Mart or Best Buy or Car-Max, buy up these small shops and put these owners into yellow vests, or ship their jobs overseas, then you have a problem, in which wealth and power rise to the top, and the Knave with an MBA is the final authority.