What's Love Got To Do With It? - Marriage, A Matter Of Marx, Will And Contract

Marx famously said that man is an economic animal, and he based his theories on that presumption. For all the failings of Marxism, the man was right. 

Expressed another way, human nature - aggressive, territorial, self-defensive, and self-interested - is economic, for we all calculate gains and losses, risks, opportunity, and the forces that determine them as a matter of course.  Everything comes under that particular scrutiny, for there is no sphere of human activity that is not a matter of competing interests. 

Capitalism, said Marx, was a destructive, divisive force that robbed society of its collective potential.  In its competitive individualism, pitting man against man, it sapped productive energies.  If these individual energies could be marshalled together for the common good, mankind as a whole could benefit.  One must work with this universal shared good in mind, said Marxists who embraced the idea of progress, positive social evolution, and the promise of a perfect, harmonious world. 

 

Needless to say Marxism for all its utopian ambitions ignored the profoundly individualistic nature of man, Darwinian competitive survivalism, and the more fundamental nature of human interaction - buying, selling, and trading for benefit and profit. 

However much Marx believed that these individualistic ambitions could be tamed by the state and conformed to its collective vision, he did not deny them.  He was as aware of Darwin as any thinker of the late 19th century and was a keen observer of history.  He must have seen that both individual competition and private economic enterprise were aspects of human society ever since the earliest human settlements, but was somehow convinced that its emergence into a new, modern world could not survive such economic brutalism. 

Long after the demise of Marxism and Communism, the keen observation that man is an economic animal persists.  Despite reformists, progressives, and Utopians, the dirty little secret - man's undeniable individual ambition and his determination to best others at all costs - is no longer whispered but accepted if not embraced. 

Marriage is the perfect example of social Marxism.  It may initially be thought to be an expression of love and caring, but over time it becomes contractual.  Men and women thrown together willy-nilly by persistent Petrarchan notions of romantic love, soon find that without perimeters, conditions, codicils, and caveats marriage cannot survive.

Marriage is not contractual in the purely legal and accounting sense, although most modern marriages are bound by prenuptial arrangements, detailed trust funds, painfully specific and demanding clauses of equal economic and financial rights.  It is contractual in less codifiable ways.  There are so-called moral codes of behavior - fidelity is the most prominent - that are nothing more than extensions of the legal contracts which broadly define the context of marriage.  A woman wants to keep her husband from straying because of a potential loss of economic value, the disruption of a carefully-prepared investment portfolio, and the loss of an additional caretaker, a father. 

As much as one can accuse men of hateful misogyny, jealousy is standard fare for all societies. A woman’s infidelity, never certain and always suspect, can lead to illegitimate birth, questions of lineage and heritage for the well-to-do and questions of economics for the hoi polloi. Why should a man, hard pressed to survive in a marginal environment, invest anything in a child who is not his? Issues of misogyny, machismo, patriarchy, and sexual abuse all derive from male uncertainty. It is a matter of security, let alone male ego and pride, to know paternity.

Some bio-ethicists have suggested that jealousy provided an evolutionary adaptation for males to assure paternity and to avoid spending resources on other males’ offspring and led females to guarantee protection and support for her offspring by having a steady partner. Men need to be sure that their children are theirs; and women, once having secured an economically viable mate, need to be sure that he doesn’t stray.

Perhaps the best fictional depiction of jealousy is in Strindberg’s play, The Father.  For years the Captain has ruled his wife, Laura, and commanded all decisions about her, their home, and their daughter.  When Laura feels that he has finally overstepped his bounds, making arbitrary decisions about their daughter and her education, she decides to refuse and force his capitulation.  

She does so with the psychological canniness and evil intent of Iago, introducing the idea, however subtlety that their daughter is not his. She knows that paternity is at the heart of male jealousy and insecurity – men can never absolutely know whether the children borne by their wives are theirs – and she progressively suggests that their child might not be his.  

Such doubts, especially since they never can be proven, are by nature corrosive, and eventually the Captain goes mad.  Laura commits him to a mental institution, and she takes charge of her daughter.  Adding insult to injury she tells him, “Now you have fulfilled your function as an unfortunately necessary father…, you are not needed any longer and you must go.”

Most modern marriages where the old Victorian prescriptions of male and female roles are no longer valid, need to negotiate a new, unwritten contract to assure a proper balance of emotional investment, risk, and reward. Values are calculated subjectively - taking out the trash every so often is not worth cooking daily or worse, cleaning toilets.  

Successful, or at least long-lasting marriages have achieved accommodation and social parity.  Wives' and husbands' duties and responsibilities are negotiated, valuated, and mutually agreed upon.  Whether paying the bills and doing the taxes is actually and objectively the equivalent of cooking dinner is not the point.  Only the mutual economic agreement is. 

Sexual favors are by no means independent of the unwritten marriage contract.  The old rules no longer apply, and intercourse is now a negotiated affair.  Too much or too little demand from either husband or wife can disturb the balance of power, the social contract, the economic status quo. Negotiations over thermometer settings, clattering, taking out the dog, hairs in the sink, the toilet seat up or down are all part of the contract. 

D.H. Lawrence wrote most expressively and insightfully about sexual relationships.  He understood that they were micro-Darwinian in nature, matters of sexual dominance and submission which were stand-ins for the larger context of marriage or partnership.  He never advocated male dominance or female submission or the opposite; but insisted that unless this dynamic were settled, the affair would end without satisfaction. 

 

Yet even if this equation is solved, there must still be limits to the extent of domination.  That must be negotiated, for excess, particularly if it is constant, will destroy the social and economic contract established. 

Henrik Ibsen wrote extensively about will.  A Nietzschean in creative spirit, his plays are about the expression of will as a validation of human identity.  Hedda Gabler, Rebekka West, and Hilde Wangel are all women for whom, a la Nietzsche, such expression is the essence of their existence.  There is no reason other than pure will that Hilde urges the Master Builder to climb to the top of the tower to assuredly fall to his death, nor Rebekka's calculated manipulation of the weak credulous Rosmer; or Hedda Gabler's willful destruction of her former lover and attempts to do so with her husband.  She commits suicide as a final act of will. 

 

Marriage is the place where the expression of will finds its most fertile environment.  As the playwright Edward Albee has said, 'Marriage is the crucible of maturity'.  Within its impenetrable confines the ambitions, energies, and will of each partner must inevitably clash and some accommodation reached - a settlement which will lead to maturity. 

Properly negotiated, this chance alliance of two distinctly different individuals, can provide for reproduction, mutual care, comfort, and support.  What's love got to do with it?  Like Shakespeare's plays, it doesn't matter who wrote them.  They are works of genius.  Whether love actually exists as a separate, higher order of human interaction, or a construct to assure the longevity of an economic partnership, matters not. 

In Praise Of The Outrageous, The Untamed, And The Incorrect - Life Would Be A Thudding Bore Without Them

Lively Markham had been brought up to be a temperate, obedient, respectful, and dutiful girl, and for most of her childhood she was indeed.  A model student, prayerful churchgoer, enthusiastic volunteer, and mother's helper.  Until early adolescence when it seemed someone had flipped a switch, turned this girl of manners and rectitude into a model of intemperance, exaggeration, and downright outrageous behavior.  

 

In a short time she became the pariah of the class, a girl who wore plaid and engineer boots, décolleté, rhinestone, and lace gloves, who sat with her legs apart, trash talked and just by her presence offended.  The status quo, especially among young teenage girls, was nothing to take lightly.  

'What happened?', asked her parents who had marked early on for a career in law or medicine, a good marriage and bright, pretty blonde children.  'What did we miss?', they asked each other, but neither could come up with a reasonable answer. 

'Perhaps it is Great Uncle Harry's genes - you know, the ones that came down through your mother's side of the family', suggested Lively's father, although this line of reasoning, so often pulled out when arguments got desperate, was a dangerous one; but this time his wife didn't object, so befuddled was she over the sudden volte face of their perfect young daughter. 

In and out of trouble, called before the Principal and Monseigneur Brophy whose priests had told him, only barely hiding Lively's true identity. that the girl was inventing the most salaciously sexual arabesques in the confessional, none of which or at least only a bare fraction of which could possibly be true. One priest in particular, Father Billings, admitted he had sought pastoral counselling for the immoral and sinful thoughts elicited by the young girl.

She slouched, chewed tobacco, swore like a trooper, and worst of all espoused the most disturbing political ideas.  Hers, according to one teacher, was what he called 'the Genghis Khan' approach to history.  While he and others in the uniformly progressive school taught a more moral-based curriculum - that colonialism, European monarchy, and the rule of the Hapsburgs were unfortunate bumps in history's gradual, progressive journey to a better world - Lively was a champion of Nietzsche, Wagner,  and neo-Darwinian survivalist supremacism. 

Her views on environmentalism were especially noxious.  Whether or not the climate was warming was irrelevant, she said.  Man is an integral, irrevocable piece of the environment, done to as much as done by, a small bit of matter in a perennially changing universe.  Why fuss?

And when it came to other progressive issues, she was just as dismissive.  'A cock and bull' story, she wrote in a paper on sexual inclusivity. 'Pure nonsense.  A distortion that belies credibility.  A fantastical imagining.  An impossibility'.  Marked 'See me' by her social studies teacher, the paper suggested a troubled girl, and when in conference it was delicately asked whether the girl was questioning her own sexuality'. 

'Bullshit', Lively said as she looked around the room, festooned with rainbow flags, Venn diagrams of sexual interchangeability, and roughly sculpted head of an African prince claimed by Letitia Washington to be her Togolese ancestor.  'Bullshit', Lively repeated and got up to go. 

'Now wait just one minute, young lady', said the miffed and nonplussed Ms. Hartley who proceeded to lecture the young girl on her ideas, her language, and what was becoming a very, very offensive attitude. 'Maybe Mr. Parfry lets you off the hook, but not I'.  Charles Parfry was cut from the same cloth as the young Markham girl, a rumbling, mischievous man who had chosen the wrong profession given his wicked attitude, but who had few other places to turn given sunken costs and limited opportunities. 

'This school cannot tolerate your behavior any longer', Amanda Hartley said to Lively, her face in hers, wagging her finger in remonstrance, 'and unless some significant changes are made around here, you may well have to find other venues for your intolerance'. 

Now, Lively was a very smart girl, and the very best colleges and universities vied for her interest.  Although she was white and straight, Harvard bent the rules and jiggered the school's admission policy (just this once) to accommodate her.  

Harvard was not what she thought.  On her first day on campus there were demonstrations for the Palestinian cause.  The Palestinians??? Are you crazy, she shouted at the speaker, and followed with a stream of hateful invectives usually not heard on the uniformly progressive campus, tarring and feathering 'the saints of the desert', dismissing their cause as ill-conceived, anti-historical malarkey.  Wrestled down by the bitches of Mather House and dunned out of the Yard by a thousand hectoring, chanting students, Lively, bruised but energized got roaring drunk at the Grafton Pub, and spewed bile all over the dark Cambridge streets. 

The Devil in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov appears to Ivan in a fevered dream and laughs at Ivan's pompous self-assured philosophical naivete.  I am a vaudevillian, the Devil says, and without me the world would be nothing but churchgoing and Sunday dinners, a perfectly thudding bore.  I am who stirs the pot, who adds the spice, who is responsible for miscreants, reprobates, and cheaters. I am who makes life interesting.

 

Of course Dostoevsky was right, and Shakespeare whose works have no heroes, only the most fabulous villains.  Tamora, Richard III, Goneril, Regan, Iago, and Dionyza are not just accidental foils for a principled, moral playwright.  They are the characters which make the perpetual motion Grand Mechanism, as critic Jan Kott has called it, go round.  

If one were to lay all Shakespeare's Histories down in chronological order, one might be surprised at the repetitive expressions of human nature - avarice, jealousy, ambition, hate, guile, chicanery... the list is endless.  Yet he finds a way in each and every one of these devilish characters to make the turning of the wheel endlessly fascinating. 

Lively was by no means evil.  She only admired evil men - or rather that natural human impulse that defies the artificial notions of rectitude, propriety, and civil obedience. Nietzsche had it right in one - only the expression of pure will validates the individual.  The timid, the reserved, the hesitantly moral, are the herd over which the Übermensch rides 

 

In this age of sanctimony, correctness, and invented commonality, the outrageous is in short supply.  Not only is the bombast, braggadocio, and exaggeration of outsized characters very rare indeed, it is hated by the run of the mill - the ordinary, the unremarkable claimants to a treacly utopian future. Over-reachers, says Nietzsche, are 'beyond good and evil'.  They are expected, natural expressions of the most hardwired - and indispensable - force of human nature. Try as one might, they will always pop up when least expected. 

Lively loved her life, the aggression, the contentiousness, the sheer chutzpah of in-your-face honesty.  She was one of a kind - brilliant, savagely honest, and remarkable.  She was Shakespeare's shrew but never tamed, always loud but never stupid.  A woman for all seasons. 

'Black And Brown Babies Cannot Die!', Said President Harris Of Her New Policy Of 'Geopolitical Inclusivity'

George W. Bush called Iraq, Iran, and North Korea  the 'Axis of Evil'; but the Harris Administration is avoiding any such racist terminology when it comes to Iran, Russia, and China, our most implacable, determined adversaries.  'We can work with all of them', she said, 'and bring them back into the Commonwealth of Nations.  Their children are our children, and brown and black babies are innocent victims caught in a web of turpitude, violence, and corruption'. 

 

This was read from a prepared script of course, and although she stumbled over 'turpitude' and dunned the speechwriter who could have used a far simpler word like....Here she hesitated.  'I'm no English major, goddamn it', she barked at the writer.  

Language aside, the speech endorsed her foreign policy.  Confrontation, saber-rattling, intimidation, threats, and punitive sanctions were out.  Compassion, understanding, and negotiation were in.  Of course this axis had no time for such gay ideas, and were all three Machiavellian to the core.  

President Xi thought nothing of scouring western China of the fissiparous Uighurs, Putin of the Chechens, and the Ayatollah of any counter-revolutionary zealots; but Harris stuck to her guns.  She did not get elected to go bullying and badgering those who disagree with America, but to reason with them, come to an accommodation which would promote world peace. 

 

The atmosphere in the Briefing Room was edgy and nervous.  Iran was bringing its nuclear missiles above ground and aiming them at Israel, Russia was sick and tired of dithering and aimed theirs directly at the most populated areas of Kyiv, and the Chinese had created a naval cordon around Taiwan.  

All three were simply delighted at the ascendancy of Kamala Harris to the White House and were wasting no time taking advantage of her well-publicized policy of Geopolitical Inclusivity' an international extension of her well-known commitment to race, gender, and ethnicity as the centerpiece of her Presidency. 

'If all people of color can be united harmoniously within our borders', she said, 'then why can't the nations of the world live peaceably side-by-side?'

This response to the briefing of her National Security Advisor, the Director of the CIA, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was surprising.  People of color were all well and good, but when they were aiming nukes at us, it was time to shuck the diversity fol-de-rol and aim right back - or at least so thought the generals.  

All remembered Curtis LeMay who had advised Barry Goldwater, former Republican candidate for the Presidency, to 'bomb them back to the Stone Age' referring to the Communists of North Vietnam and all Communists in general.  'Should have finished off the Russkies and the slopes when we had our chance'.  Times had changed, but military men were trained to shoot and kill, so what did the new President expect? That they were going to lay down their arms? 

'Explain this American diversity thing', Vladimir Putin had asked his senior foreign policy advisor. The President had found the whole idea of raising the black man to a position of racial and social superiority hilarious.  In his former KGB days he had been to Africa and decided that except for countries with something valuable to sell, the whole lot should be hived off and sent adrift.  'They eat monkeys', he was reported as saying after a clandestine trip to Cameroon. 

As for the rest of the diversity side show explained by the aide - swishy gay men, bathrooms, and sex operations - enough said.  The President ended the session and went to work with his senior military staff on their latest proposal to neutralize Kyiv and be done with the bloody war once and for all. 

The same scenarios were played out in different ways in Tehran and Beijing.  The Ayatollah and his mullahs were enraged by Israel's genocidal attacks on the Palestinians, but delighted that thanks to Kamala Harris and her pro-Palestinian stance ('Enough brown babies have died'), Israel had not delivered the knockout blow that had been expected.  Not only that, her administration had publicly committed itself to removing all sanctions against Iran in the name of 'inclusivity'.  

The Chinese, intimidated by no one now that they owned most of America's debt, had cornered the market in rare earths, had built their military to premier status, and were gaining friends and influencing nations through their No Conditionalities policy - let's make a deal, and be done with it.  

'Some show of strength is necessary, Madam President', said the head of the Army; but Harris was unmoved. 'That is exactly what we have pledged to avoid', she replied, and clotured the meeting.  She wasn't going to sit there one more minute and listen to more testosterone-fueled, playground bullying.  It was time indeed to replace them all with women!

Irritated, nonplussed, and downright angry that things had taken such a turn, the senior military and foreign policy advisors had never expected such indifference and airy-fairy accommodationist policies.  They knew that the lady's Policy of Inclusivity meant trouble, but not keeping the nukes in their silos and letting Xi and his band of thieves rule the world. 

A ladies' tea in the Rose Garden took her mind off world events. 'Welcome, my dear friends', the President said, smiling and embracing each and every one of the guests.  'My home is your home', she said, and turning to the brilliantly white portico of the White House, talked to them about everything that popped into her head, a relief after all the prepared speeches, political briefings, on-message remarks, and official statements. She happily talked about her life as a black child, the courage and honorability of her father, ghetto spinners and weaves, her closeness to the tribal beauty of Africa and of the 'terrible responsibility' of being the ruler of such a great and important country. 

When she left to return to the Oval Office she felt cleansed, back to her old self, a happy warrior, happy in her skin and confident of her vision. 

Of course that sense of peace and security didn't last long as a national security aide reported that the Houthis had fired a missile at Israel and it had hit Tel Aviv.  'Who?', the President said. 'Who did what to whom?', followed by the aide who said, 'Houthis', followed by a Who's on First Abbot and Costello routine until the President got the picture, only more Jew-hating Arabs. 

'Sorry', she said.  'Noisy chopper on the South Lawn.  Gotta run'. 

'God help us', said the Secretary of the Navy when he heard of the President's initiative to reduce the naval fleet, and to withdraw it from the South China Sea.  'Taiwan is of course important to us', Kamala said, 'but not at the cost of brown and black babies.'

'Yellow babies, actually', thought the Secretary who had had it up to here with her racial nonsense and faux inclusivity; but his President banged away as she was now increasingly wont to do about universal principles, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and how racial justice must include the Chinese. 

'It's been a good month', said the new President. 'I see only good things ahead' 

When Corruption Meets Corruption - An African Dictator's Visit To The Harris White House

Prince Alfonse M'bele was the longtime president of 'a dump with oil', the rather nasty reference made in the the halls of the State Department to a miserably poor, crime- and civil strife-ridden country whose only interest to Western donors was its vast energy and mineral reserves. 

The country had for years been on the State Department's priority list because of - and only because of - these resources.  Otherwise it was a pariah - public executions, political refugees, Tonton Macoute-style secret police and a steady stream of dollars and euros to private off-shore bank accounts.  If there was a more corrupt country in Africa, diplomats and CIA analysts had not found it. 

The President lived in a palatial mansion on a promontory overlooking the ocean.  It was done in the style of the Palace of Versailles down to a Hall of Mirrors and a formal garden.  The President liked to take visitors to the palace, stand on the balcony, and wave his arm across the maze-like gardens and the blue sea beyond.  'I did that', he said, giving his visitor the broad, generous M'bele smile and a warm embrace. 

 

Diplomacy and foreign aid stopped here.  M'bele, despite many requests, had never visited the White House.  That would be asking too much, and the thought of one Africa's worst dictators standing side by side with an American president would send the wrong messages.  No, said the State Department, let the dollars and oil flow, and leave it at that. 

'Why has President M'bele not been invited to the White House?', asked the new American President, Kamala Harris. 'We want to be seen extending our hand to all Africans in a sign of solidarity and cultural communion'. 

Harris had during her campaign made her African heritage and the special interest the American people had in restoring social and cultural ties with the continent.  It was not enough to base bilateral relationships on oil and rare earths.  The time had come to recognize the cultural and historical importance of the continent from which her ancestors and those of millions of black Americans had come. 

 

'But the public executions, Madam President...', insisted her aide de camp and chief personal advisor, a black woman selected for her loyalty and familiarity with things African.  

'Public executions?', she quickly replied.  'Thousands of black men have been wrongly accused and tried and are languishing in American prisons. Their life of incarceration, this wanton and blatant deprivation of their human rights and separation from country and family is no different from the public punishment of President M'bele.  Which is why we must free American prisoners and work to establish the rule of law in Africa'. 

 

Oration over and quite pleased with her sense of moral equivalency, she turned to other matters; but before she did, she issued an executive order to her aide. 'Invite him'. 

When M'bele received word of this Presidential invite, he immediately began preparations for the visit and whether or not he should wear the tribal leopard skin robe fashioned after his hero, Mobutu; or should go dressed in Armani.  It was a rhetorical question because 'that woman', he knew valued her African heritage above all, diluted as it was by racial impurity.  Showing up as a proud, traditional African leader will be the frosting on the beryllium cake.  'She will love it', he said. 

American exceptionalism has stuck in M'bele's craw for years.  Who were they to tell black Africans what to do when our continent is the cradle of civilization and we are the first to emerge from the forests as men? He was just as proud of his moral parallels as Harris. 

'Well said, Mr. President', his senior advisor commented.  'Well said indeed', and went on to second ever motion his president had made concerning American hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty. America was, after all the country that killed millions of Vietnamese in the jungles of Southeast Asia, supported Zionism and the murderous, genocidal regimes of Israel, and killed thousands more Muslims in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq. 

Our public executions - executions of traitors and enemies of the state - are morally right and politically justified and who are they to tell us how to run our country?

The preparations for the official visit to Washington went on apace in both capitals.  M'bele had selected an entourage of the most beautiful women in the country, women whose African, European, and Caribbean heritage - traces of Portuguese colonization, Cuban military and economic support, and light-skinned Fulani ancestry made them stunningly appealing.  'That Harris woman', the President said, 'will find herself in these beauties, and all America's men will want them'. 

On her side of the Atlantic, President Harris also was attentive to cultural detail.  Her receiving line should be made up of America's finest black people - athletes, musicians, and entertainers, a potpourri of what one would find at the newly-inaugurated National African American Museum not far from the White House.  

She searched in vain for black academics but came up with only the cheap shot performers like Cornel West, moneygrubbing turncoat who bilked Harvard, then Princeton, then Harvard again, riding affirmative action and bellowing blackness until everyone was sick of his charade; and of course the ambulance-chaser in chief, that chicken-neck Al Sharpton who was in your face everywhere you looked. 

'Africa comes to America', was the meme, the tagline of the upcoming state visit, and so it did in all its tribal finery, drums, native dances, spears and masks.  The M'bele contingent spared no expense for a cultural extravaganza, a show of roots, cultural legitimacy, and human origins. 

The American conservative press was of course not quiet, and roundly criticized the new American president for so hawking racialism and African idolatry.  The man with whom she sat next to eating collard greens and fatback was a mass murderer who had just recently 'removed' three hundred and fifty 'miscreants' mowed down as they tried to 'escape' from federal prison. M'bele had more blood on his hands than Mobutu, Idi Amin, and Robert Mugabe combined; and that was without even considering Eyadema, Barre, and Charles Taylor. 

And this was without even raising the dubious question of moral equivalency.  Most of Africa split its sides when watching the side show of American transgenderism - the swishy skirts and high heels, the buggering, the emasculation, and the woman-worship were disgusting examples of moral turpitude. African men were proud of their machismo, their harems, their serial affairs, and their potency.  How was this twisting deformity of God's plan ever considered moral? And this hammering down of little boys' energy and sexual enthusiasm?  This crackpot feminism and glass ceiling nonsense? 

Of course there was a bit of hysteria on both sides, but the myth of American moral exceptionalism had been debunked and discredited long before the likes of M'bele ever set foot in Washington. How was keeping the American black population enslaved through entitlement, another word for a political permissiveness that never calls to justice ghetto dysfunction? 

Pimps and ho's are welcomed into the national discussion on culture? Assault and rape are understandable expressions of black rage and frustration at continuing white supremacy and Jim Crow.  Affirmative action denies individuality, individual worth and talent and throws all black people into a grab bag of leftovers. 

 

How can 'Abortion for all, any time, any place' be morally justified when legitimate moral objections have been raised and summarily dismissed.  Where is the moral equivalency between abortion and the death penalty? 

So, once the official dinners, ceremonies, and exchange of gifts are over with, what is left is two very morally compromised presidents.  No one is suggesting that the moral failings of the United States are in any way the equivalent of the wholesale slaughter in Africa - it is just the hypocrisy, the venality, and the self-serving intellectual myopia of both that rankles.  

China has the right idea - impose no conditionalities on trade or foreign exchange,  Roads for a fixed below market price for oil.  Purchases for rare earths, industrial diamonds, and other natural resources which include planned 'overruns', a blind eye to a given percent of payment added for investment in personal accounts in the Caymans. 

The M'bele-Harris event went off well, despite the carping and bitching from the conservative wings.  It was a celebration of culture and a cementing of financial and economic bonds.  As the tom-toms and African bass drums beat a native rhythm to M'bele's formal exit, the American President smiled.  'Well done', she said to herself. 'Well done'. 

  

Diary Of A Modern Overlord - The Myth Of Social Equality

Everyone knew that Harrison Alcott was a man of intellectual means - a master of ten languages, entrepreneur, Lothario and bedder of more women than the harem of a Turkish pasha, traveler, gourmet, and fashion icon.  Was there nothing that he couldn't do? Anything that was beyond his reach? Anything  farfetched or beyond belief? 

 

Harrison was a child of wealth and privilege - old money, the cultured money of Revere silver, Chippendale highboys, Tiffany lamps, and Townsend chairs; the money of the Vineyard, Rimini, and Gstaad.  'Be all you can be' was an irrelevancy for the likes of Harrison Alcott. In his 'being' there would never be a hard row to hoe, no bootstraps to pull up, no Sisyphean rock to climb.  He was all he would be from the moment of his birth. 

He commanded attention, demanded loyalty already given because of some innate sense of authority.  Alcotts had always owned others and ruled more.  Harrison's great-great grandfather had been the owner of Barker's Rise, a Mississippi delta plantation of a thousand acres of prime Egyptian cotton worked by fifteen hundred prize Angolan slaves.  His great grandfather was a Boston and Newport shipowner who profited from the Three Cornered Trade of African chattel and Caribbean molasses. 

'Alcotts work for no one' was the inscription in the family Bible, followed by 'We own things', surprising for what should have been, 'Except for God Almighty', and those descendants who had read the prophetic words were unapologetic, for they too had owned things and people without regret, guilt, or second thoughts. 

Captain Isaiah Alcott was the captain of a New England whaler which plied the Southern Ocean and returned to Nantucket with enough oil to light the town for year and enough ambergris to scent Boston's finest ladies for years to come.  No one was ever lost on the Augustus, a ship run with iron discipline and unflinching economy, and sail after sail the ship was the prince of the northern fleet. 

Bernard Alcott was a captain of industry, second only to J.D. Rockefeller in oil exploration and refining and the first investor in the new Wall Street bank of J.P. Morgan.  His son, Phillips Alcott ran his fathers earnings into the tens of millions in stock futures and canny off-market investments; and his father, H.F. Alcott was a master of creative financial instruments. 

Each of the Alcott men owned things and people.  Although the days of slavery and the lucrative trans-Atlantic slave trade were long gone, later Alcotts owned investors, employees, and speculators.  Ownership was a birthright, a God-given gift of power and authority. 

Alexander Hamilton knew as much - that is, he understood the legacy of breeding and, despite the populist objections of his colleague Thomas Jefferson and his touting of democracy and citizen rule, he knew that America's elite would always determine the new republic's future.  The Alcotts were beneficiaries of Hamiltonian aristocratic convictions; and bred in economic and financial nobility helped create the new nation. 

 

Slavery was not so much a matter of involuntary servitude but an example of profitable ownership. The new republic was about enterprise and capitalist principles, and slavery, despite the moral objections to it, was a prime example of them.  It mattered not to the Alcotts whether or not slavery was an immoral enterprise.  It was permitted, encouraged, and protected in independent America, and the Alcott family profited immensely.

The early Twentieth Century Alcotts, the claques and rising stars of the Robber Baron era, followed suit.  The thousands of immigrants on the assembly lines of their industrial enterprises were neo-slaves, little different from their African brothers only thanks to a desultory right to vote.  The Alcotts were modern masters and overlords. 

For Harrison Alcott, all this was academic muddle, organizing the obvious with predictable fallacies. He and his family were born to lead, just as millions of families were born to follow.  Democracy is not hurt by the implications of this notion, only strengthened.  Despite howling and breast-beating, class distinctions will always be a part of society as they have been since the Paleolithic. Those destined to lead will lead. 

 

Elitism, privilege, historical legacy will remain despite attempts to expunge, censor, and marginalize them, and thank God for their resistance and longevity. 

And so it was that latter-day Alcotts continued the tradition of ownership, and by so doing consolidated the family ethos of rule, governance, and authority.  It was in their blood.  The portraits on the walls of the Alcott homestead were reminders of this legacy. 

Harrison Alcott extended his inheritance beyond mere finance and economics. He controlled women, brought them easily within his sexual administration, and assembled a harem of female devotees worthy of an emir. 

The women were free to leave but never did. Sexual bondage in an early twenty-first century context was far different than the enforced concubinage of centuries past.  It meant only emotional fealty - the women in Harrison's 'household' were tabled because of desire. At the sexual beck and call of a modern-day pasha had its own deeply psychological appeal. 

Harrison was especially noteworthy and unique because of the era in which he lived - a censorious, neo-Puritanical, neo-Soviet age of preposterous inclusivity.  The very fact that this antithesis of 'diversity', this Nietzschean Übermensch, could exist in a culture of raging social fantasy was unique in and of itself. 

There were a few who interpolated Alcott family history and placed it well within the social bell curve - on one far asymptote while the mass of unwitting Americans were in the soggy middle - but they had to admit the disproportionate power of the asymptotes.  The Alcotts, as far they might be from the norm, would always rule the rest. 

Darwin, in his seminal work on evolution wrote about supremacy - the natural, innate drive for dominance and perpetuation of the species and the existential wars to determine genetic future.  Social Darwinism, discredited by progressive Utopians, best describes the ascent and longevity of the Alcotts - a family with social and intellectual rights and the strength and determination to continue them.  The Alcotts, as long as they retain their commitment, their purpose, and their legacy will always rule. 

Seen One Mountain, Seen 'Em All - The Irrelevance Of Environmentalism In An Artificially Intelligent, Virtual World

Paul Archer grew up in a small new England town - not quite big enough to be classified in the census as a city, but too large to be much like the drive-through places of the South. He lived in the West End of town, a suburb really, although in that part of Connecticut, far enough away from Hartford or New Haven there were no bedroom communities.  

The West End was the old Anglo-Saxon redoubt where generations of New Englanders, captains of industry who built the town into something of an indispensable, had lived. Appointments were all Revere, Townsend, and Chippendale, houses were white frame, trellised, and picket-fenced.  Summers were spent on the Vineyard or Nantucket, and children were all at Choate, Andover, and Exeter. 

New Brighton was in many ways semi-rural - the truck farms of Berlin and Southington were a short drive away, Meriden Mountain was accessible for climbing, and orchards and cornfields were common no more than five miles out of town.  The Lancaster Country Club, the watering hole for the West End, had been designed by Ben Hogan and was one of the county's premier golf courses.  It was surrounded by the Pequot hills, the town reservoir, and the spacious houses along Monroe Street. 

Paul's childhood was a mix of all this - schooling, summering, and socializing were all predictably prescribed but pleasant.  His trajectory from Adams Country Day to Groton and on to Yale was familiar and preserving of the historic privilege of his families and others in the West End. 

Growing up Paul's life was interior, surprising for one for whom environmentalism became his modus vivendi, his defining cause, and what he considered his purpose in life. Despite the proximity of the outdoors, his life like that of his colleagues was one defined by intellect, travel, and the appreciation of art, literature, and philosophy.  His father, educated at Yale and Oxford had taught his son that the entire world was within the mind, and all outside it was confounding and irritating at best.  

It was the distilled experiences of Plato, Aristotle, Einstein, Kant, and Faulkner - the pure reason and purer sensibilities of the world's greatest minds - that were enough to complete one's education. One needn't stray outside the social milieu - his milieu - in which such intellectuality thrived.  So while Paul's father never dismissed mens sana in corpore sano, it was always the mind which prevailed, not 

 

At some point after graduate school on his way to post-doctoral studies in computer engineering, Paul discovered environmentalism.  Perhaps because this was the cause celebre of the day, or perhaps because it was the first time that he felt energized, if not passionate about anything, he became a profound believer in the crisis of global warming.  

The woods of Southington Mountain the ponds and lakes in Vernon, Avon, and Farmington, and the shores of Long Island Sound now meant something profound; and for the first time interior and exterior became equal parts of an existential algorithm. Philosophy and rocks, stones, leaves, and branches were joined in an intellectual symphony. 

Environmentalism had grown significantly by the time Paul became involved.  More and more people had become committed to slowing or stopping global warming and stopping the commercial rape of the natural world.  Environmentalists not only united to increase political influence but to join a movement which had higher, even spiritual ends.  Saving the planet was no different from religious evangelism and the saving of souls.  Environmentalists were passionate, even ecstatic about their mission; and belonging to a like-minded group of believers was like participating in a Holy War or a Crusade.

All this was appealing to Paul whose conversion to belief and newfound skepticism of his father's restrictive logic-only vision was thrilling and life-changing. Environmentalism added an entirely new dimension to the dry intellectual pursuits he had been following up till now. 

He joined many of the environmental subgroups that had formed as competitive lobbies - for clean water, clean air, clean oceans, carbon emissions, organic farming, the spotted owl and the snail darter, and the capitalism that underlay all the assaults on the natural world 

He did not give up his studies, however, and had begun to write on the increasingly important world of virtuality. Although users of virtual reality looked upon it as enhancement of the real world, slowly but surely the real world was becoming supernumerary if not irrelevant.  What would happen, he wondered, when the link between brain and computer became perfect and seamless?  When the mind, enabled and facilitated by the computer had access to all the world's information, history, and live experiences instantaneously; and when individuals could construct, confect, and construe 'reality' in any way they pleased?

Who would not prefer to walk through the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, dine with the Duchess de Nantes, sleep with Persian princesses and Palestinian dancers? Or more to the point, what was the point of preserving the natural environment when it could be created virtually?  Artificial Intelligence was already revolutionizing the way the real world is perceived.  Imagine when this powerful tool is linked with brain-computer inter-functionality!

 

'Seen one mountain, Seen 'em all' was the cynical but ironically prescient hate poster Paul saw on the way to work.  It was the work of an anti-environmentalist climate change denier group which resented government's arrogant policy to electrify its way to some distant environmental Utopia. 

Paul was by no means a climate change denier.  Far from it.  He was convinced that the planet was warming due to the indifferent burning of fossil fuels and that dire consequences would result unless rising temperatures could be slowed.  However as a computer engineer working in the world of AI-facilitated virtual reality, the group had a point. The environment, nature and the very fundamental configuration of human interaction would no longer be regarded the same way. 

If there was an existential change in the wings, it was not the warming planet, it was a society running for the exits of a brick-and-mortar, buggy, hot-and-humid, 'métro, boulot, dodo', incessantly routine, overcrowded world. 

Mountains, lakes, forests, birds, and animals would be virtual choices not absolutes.  The ascribed sanctity of nature and the environment would be a thing of the past.  Individual choice would neutralize value. Causes, passions, crusades would be folded into a universally personal experience. Genetic engineering will be the new environmentalism, reconfiguring the human species to live anywhere at any time under any conditions, realigning the codes of plants to grow wherever convenient, readjusting the living world to sustain the virtual. 

Mirabile dictu, one passion had been displaced by another.  Having been raised from the spiritually dead by environmentalism, it was an easy elision to the passion of virtual reality; but where he found that the old-fashioned, Armageddon-style environmentalism was nothing more than smoke and mirrors, the post-human generation was a lock.