Seeking Advantage

Advantage  n - “superiority of position or condition”.   Thus seeking advantage is to gain a superior or upper hand.  We have allowed ourselves to be convinced that this orientation will produce all that is good and worthy for a life to be fulfilled, that it is a natural biological imperative. Some have argued that Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ is all there is to know and that it is the dominant characteristic of all life. Of course, that’s the narrow reading of what Darwin actually said in The Descent of Man.

We are used to stories of winners and losers and are thus are attracted to them. Be that as it may, we have taken this biological factor to be transferable to our social, political, and economic lives as well. Winners, or those with “superiority of position or condition”, use this advantage  to establish the rules to maintain or improve that condition or position.  While this might seem innocent enough during a friendly game, where winning is a side benefit of the enjoyment of playing, in our larger social, economic and political lives disproportionate and lasting advantage hampers community well-being.

Linked closely to ‘seeking advantage’ is a drive towards domination.  When our world was less developed and less crowded, the planet could absorb some of the damage inflicted on it as advantage and domination were sought over nature and other beings.  Obviously many suffered and continue to suffer from domination. It is clear that our economic model is fundamentally glued to this drive to seek advantage and domination.  No doubt many, if not most, corporations who love to achieve “too big to fail” status. Hardly anyone questions endless growth or concentration of power as a concern. As in cancer, we often find out too late, that such an unchecked appetite is fatal.

Of course, our recent political season, is emblematic of that same notion in our political system. Both major parties are out to dominate. When in power they change the rules to benefit their position and condition. The Republican Party took this to new levels upon the election of Barack Obama, when Sen. Mitch McConnell  said “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Of course, the game of gerrymandering is all about securing party advantage. We just assume this kind of “seeking advantage” is normal, and therefore acceptable.

Step this up a notch to global affairs and the predominant  ethos among most of the more powerful nation states is too secure as much advantage as possible for as long as possible over every other nation. This is emblazoned in the veto power of the permanent members of the Security Council and the special powers they hold over the global community.  In the US we never heard from any of the presidential candidates any commitment to any sense of a just global governance system. I don’t even think there was single mention of the United Nations.  US exceptionalism is just one symbol of advantage and dominance sought. There seems to be no real sense of seeking unity, certainly not from the five permanent members of the SC.

In this all-encompassing worldview -- winning for oneself, one’s team, one’s state, or one’s nation is the true goal. The others, the losers, don’t matter. They are separate from us. They don’t matter. There is no room for empathy or compassion when winning, or seeking advantage, is the goal. As I sit here this evening thinking about these things, I see no desirable future with this worldview for the human family or the other living things we share this planet with. Some folks will surely find their condition and position superior to others. Until we challenge this unfettered myth that we can escape terrorism, climate destabilization, and increasing inequality if everyone simply seeks their own advantage, we are destined to heighten those same challenges. Our obsession with and fealty to spectator sports is a reinforcing loop to these more important systems where advantage and domination are the prize.

For all its many imperfections, the human family took a major step together at the end of WWII with the establishment of the United Nations. Recently those 193 member nations agreed on 17 goals to attain together by 2030 if we are to live well together on this fragile planet for the remainder of this century. The Sustainable Development Goals offer us a framework for making choices at all levels. How do the choices we make affect the attainment of those goals across the globe? If we are fixing one goal but making attainment of another less likely we can’t make the progress we need. We will need collective intelligence of many to insure our choices move multiple goals forward at the same time and that improvement in one place does not put another place in jeopardy. This is where democracy, especially in the sense that we are ALL global citizens holds some promise, some possibility that we must seize.

This is a major change in worldviews, at least as represented by the visible systems and leaders in this country. As has been the case in the past, change of this level must be led from the grassroots -- from us as individuals and members of communities. Let’s hope it’s not too late. Imagine a world where everyone is secure economically – good shelter, ample good food, good and plentiful water, and personal security wherever they live.  We can do this if we share and work to rid ourselves of the seeds of violence and domination. This is system change I can believe in.

We Are What We Eat/Read

We took our son, Noah and his partner, Andy, to dinner last night at a new Thai restaurant in Detroit, Katoi. 

The menu was unique to my culinary experience. The mix of tastes and combinations of ingredients was so distinctive, that I could not possibly imagine what these combinations might taste like.

I was struck this morning while reading from two different books on my table: David Harvey’s Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism (Oxford, 2014) 



and Rethinking Economic Policy for Social Justice: The Radical Potential of Human Rights  by Radhika Balakrishnan, James Heintz, and Diane Elson (Routledge, 2016).

Like reading the menu last night, I had no clear picture on what reading from either of these books this morning might taste like. While each of these two books pulled from the pile have some focus on economic policy, they are totally different in orientation and style.

But reading each of them triggered numerous thoughts, including an urge to write something about how the menus of our life change as the available ingredients are in either surplus or scarcity.  Reading this morning took me back to several other recurring thoughts that have seeped into this feeble brain over the past few months.

For instance, while in the actual world the economy is the wholly owned subsidiary of our environment and social world, it is pragmatically dominant to both. Which leads me to believe that solving our inequality and climate change challenges must focus on our economic policies. But as Balakrishnan and colleagues assert, this process must be based upon true democratic process of “public reasoning” to borrow from Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. In spirit, that’s what this blog has had at its heart from the beginning some 200 plus entries ago. Can we consider alternatives,  other “possibilities” to our arrangements that will, in Balakrishnan’s et. al. view, help all of us achieve the human rights that the family of nations has concurred with in the UN Declaration of Human Rights?

Human rights are indeed about individual freedoms. This is a critical aspect of the way human rights frames issues of social justice. But the human rights framework insists that full realization of these rights requires a strong state, international cooperation, and robust social institutions. It recognizes that claiming individual rights demands collective action and responsibility. The human rights approach ensures individual freedoms – including economic, social, and cultural rights, as well as civil and political rights. But there must also be a collective responsibility, exercised through the state, and through cooperation between states for realizing these individual rights. (p.6)

 Other thoughts followed from this including an infatuation I have with the idea of organizing, through some grant assistance, an annual parallel public budgeting process that would mirror the federal budgeting process that beings with the President’s budget release in late January, early February. My idea is that it would transpire over a month or two beginning with a day of looking at existing revenues and expenditures and their trends over time. This overview would be led by  economic and political aware presenters. Following this would by a weekend of a public discussion of values that should guide development of a budget. From this would follow a process akin to Participatory Budgeting where a random group of participants would be selected to draft two or three versions of a “People’s Budget”. These options would then be made available for discussion and vote.

The importance is that this becomes an annual local event. It helps inform the citizenry about the tradeoffs and challenges in allocating resources and collecting revenues. It would subsequently, through media coverage – including of course social media --  impact public policy makers as to the popular will of the people, through a more “public reasoning” process.

Now as I glanced at the other books on my table that I have been alternating between over the past couple of weeks other ideas break through the soil:

William Gaudelli Global Citizenship Education: Everyday Transcendence (Routledge, 2016)
How might we reshape education to improve the chances those who follow can build a more socially just and equitable world to live in? 

Joseph Siracusa Nucear Weapons: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2015)
Can we eliminate nuclear weapons and use the savings, including the $1 trillion our peace President proposes to spend over the next 30 years on them, to help reach the recently agreed upon Sustainable Development Goals?

Colin Tudge Six Steps Back to the Land: Why We Need Small Mixed Farms and Millions More Farmers (Green Books, 2016)
If we are to reduce our footprint on our ecological systems before they collapse, is not a return to small, local, mixed, caring farming essential?

Michael McLeod (ed.) The Best Buddhist Writing of 2008 (Shambala, 2008)
How important is personal transformation to the change we need to see in the world? Does one proceed from the other?

Joseph Schwartzberg Transforming the United Nations System: Designs for a WorkableWorld (United Nations University Press, 2013)
Is it even possible to create a more violent free world without some form of collective/shared responsibility and governance like the United Nations? How might we move such ideas forward to center stage in a world of nation states committed to competition and dominance?

Charles Derber and Yale Magrass Bully Nation: How the American Establishment Creates a Bullying Society (University of Kansas Press, 2016)
Do the systems that drive us endorse bullying and domination, and if so, does it guarantee losers along with winners? Is this something we can live with or need to challenge?

Many questions continue to circulate on a daily if not hourly basis in this head. I don’t know what is on tomorrow’s menu, but I’m confident that some new taste experience is out there. We are what we eat and to some extent what we read. What's on your bookshelf?

The Exceptional Bully

Upon glancing at our local Sunday paper this morning, I realized why what appears to be a majority of the public, knows little of the rest of the world. It rarely exists in the pages of local media. I suspect my rather late recognition of the obviousness of this observation was jolted to consciousness as a result of the recent political conventions and three current titles in my possession.

I just finished H. Peter Langille's Developing a United Nations Emergency Peace Service this morning



 and have begun Joseph Schwartzberg's Transforming the United Nations System: Designs for a Workable World.

For the two national conventions the focus was solely on our exceptionalism. If other nations and their people even exist it must be as terrorists or economic competitors. There was no mention of the United Nations or any global effort to address the challenges facing us as a human family on a finite planet. There is Trump's personal exceptionalism belief, and Clinton's American exceptionalism dogma. My realization aligns well with the third new book on my reading table, Charles Derber and Yale Magrass' Bully Nation: How the American Establishment Creates a Bullying Society. 



I find it astounding that there is almost no discussion of the need for global responses to the challenges that face us. That there really is, if you read the paper or watch the politicians, only the U.S. to save the world. If you are Donald Trump supporter, you likely add him to the savior list. That we might even conceive of building a global democracy seems inconceivable if you listened to any of the speeches at either convention. Yet, without the albeit imperfect United Nations more of the global fabric would be torn and tattered than we find it today. We need to strengthen it not ignore it.

     We profoundly constrain our ability to imagine alternative, brighter futures if we insist that               every single proposal be weighed down by the heavy ball and chain of "PPP" -- present                   political possibility. Nothing will ever become politically realistic unless someone first declares         it to be politically desirable -- and proclaims it, however distantly, as an eventual historical               goal. If politics, as every freshman knows, is the art of the possible, then political change ought      to be about expanding the boundaries of future possibility. (Tad Daley, as cited in Langille p.94) 

Langille has tackled the boundaries of future possibility of a global peace service with this important work. He has studied and built on all the efforts that have brought us thus far in an efforts by the human family to govern ourselves. His proposals seem sound and surely the need has never been greater.



The International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect notes in a stunning infographic of the 60,000,000 displaced persons for the huge need for security and shelter. 42,500 persons are displace EVERY DAY. That somehow we might think we can continue to ignore this issue without blowback seems foolish. Ignoring this accelerating nightmare won't have it go away. Bless the many civil society roups and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees for doing what they can with limited resources.

I find some solace that there are networks of people around the globe who are working to make the concept of a global democracy a human security a political possibility, knowing with much evidence that it may not occur in their lifetimes. But it is through the aspirations voiced by the global community through the auspices of the United Nations system that lead us towards a better world.


Last fall's global agreement on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's) is perhaps just the latest version. Agreeing to those 17 goals with aspirations to achieve them by 2030 is a significant step. It surely doesn't mean we will get there, but if we can collectively agree to aim there, our chances  improve. Such is the spirit that spurs Langille to tackle reasonable approaches to creating global standing and standby forces that can be sent quickly into emergency situations, whether they involve conflict, disasters, or any emergency need where we have a responsibility to protect the vulnerable. Goal number 16 is PEACE. Langille helps us move towards it.

One additional possible positive consequence of developing such a peace service could be less need for individual nations to spend so much on their own separate military forces, thus allowing funds to be used for human development and environmental protection.

While I'm not far enough into to Schwartzberg's book to give any kind of synopsis, I can speak to the insights that professors Derber and Magrass are making in Bully Nation. While they applaud the rising interest in dealing with schoolyard bullies through counseling and for both the bully and the bullied, they believe that the emphasis on bullying as a psychological issue misses the larger social systems that conspire to nurture a bullying culture. I am not far enough into it to relay their arguments sufficiently, but already I sense some solid truth in their analysis.

With Donald Trump playing the bully role to the max these days, perhaps he will help us awaken to our own nation's bullying efforts which we seem to believe are appropriate because we are exceptional. We need to come to the realization that we're all in this together soon. These three books help us see the way forward to fulfilling that idea. Read on....