Online Privacy and Values Readjustment

The disruptions that come with new technology often bring discomfort to those who would rather return to the way things were before (keeping of course the benefit that the new technology brings).

Consider automobiles in the early 20th century as an example. Most of us today drive or at least ride in automobiles but also realize that there are drawbacks. We enjoy the benefit of personal, flexible travel but would like to eliminate the traffic deaths and injuries, air pollution, generalized stress of automobile traffic and a host of social ills such as anonymity and isolation and the alterations to our landscape that the use of autos has brought. We like the mobility but not the public health and environmental drawbacks. These unintended consequences are disruptive and although objectionable to us, they are not enough for most of us to stop using cars.

French Misrepresentation in U.S. culture mid-20th century

When I was growing up I was exposed to stereotypes of a wide variety of people via popular media. These messages were of course untrue and unfair but some of them were so distorted and pervasive so as stick with me and many other kids of my generation for a long time. One of them dealt with the French, particularly French men. The juvenile American television, movies and cartoons I watched caricatured males from this country to the point of ridicule. I've met plenty of Frenchmen throughout my life who are no different from American, English or Australian men, but as a boy I was left with the impression that French men were weak, effeminate and overly emotional. 

Kids growing up in the U.S. in the mid 20th century were told repeatedly that the French man was a namby-pamby weakling. They were often either artists or chefs or some other occupation stereo-typically associated with women and they displayed this in their interpersonal behavior, for example when they cried if they heard the French song, 'The Marseilles'. 

Additionally, most French men in comedies, dramas or (especially) cartoons had what we might consider thin and very weak mustaches. While Americans had Mark Twain or Teddy Roosevelt mustaches, strong and thick and robust as the American west, the French either had pencil-thin mustaches or goatees or something that seemed to violate an American sense of virility.

This caricature of French males could have grown out of government propaganda just after the Second World War, perhaps because of the American GI rescue or maybe it came from some personal vendetta among those in Hollywood and other media production types. I suppose it grew out of a young America seeing France overrun twice in the first half of the century.

There were some notable exceptions to this unfair media stereotyping. One was the French-Canadian lumberjack type who appeared in several cartoons of the period. He was an unshaven, burly guy who wore a knit hat and plaid hunting jacket. Two other exceptions, the Pink Panther's Inspector Clouseau and Warner Brothers' French skunk, Pepe Le Pew, defied most of the messages that Frenchmen were lily-livered weaklings, although neither was terribly masculine like John Wayne or James Bond. And both perpetuated the bumbling idiot portrayal of French males to  American men.

 

The stereotype sometimes suggested homosexuality or hyper-sexuality (as we see in the Warner Brothers' Pepe Le Pew). I've nothing against French men or gay men but it reminds me of a bit of graffiti I once saw in a Baltimore restroom:

"Brian Murphy slept here with 4 french sailors and is still a virgin."

There were four of them.
They were sailors.
They were French.
And they still turned down Brian Murphy

Market State v. Nation State

Many people (including myself) have said that the modern nation-state--just over 250 years old--is nearing the end of its useful life. Some day I will go into the reasons or the causes but for now I will just point to the many others who have said the same thing. The lesson may be that governance over more than just a few hundred thousand people is impractical in today's world but regardless, the days of the nation-state are numbered.

Some say that it will be replaced with what could be characterized as a market-state. I don't know much about this theory except that it appears to align with the long-standing assertion that we owe more and more of our allegiance and livelihood to the private sector (corporations, etc.) than to the government to which we remit our cash in the form of taxes. Again, I will save the details on corporate rule for another post but only note that the market-state, most commonly associated with the author, Philip Bobbitt, supports the growing recognition that multi-national corporations rule the world--including those presidents, prime ministers, legislators and members of parliament who are purported to govern.

Reconciliation of Historical Disparities in Standards of Living

A reconciliation between the standards of living in the industrialized countries of Europe and North America on one hand and the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America is inevitable. Just as in the physical sciences, particles with a negative charge and those with a positive charge cannot exist for long without a spark jumping between them to eliminate the disparity, the vast uneven-ness of our income and wealth distribution over the last 50-100 years will inevitably change.

Nothing illustrates this more clearly than the almost irresistible flow of migrants from these poor countries to Europe and North America in search of work and wealth--even in jobs requiring heavy physical labor and paying near minimum wage. Migrants save and borrow what is to them large sums of money only to spend it on human smugglers and often extremely dangerous transport across desert or sea to reach the place where the industrial revolution cultivated an opulence that these migrants feel they can achieve only by risking their homes, years away from their children and in some cases, their very lives.

And because of the difference in numbers between the global haves and have-nots, it is more likely that the reconciliation which takes place will mean the standard of living in the industrialized rich world be reduced far more than they will be raised for the poor, developing world. In other words, U.S. lifestyles will fall far more than African lifestyles will rise. Most of us would agree that despite their desire for western lifestyles, it is unsustainable for 2 billion Chinese and Indians (to say nothing of the others) to eat meat and have personal and recreational use of automobiles on the level that has existed in North America for so long. There are just too many poor and too few wealthy for the reconciliation to happen any other way.

Still, some friends of mine argue that there is no solid reason why this is going to happen. They believe that things will stay basically the same as they have throughout their (admittedly short) lifetimes. But I answer that what I call the "Third world-ization" of the U.S. is happening now. Consider the characteristics of what we traditionally call a Third World country:

• Enormous disparities in wealth and a very small middle-class
• Crumbling infrastructure (e.g. roads, bridges, public utilities)
• The export of raw materials and import of finished goods

These are only a few but I think any first-time visitor to the less developed world notices these things. What they may not notice is that we are beginning to see these developments in the U.S.Clearly a middle class is growing in the less developed world. For most of the last century, these countries were characterized by extreme wealth among a small minority and grinding poverty for an overwhelming majority. The increasingly easy of movement of capital, information and labor occurring in the last 25 or so years facilitated economic investment by multinational corporations and that has brought millions out of poverty. (There have been harmful by-products of this investment by foreign corporations, but I will leave that for another essay.)