I've weighed the way three institutions have historically unshaped our idea of democracy as a model of human relations. I now turn to look at how these cultural tendencies impact public discourse and our apparent inability to settle any public issue.
The validation of a personal, individualistic point of view in American culture to the exclusion of an objective, shared, and collective perspective constantly puts us at odds with one another because individuals normally disagree in judgement, interpretations, and opinions.
Continuing my discussion of our turn towards individual points of view to the exclusion of larger concerns, I propose that in the last half century, American education has focused on student subjectivity pushing the culture towards individuation rather than cohesion.
Continuing the series "Assaying Entropy," I continue to develop a description of how the original idea of democracy in America was altered due to the influence of undemocratic structures. The last essay dealt with corporate hierarchy. In the present piece, I discuss the military influence, militarism, and the frontier mentality.
The Constitution created a government around the arguments about democracy, but it did not resolve those conflicts. The resulting ambiguity allowed traditional hierarchical, undemocratic structures, institutions, and values to inform American life. Those hierarchical ideas still dominate American social thinking today resulting in a complex and often self-contradictory identity.
Looking back over the series of essays called "Assaying Entropy," I summarize what has been said: why the topics so far covered are a continuous investigation of loss and time, how that process of thinking got to the question of democracy; and where that may be going.
Some aspects of American society might make us more prone to what psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls fast thinking and thus more prone to make mistakes in judgment when it comes to complex issues like Covid.
In the hearing on the application to transfer water rights to wells in Caballo for use at Copper Flat Mine, the hearing examiner has decided that Percha-Animas Water Association has standing to appear as a protestant against the granting of the application.
Water conservation has been a legal requirement in New Mexico for several decades, but until now, the courts have never discussed or defined the requirement. Yesterday, the Appeals Court gave substance to law by affirming a lower court decision based on conservation principles.
Some limits on our ability to think when we want to think about Covid.
Is our perception of death and of human life changing because of the Covid-19 pandemic?
I am introducing a series of articles in which I view and weigh our present world in light of the concept of entropy, and in this first essay, I explain what entropy is and how it allows us to see the effects of everything that we do.