If you are a small business operator starting out in a new direction, as I am, there is so much to consider beyond the usual business plan if you are also a political creature, as I am.
When I was a graduate student studying semiotic analysis of cultural systems, my major professor told me there were two kinds of people: lumpers and splitters. There are those who are contextual and inclusive and those who are detail oriented and exclusive. I try to include as much contextual information as possible in my decision making and I can get bogged down in details, but usually I get wrapped up in threads or linked connections, so I think of myself as a lumper.
So today I am writing about the some of the significant, but often under-valued, contexts within which local business takes place.
We are careening into shopping season. This Friday is called Black Friday. While some say the term relates to Philadelphia and traffic snarls noted on this day in the 1960s, I am talking about its meaning as a day when stores go into the black, as in show a profit. There is some truth to this meaning especially in difficult economic times. Holiday shopping can make or break businesses. It is also promotes buying a bunch of plastic, foreign-made items that no one really needs.
One approach to countering this cult of consumerist crap buying is Buy Nothing Day. Observance of this day is counter to the concept of Black Friday. I don’t go for the stuck in traffic purchase frenzy of flaring frustrations and tempers that is this the day after Thanksgiving. So this year I plan to have this Friday be a Walk to a Neighborhood Store or Buy Local Day. This is where I am a lumper and not a splitter. I am combining the reality of this Friday being a day off from work for most folks when Christmas shopping can be done with the reality that we as patriotic Americans and concerned local community members in that I will NOT go to Target, WalMart, or any Big Box Stores and only go to locally owned businesses. This is a compromise as I’m not saying don’t go to local franchises, and I’m just saying buy local, don’t buy junk, and if possible shop in your neighborhood… and maybe bake something, visit a neighbor, or play a board game with your family.
Everybody Look What's Going Down
I personally think some “major shit is going down” as we used to say early in my youth. Life doesn’t run smoothly even when it is running smoothly, it comes in bunches, in fits and starts. Statisticians know clusters occur and folk wisdom also shows an appreciation of this in sayings such as, “things happen in threes.”
Most of these patterns are beyond our perception but sometimes we see small segments of them and name them.
Now I’m not going to give too much significance to these occurrences, BUT there does seem to be something happening. Human culture does have patterns that we name. Systems of human organization we have named include: social, political, economic, kinship, religious, legal, technology, and language. All these systems have fluid trajectories and sometimes these system trajectories are at odds with each other. Our economic system is at odds with our political system. One is designed to create surplus and accumulation by the few while our political system supports the distribution of surplus through infrastructure and social programs. Our society arose in an overall environment of plenty where frontiers existed and more bounty was just over the horizon.
But we now have 7 billion people on this earth and we are in the middle of massive planet-wide shifts environmentally that will change every thing. Individuals can chose to believe in whatever they want to, but that is not likely to change the global patterns of which we are but a small part.
Social systems will change if we are to survive. Several systems that have been growing in incompatible directions are readjusting in ways that are difficult for those of us within the system to appreciate. Distribution of influence versus consolidation of influence have been vying with each other for for centuries.
Monarchies are on the way out. But the inheritance of wealth and prestige still very much exists. We no longer think our rulers are gods, but we seem to mostly believe that our rulers have a singular god on their side. We espouse equality, but we look the other way when powerful people rape children. We say that our country is based on freedom and equality, but wealth is consolidated among 1% and the freedom of the individual is waning while more and more groups are asserting their supposed right to inflict their will on the individual. These groups are corporations, religions, and military-economic alliances, yet groups were not supposed to have the same rights as people in this county because the founders were trying to rid themselves of the tyranny of Crown backed corporations that were given massive land grants in the New World as well as the tyranny of state sanctioned religions. People in the newly United States were to be free of corporate rule and free to believe as they wished without state intrusion into religious thought.
What is happening in the U.S. seems like a left leaning realignment toward individual rights with restraints placed on those that would “rule” rather than govern, after an orchestrated power grab over the last few decades by those who would see themselves as “rulers.”
In my next post I will look at this past weeks significant newsworthy developments with an eye toward what these significant and competing cultural processes at work in the world today might signify culturally. These are: Occupy groups, the outing of corrupt college sports empires that had been covering up serial child rape for decades, the ouster of the architect of the institutionalized racism of AZ SB 1070, a conservative southern Christian state decided to retain a woman’s right to choose, a conservative rust belt state decided to reinstate collective bargaining. And even internationally there are signs that powerful men might not be getting away with morally reprehensible acts as Dominique Strauss-Kahn is now being linked to a French prostitution scandal.
Here's Hoping The Lean Toward Political Sanity Lasts
I’m still somewhat awash in happiness over local and far-off year election results of yesterday. While I would have loved to see Mary DeCamp as mayor of Tucson, a Green Party Mayor isn’t in the stars for us just yet. I am very, very happy that the lobbyist for Rosemont Copper, also known as the Republican candidate for Mayor in yesterday’s election, aka Rick Grinnell, was soundly defeated. The airwaves were blanketed with anti-Democratic candidate ads for the days leading up to the election and pro-Rosemont mine ads have been everywhere for the last month. Lots of corporate money went into anti-Rothschild and anti-Democratic, and pro-corporate mining ads before the election.
Arizona knows mines. Abandoned mining towns such as Ruby are evidence of the temporary nature of mines. The toxic warning signs posted around what is left of Ruby are evidence of the long-term impact of the use of toxic substances in the mining process. The Santa Rita Mtns are some of the most beautiful, and avian species rich, land in the U.S.A. Just take a look at Madera Canyon in the Santa Ritas. Birding, nature, hiking, picnicking, vacation cabins and the like are apt to last much longer than a mine while bringing in tourists and providing respite for locals. Of course the owners of Rosemont Copper Company, a subsidiary of Augusta Resource Corporation are sort of like tourists too, just ask the Canadians at its headquarters in Vancouver, BC, but ones with heavy equipment and massive need for limited water supplies.
So I’m still pleased as punch, to the point of being somewhat punchy, over the City of Tucson not being home to a Lobbyist Mayor. I believe small local business will benefit from our more traditional soon to be mayor Jonathan Rothschild even though one large foreign corporation may not want to hear that.
The second happy thought generating event that is still buoying my disposition today is the resounding defeat of Russell Pearce in the recall election in Mesa, AZ.
The fact that the loss of the mayoral race by my friend Mary DeCamp, Green Party Candidate, to a middle of the road Democrat and the election of a moderate Republican, Jerry Lewis, over Pearce, actually makes me happy shows just how extreme the concerns of Progressives like myself have become in the last few years in this state.
The sensible defeat of the attempt to grant personhood status to blastocytes in Mississippi and the reaffirmation by the people of people to be able to gather together and discuss labor issues and act collectively in Ohio are also quite heartening, and overall I am very, very pleased that some sensible movement away from extremist positions seems to have begun across the country including in my own state.
I do dearly hope that the right of individuals to have control over their own lives is being reasserted in opposition to Religious Group and Corporate Group attempts to usurp the sovereignty of the individual over his or her own body and behavior.
Who Owns the Media VS. Who Drives the Media?
I’m trying to get ready for BlogHer San Diego (Woot! Woot!) and have so much to do! But I wanted to talk about how markets may change significantly because of a potential change in media ownership. Don’t know how as yet. I’m not psychic. Just astute. But I’m so darn busy I haven’t been able to update everything as yet. So, if this is cryptic, leave a comment and we can talk. Social Media folks better take note of what is coming down the pipeline for Corporate Media. Just look below at this Ad Week screen capture from my computer this a.m.
Ads drive media. Even we little gal bloggers and sole proprietors know that. So while Corporate Media wields incredible amounts of power, it may be declining with the evolving downfall of Murdock Media Manipulation. Advertisers go with the flow. If ADWEEK has “Hacked” as a banner story and when you click on it you get this page, you something is going down for News Corp. I watch the news, I follow lots of stories, but the times I’ve anticipated trends, which is one of the things at which I excel, it is because I see something that is glaringly obvious such as this page.
Oh, as an aside I used Gimp to blur the ads and my open tabs on this screen shot so you can see the useful nature of Gimp, which I still LOVE. Open source, community based, I get tingly just using phrases like these.
Ad Week covers the ad industry. The ad industry drives media. The ad industry will not back corporate media if it is disadvantageous to them. After the dust settles on this issue (in about two and a half years) small dispersed media will be more important sooner than anyone had expected due to total lack of trust of Big Media (and maybe Big Business too, wouldn’t that be nice for us little persons?) So social media moguls in the offing, be aware of what is changing in your world at this very moment.
Social Media will be the frame for media even sooner than expected because of what I like to call “Fox Fall.” Isn’t that poetic?
Now, how to make some money on that…. let’s talk if you have ideas. I added a contact form on this site. It will be shaping up to be even more useful soon.
I’m finishing up a website for someone, I’m hoping to do before and after images, but am waiting on permission for that) and restructuring everything in my life, again, as I have been doing all year — but with a difference. I’m healthy and raring to go for the first time in a long, long while, have lost 15 lbs so far, can breathe easily — nose surgery — who’d a thunk it? I’m writing up a storm, but I’m ready for more website work so send me some info about your website needs and we can discuss simplification and standardization. And remember, “Buy Little & Buy Local.”