Compartmentalized

Around a week ago, Standard and Poor's gave the United States a credit downgrade, the first for the US in 70 years. Hard times must be up ahead, even for the Yanks. Hi-Ho.

Randy David, a Filipino columnist tells his story about the "Humbling of America." A humble America will have a trickle effect on ours and many other nations. We export to America, and other countries we export to use the raw materials we export to them, to export to America.

Among the many things that compound this problem, he writes, "They are shocked to learn that their country’s biggest single foreign creditor is China, forgetting that long before the recession, American consumption was already being funded by Chinese savings. They are traumatized by the thought that someday US companies would be owned and run by Chinese bosses."

Also around, a week ago, I was reading an easy read in the best possible way (which is reading by the beach, during a vacation), Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick or Lonesome No More. In this novel, the Chinese had closed their Embassy in Washington, as they no longer needed anything or had anything to do with the United States. They had also compartmentalized themselves, becoming so tiny to the point of invisibility. In the process, they save their resources because of the minimal requirements of things small. They have also experimented with the with gravity through an an expedition of the lost secrets of the Incas. The Chinese also had colonies in Mars. They were creating millions and millions of geniuses.

The China piece isn't what the novel is about, but that's probably what's most relevant at this point. The prevailing notion nowadays is how hard it is to find anything that's not made in China.

There's a Picasso quote that goes, "art is a lie that makes us realize the truth." Hi-Ho.

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"I spoke of American loneliness... It was a shame, I said, that I had not come along earlier in American history with my simple and workable anti-loneliness plan. I said that all the damaging excesses of Americans in the past were validated by loneliness rather than a fondness for sin."

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Aside from ending some of my paragraphs with "So it goes," I'd like to think that Vonnegut has some influence on me. He clearly executed that wry sense of humor that worked on dismantling a xenophobic American culture and their megalomania with both a down-to-earth and out-of-this-world sci-fi approach.

Slapstick, he said in the prologue, was also the closest he had to an autobiography. That was my favorite part: the prologue. It often spoke of love for a sibling.

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And yeah, in a world that centers on consumption, I've go to keep myself debt free, and save before spending.

For the last time, Hi-Ho.