DFNYC Socializing Is Circle 3 For Me

Social Concentric Circles

People have their own ways of seeing things. I have drawn this diagram that throws light on my idea of social reality.

Privacy is important. To me. It is very important.

At some level I am a loner. I have to spend a lot of time on my own. I have to read and write and listen to music. On my own. I have to surf the web, on my own. I am more like an artist than a politician that way. Or maybe I am a different kind of political worker than the stereotype allows for. My emphasis is not on shaking many hands. Although meeting people is sheer joy. But I think I am selective. I do it for the joy of it, not to please people. So I skip when I decide to skip.

And if you are someone I meet in circle 3, I am not going to pretend I am meeting you in circle 2. Circle 1 is out of bounds. Like Amitabh Bachchan once said when asked about his marriage, "And why am I discussing that with the world?" Some people can talk about their private life, or at least parts of it, like they were talking about the weather. I can't. That's just me.

This is important to me to explain. Because some people in circle 3 wrongly assume getting "close" means you try and invade the guy's privacy. There is this urge to force open the circle perimeter. You lose your space in my circle 3 that way. You move to the "wedge," or you move to a further, outer circle, or you plain disappear.

As DFNYC expands, and Dean 2008 takes off, most people I will be meeting will be in the outer circles. Circles 5, 6 and 7.

At some level, this is about honesty. It is also about being effective. It is also wisdom, I think. The detachment this model offers is also emotionally healthy.

This is not to say you are cold to the people in the outer circles. It means you don't pretend to be closer than you are. And you actually relate better, because you know the rules of the game are different in the outer circles. You communicate more effectively. You relate more effectively. You suffer from fewer illusions.

A Few Diagrams

Mumzee's Kitchen

I just bumped into this blog: Mumzee's Kitchen. More specifically its latest blog entry that was posted at another site: Howard Dean And The Demo Money Problem.

She has some great stuff to say. And she is not exactly under 30. Here are some samplers.

..... there were many of us "small people" who were willing to dig into our very shallow pockets to donate whatever we could spare ..... The progressives among us became understandably gun-shy. We are holding our fire and keeping our little bits of money in our pockets until we are sure that it will be used on behalf of those policies which we espouse ..... The great majority of us who are at the bottom of the human food chain have had enough of the same old "kiss the rich and screw the poor" choices that we have had for the last 24 years! We are sick and tired of being required to choose "the lesser of two evils" on election day, of holding our noses as we mark our ballots. We want to support someone who can think constructively, who will restore our democracy to "one man, one vote, and actually count the votes", who will stop spending our grandchildren's money on a needless and un-winnable war, and who will concentrate on rebuilding our national economy with real jobs by restoring our neglected super-structure and salvaging whatever is left of our damaged society ...... We need a candidate with guts, who will speak truth to power, a real barn-burning ass-kicker who is not afraid to tell the American people the truth about the liars and manipulators who have held our very existence in their hands for much too long ...... We hear our corporations complaining that the pension plans for long-term employees are crippling them financially. There is an answer to that problem and they should be made to understand what that answer is. The cap should come off the Social Security contributions to allow that program to grow as it once did and that pension expense would no longer be necessary. When they cry about the cost of maintaining employee health insurance, they should be reminded that universal health insurance, with an administrative expense of only the 2% cost of administering Medicare would relieve them of that responsibility. Those who complain about the taxes that would be necessary to pay for these programs should be presented with facts and figures on what they currently pay for private insurance compared to the taxes necessary to fund universal health care and learn that their own financial situation would actually improve ......

Some of the points on retirement and health insurance are great pointers. Got to crunch a few numbers.

Lee Metcalf Is A Naderite

Soviet Health Care In America

The proof is in the pudding. If the health care sector in this country were driven by market forces it would be at the forefront of adopting information technology. But it is dead last. Even the pizza industry, especially the pizza industry, is ahead of it in that adoption race.

Health care reform in this country has to be about introducing market forces into the sector. Costs have to be brought down for all participants.

Expanding insurance coverage has to start with children. Once you can make sure it is there for all children, and while you work it, there will open up ways to see how it can also be expanded among the adult population.

There are many ideas out there, many good ideas. The sector is such a huge chunk of the economy, any reform effort necessarily has to be a rather large conversation. A large, inclusive conversation that is also near transparent, that is the model I have in mind.

The last good effort was Hillary's but it did not fare well on the transparency part. She also drew a lot of flak as a woman steering policy. So a political fight against sexism has to be part of health care reform. And Bill Clinton was not sufficiently invested. For a president this has to be top priority.

And of course a culture shift from an illness-focus to a wellness-focus.