SAY GOODBYE
Evolution has been around for millions upon millions of years. Many of us presently around at this miniscule point in time are clear benefactors of this astounding God created process. There is no logical reason why this process will end and so there is no need to say goodbye to the evolutionary process, it appears around for the long haul. DIVERSITY and CHANGE are the engines which drive the process and thus the lifestyle many of us know will never exist again. Say goodbye. Even in my own short history, my earlier times cannot be recreated and never will be. It seems more and more evident that we are rapidly approaching a major evolutionary 'catastrophe' which will rewrite, in a major way, the direction of evolution. The process has never been a steady upward straight line, but rather one of upward surges, interrupted by temporary declines or long flat periods of little change.
I have tried, but it is hard to figure out how human behavior and the lifestyles of those of us who are affluent can last much longer. Humans, as a whole, are not yet capable of responsible behavior in the complicated and diverse global environment comprising our existence. On paper we are bright enough to comprehend our responsibilities but in the end greed, selfishness, illusions, lack of empathy, and tunnel vision are driving us down a fatal path.
We understand a lot, we follow through with too little. We understand overpopulation of any species is self destructive but we cannot discipline ourselves, in any organized way, to enforce responsible human reproduction. It is not even much of a discussable point. The world population has like doubled in size since my short time on the planet. We understand natural resources are limited, but act just the opposite and make economic GROWTH our focus. We understand the Golden Rule---all human societies do---but all of us practice this Rule mostly when convenient to do so. We all understand freedom, justice, and the value of diversity but we use our prejudices to limit freedom and justice to others not like us. We understand through life observations that bad and good things can happen to almost anyone but choose to believe God will guide us through the minefields of life IF we are born into the right religion, practice the right rituals, and pray often enough for his assistance. We understand basically how evolution works and how interdependent plant and animal species are on each other in the process, but suffer the illusion that God has given us unlimited dominion over all other species, even the natural resources of the planet. There is no logical basis to believe this, or that humans are God's favorite species, let alone that God made man in the image of himself and thinks like man. No, we invent a God of our liking so that we can justify our individual and collective behaviors as some sort of religious exercise. It is natural enough and easy enough to like ourselves, but the Golden Rule is such a stress as to be in effect mostly when convenient. We understand our individual needs but rarely understand when enough is enough, when enough is as good as a feast.
Part of being fortunate enough to live relatively healthy years in one's terminational phase of life is the chance to say goodbye to so many aspects of one's formative and productive years. For me, it is time to start my farewell tour---to the places of my formative years, to places of my productive years, to the many favorite spots of nature. Of course everything has changed except some of the nature spots and with all the climate uncertainties bearing down on us from man's unrelenting exploitation of our natural resources, these nature settings may change in a short time too. Nature, of course, never vanishes. It changes but will still be there. It is we who vanish like wisps of incense which make a temporary impact and are gone with the wind. This year I plan to make a farewell tour of Rte 1 in California, the redwood forests, Yosemite, my old home town, my alma maters, my former places of employment, and continue each year with my farewell tours. There are, of course, new places I could travel to, but the past means more to me than a present which is mostly irrelevant to someone my age. Farewell tours are not sad, but rekindle fond memories. The sad part is remembering so many who were part of these memories who are long departed from life. I can still feel their essence, whether they be friends, parents, co-workers, pets, teammates, historical admired figures, whatever. What is there left to really do, in the last analysis, but to be grateful for your many unearned blessings in life, to assemble all the pieces of life's puzzle to finalize your understanding of the meaning of life, and then to return money fortunate to have been earned back into the society from which this money came---directing such money to those most in need. Fair is fair and let the Golden Rule prevail so that justice is done.
The wheel of God's evolutionary process spun, we were dealt our cards, we did the best we could with what we had to play with, we used our free will to make a lot of decisions which took us down paths of our own choosing; we learned, we forgot, we failed to learn, we did right by others sometimes, but never all the time, and we strutted about on life's stage, full of energy and sometimes fury, creative occasionally, were swept along with the culture of the times, stood for the right as best we saw fit, but too often our motives and actions were self serving, seldom seeing the big picture but with blinders on often ignored injustice, and in so doing we failed the Golden Rule; and each time we morally failed we made personal contentment elusive; instead we chased false rainbows of materialism, power, sex, titles, popularity, 'family values', fame, and all the other categories of life upon which, if 'enough is enough' fails to reign us in, leaves us a curmudgeon wading in the shallow end of contentment. The finish line is a great leap into the great unknown. The only thing of permanence is TIME. TIME STAYS, WE GO. Say goodnight Gracie.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Sentiments at 70
Sentiments at 70
I have long held that any years after 50 are bonus years. After all, 50 years of a relatively good life is luck enough. SO, at 70 what feelings about life engulf my mental state? The early years seem so long ago now, the productive years seem a bit unreal, and the present is filled with a feeling of having been very lucky. In no way do I look at the less lucky and pass off their less fortunate lives with any form of "well, they could be as contented as me if they would have gained such contentment the old fashioned way---EARNED IT". The most ludicrous and yet oft comment I hear from so many is that "It is my money, I earned it!!!". And they actually mean it. Or they humbly give the credit to the grace of God, a grace no doubt, in their mind, earned also.
I, like most people, believe in God. Life is a gift, and where there is a gift, there has to be a gift giver. The gift giver is God. HOWEVER, I consider it an absurdity that God would pass on religious dogma via inherited religion. And even more absurd that God's dogma would be written down by humans decades after a prophet of some sort dies. I doubt God is illiterate. And if one believes God is a fair God then He doesn't pass on words of salvation by inherited religion.
SO THEN, just how is ethical behavior instilled in the human psyche? Ethical behavior, like every other aspect of life, is a consequence of the evolutionary process---a process created by God and driven by the laws of evolution---laws created by God Himself. There is no need to debate the brilliance of the evolutionary process or the endless onward progress of the process. So many life forms, ever more complex and advanced, have been generated from this process, including the human species. Humans like to place themselves as some sort of favored species or even create an image of God which casts Him in the role of giving each of us individual protections IF---the big IF---we follow the certain tenets of human devised inherited religious rituals and dogma.
I like to think with maturity I outgrew these self centered notions. I simply no longer believe God arranged for a certain sperm to meet a certain egg so that I might exist. And of course for that to happen God would have to have arranged for my parents to marry too, or at least pause in an alley for sex. Of course anyone is entitled to believe any religious concepts they choose. Beliefs are not facts although beliefs can be structured around known facts and logic. Because sectarian religious beliefs are not facts such sectarian dogmas should never be allowed to become the law of the land. Over time, less and less of them are. That is the nature of the evolutionary progress. The evolutionary process is governed by genes, environment, and chance. Survival of the fittest reigns and since the fittest, in the big picture, are the best such evolutionary laws can generate, evolution has an upward progress. To postulate that God actually micromanages His created process outside the laws He created to drive the process is irrational--- IF we perceive God to be a good and just God.
At some point in my life I decided it was ludicrous for me to pray for certain outcomes in my life. Luck has been good to me, or chance if that is a better word, and for me to think a just God would intercede for me with my relatively minor problems and let children in other places die from starvation, let brutal rapes occur, let really moral and good people die a slow and painful death from a cruel debilitating disease, etc. is just beyond logic. This would be the ultimate in self serving beliefs. Either God cannot intercede to prevent all this human misery across the globe, and is therefore powerless, or He could but won't, and therefore He is unjust and evil. Put more bluntly, if God could, but won't stop a brutal rape of a child, then just what is it that God could ask of anyone of us who could, but won't stop any similar cruelty? The best sectarian religious leaders have ever come up with is "Well, God acts in mysterious ways". Yeah, I guess so, but that is like the parent who tells their child, in some form or fashion, "Yours is not to reason why, but to do or die."
It is illogical to say ethics cannot be a reasoned process or an inherent human characteristic. The ability to do math is an inherited human characteristic evolved during the long drawn out evolutionary process. There is no reason to believe that ethics is any different in origin. Most humans everywhere (minus mental conditions) understand right from wrong. Whether any particular human chooses to do the right rather than the wrong is another story. Some of the worst human behavior in history has been done in the name of inherited sectarian religion. And this continues to be the case. Like with inherited mathematical ability, some humans are better at math than others. So too with human ethics. The golden rule is never refuted as the ultimate standard of ethical behavior. To the extent humans collectively follow this universal ethical principle, then justice, mercy, and peace prevail. This, condensed, is essentially my religious belief. Does God ever intercede with His own laws of evolution? Hard to say, but it clearly cannot be often. I suppose one could argue that Lincoln was given a certain wisdom by God to break the back of slavery and get our country through the Civil War. There was certainly nothing in anything Lincoln ever said or did prior to his run for the Senate four years before the war which can remotely match the quality of what he wrote and said from that point on. Just seems strange that a man could so suddenly become possessed with such wisdom and literary excellence---especially given only a few months of formal schooling.
Like I said, with such religious belief as above, at 70 years of age I feel mostly fortunate more than anything else. With patience, my good fortune will certainly end and like everyone else, I will GO, TIME will STAY. One of my good fortunes was to have parents who parented by example, not autocratic discipline. For a child of my own genetic make up, it turned me into a neutral observer of life, gave me the freedom to have a lot of experiences with a wide range of other people, to appreciate diversity, not resent it. Along with this parental franted freedom came a steady reminder that when I was 18 I was going to be on my own. Period. And that pretty much came with a strong period. This strategy worked well given my own personality, but not so good with my brother who had a much different personality. As a teacher I quickly observed that raising kids is individualized, the methodology employed has to match the inherent nature of the parents and child. What may work for one child may not work for the other. Being a good parent seems to be an awesome task. Some clearly are not up to it and how easy it is to raise a kid varies greatly from kid to kid. It is all part of how evolution works. Not much in the evolutionary process is easy.
At 70 I view life in three stages---the formative years, the productive years, and the terminational years. My productive years have been over for almost 15 years. Each stage is different. I certainly lucked out in my formative years, those years in which a child has the least control over their own destiny. The productive years are by nature the most self centered. One wrestles with their social life, career, materialistic gains, power, love, religion, loyalty, politics, etc. Each person enters their productive years with certain cards in their hands, then chance is thrown in, and the desired results to be achieved are always tenuous at best. I guess for everyone contentment is the goal.
BUT, contentment is often elusive and frequently a mirage which evaporates before our eyes. True love is sometimes found but often lost, escaped, or of limited duration. Much of contentment seems based on knowing when ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. When the bottom line becomes material possessions, power, sex, recreational drugs, a compulsive hobby or activity of any sort including eating---then contentment will become elusive. The new 'family values', really little more than self centered obsession---with a circle the wagons mentality---well, these people do not come across as skippidy do dah dey families at all. They have little tolerance for diversity, little interest in others outside their own families, and I get the impression if they smiled they would fracture their face. If one likes serious fussing about self serving peculiar issues, being around modern family valuers is a genuine party.
The terminational years, for me at least, have necessitated a change in priorities. Good health becomes not something assumed but the foundation upon which all else hinges. For those who ignored preventive health matters most of their life, the chickens are likely to have finally come home to roost. HOWEVER, even those who have lived a healthy life need luck once again. Nothing fundamentally changes in life, the evolutionary process involves genes, environment and chance. You can pray incessantly, center your whole social life around the church, waddle around in material wealth, have the communities best personality and looks, have a herd of grandchildren and YET, none of this will bring more than transient moments of contentment in your terminational years. That is not to say any of the aforementioned is bad or inconsequential, but it is to say therein is not to be found the kind of entrenched contentment we all seek in our terminational years.
SO, from whence do we find contentment? As Lincoln said contemplating the state of our nation, we need start with the same assessment when we enter our terminational years: "If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it...." There is no period in life which requires more self independence for contentment than the terminational years. If, after all these years you cannot amuse yourself in ways attuned to your personal nature, then the terminational years are going to be a bumpy ride. To depend on others to amuse you, to entertain you, to center their lives around you, to take you places, to attend your daily emotional needs is, simply put, almost always FOLLY. FREE AT LAST is most applicable to the terminational years. Free, of course, requires a certain level of economic independence. It takes a comfortable safe place to live, adequate food, and good health to pursue contentment. Of course none of this is guaranteed but for most achievable. Only good health must eventually dissipate.
For the first time in life you are not overwhelmed with learning how to function, learning how to succeed, enmeshed in tangled adventures of love, have a need to look constantly over your shoulder, be responsible for the behavior and success of kids or employees, and all such stuff of which earlier life was comprised. Essentially one becomes, in their terminational years, a retired performer relegated to a permanent seat in the grandstands.
FOR ME, a seat in the grandstands is welcome. Again I have lucked out. To muse, to wander around, to observe people and places, to put all the pieces of life's puzzle gathered up in earlier years---to put them together as some sort of final analysis of life---this is fun, challenging, and leaves me contented. Each day is truly my own, there is no depending on others to amuse me, to take me places, to visit me, to obligate me to do this or that, etc. Let's face it, older people are a threat to younger people who naturally wonder to what extent they are obligating themselves if they are friendly or get involved in any way with an older person. The more independent a terminational person is, the less threatening such a person is to others. It is far better to have people pester you to engage with you on occasion than to have you be the pesterer. I get far more invitations to attend this or that or go here or there than I ever accept. This is good, others don't worry then that they are starting something which will become a burden or precedent.
How broad the following application is I cannot state. But at least for me, contentment can only come when one finally learns that ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. If there is any cultural failure in the current American mentality it is the failure to ever comprehend when enough is enough. When 1-3% of our population own 90% of the wealth it seems clear, that for whatever the reasons, we have a problem. This obsession goes way past any need, and being around these kind of people does not reveal accomplished souls waddling around in contented bliss. Their disgruntled, focused energy in amassing more and more leaves me puzzled as to what the hell they are achieving from it all. They are seldom happy campers. As much as possible I avoid them. I sense for those who are fortunate in this evolutionary process to be content it is necessary for them to share their good fortune with the less fortunate. Show me a sharing person and I will show you a contented person. Less complex species may not have the same need to share because they are not wired for ethics. Any species wired for ethical emotions cannot be content individually if ethical behavior is absent or stunted. It took some time but I finally understood this. Teaching makes this finding easier. There are so many in need of help, in varied ways, that it is hard to feel right about yourself or anyone else by turning away. I don't know that there is any simple formula for meeting ethical responsibilities. For me, I need to make things simple. Thus, anything I spend on myself past basic needs has be be met by an equal expenditure on the needs of the less fortunate. Thus if I need a car that is a basic need. But the basic need can be met for like $22,000. THus if I choose a more expensive model, a $32,000 car then $10,000 must be spent on the less fortunate. In my mind this translates into others count as much as myself. Now, with whatever I do have, has to shared, and it teaches me to understand that 'enough is enough'', as a practicing concept, creates contentment---a sort of immediate 'heaven' on earth. I have no idea whether there is an afterlife. If I can't remotely understand exactly how life here and now exists, I am not going to pretend I can understand wether any life exists after death. If this is it, well---I'll do the best I can, given the cards in my hand, use ethics to achieve some personal contentment, and take the time to smell the flowers along the way. IF I could control my own dying process without the interference of religious dogma and governmental laws, the terminational years would be less fearful. I don't fear death, I fear being trapped into a lengthy unacceptable dying process. My understanding is that about one third of medical costs in this country are spent on the the last few months of peoples lives. I totally resent my money or anyone else's money being spent to keep me alive a few more months because of the misguided BELIEFS by some that God demands this. I say let each person control their own dying process, at the time or via antecedent directives, and if a person wants tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars spent to keep him/her alive for a few more months then let that expense, by law, come out of their own estate or their relatives come up with the money. To spend that kind of money to keep someone alive for a few more months and let millions of people younger, with a life ahead of them, die for lack of medical care is about as unethical as it gets. I can never understand why anyone would want to lie around dying for months instead of letting go in a civilized realistic painless fashion. I know a person can be doped up until they are in a mental fog, oblivious to much of pain (physical or emotional), but if a prisoner of war was treated this way it would be called torture---well maybe not by Cheney. This realization, that a person ought to be allowed to control their own dying process, is finally starting to take hold and maybe in the next decade this will become a new legal right.
The religious right, as the evolutionary process proceeds, loses ground on more and more of their unethical human devised religious dogmas---dogmas which fly against the Golden Rule. Slavery, the right of women to vote, child workforce protections, desegregation in schools and the military, gay rights, female rights, torture protections (no more inquisitions), etc. are all ethical advances earned by overriding established sectarian religious dogmas.
Accepting that in one's terminational years death will come, sooner or later, is a mental process necessary for contentment. There is really no reason to fear death since obviously if one is dead one feels nothing. The person in the casket cannot be stressed by anything anymore. Oddly enough the biggest stress on the terminational stage of life is sectarian religious dogma. To be able to control one's own dying process is a fundamental right. Etched, as in stone, on my mind is the picture of this paster who was in the same hospital room with me after I had a surgery. The poor guy was there because he had a stroke and was totally paralyzed except for the ability to move his eyes. He constantly choked on his own saliva and the only thing I could see in his eyes was pure terror. Family and parishioners came by, read bible verses to him, another minister told him "God is not through with you yet". Doctors and nurses asked him questions and asked him to move his eyes right for yes and left for no. He had no hope of recovery. No one ever asked him if he wanted to be put to sleep permanently. I fail to understand what kind of God do some people worship who would relish or condescend watching anyone go through a painful, stressful dying process? It is ok to use our own intelligence to prolong our life through healthful living and medical interventions but then claim God Himself insists we cannot use the same intelligence and feelings to control our dying process and decide ourselves, if we want, when enough is enough? No rational person lets their pets suffer needlessly when they are dying, we put them to 'sleep'. But then so many strangely insist that God's attitude toward human death is just the opposite. Even when we allow a person to die we have to be totally asinine about it. We remove breathing machines and let the person suffocate to death, we remove feeding tubes and let them starve to death, etc. I mean really, how perverted is this, and by what reasoning do we attribute such perversion to God?
If one has been lucky enough to have had a healthy, productive, challenging life in a good environment, then by the terminational years there is little, if anything, left to accomplish or do. That is a good feeling which raises one's contentment level. Earlier in life I used to ask my aging parents why they didn't go here---or there---or do this, or that---or buy this or that? The answer was always the same: "What for?" At the time it seemed an absurd answer. Today, I finally understand. In the terminational years there is much to be said for a simple peaceful daily routine in life which is tailored to your own peculiar nature. A doctor recently asked me what exciting plans I had for a holiday. At my age I don't really seek 'excitement', peaceful healthy relaxed living will do just fine. The game or race in life, whatever the adjective used to describe the formative and productive years, is over---along with all the obligations, stresses, manipulations, competitions, out maneuvering, looking over one's shoulder, and commotion over illusionary matters of importance. Free at last replaces all of that. Of course health issues will increasingly rise, sooner or later, in any number of unpredictable ways. THIS and DEATH have to be accepted as an inevitable conclusion to life. Few are going to make any final curtain call in front of any appreciative and applauding audience. And regardless, MOST EVERYONE DIES ALONE. They really do. If the dying process is not personal, nothing is. If you cannot derive comfort from within at this time, no one else can impose any comfort on you. I am not talking here about physical comfort, but the mental state of the person dying. Any lively or intense personal interrelationships will be gone, replaced by a relatively useless empathy and sadness from others. Whatever the nuances of the dying process it is quite internal and all the external impacts of earthly keep fading and are almost nonexistent. TIME STAYS, WE ALL GO. In the latter stages of my mother's life the best I could do for conversation was to mention names of people in her past and let her talk. The past still had some relevance, the present had little.
My dad used to ask, what is the purpose of living on at his age? The question is not silly at all. If we could live on forever what the hell would we do---same old, same old, same old. God's evolutionary process is all about change. Always about change, diversity, and chance. No species in the evolutionary process has ever been an end in itself, certain self conceived human religious notions aside. There is no need for this to be a depressing thought. After all, "out of a million million spermatozoa might have chanced to be......" YET it was each of us when the wheel of chance stopped. We all hit the jackpot, we had the chance to be part of the evolutionary process. No one who hits the jackpot has any logical right to complain, period. The alternative would be to have never existed, to never have won the jackpot, to never have had any chances at all.
THUS, I feel grateful, fortunate, and still awed by everything around me, the complexities of human existence and the absolute beauty of nature. HE/SHE who learns to appreciate nature can never be distraught or angry. I never feel less alone than on my walks in various nature settings. It is like the eons of time, and the very molecules which have been around since the beginning, and whose rearrangements have led to endless diversity of the genetic code, permeate one's personnel essence and you feel at home as a part of the whole amazing evolutionary process. When you feel a part of something so amazing and important you cannot feel alone. You don't feel alone, you feel very very lucky. If you are third string defensive end on the winning Super Bowl team, you feel lucky. And if you don't, you are a fool. Everyone can't be the head engine in the train of life.
Back to my dad's point. What is the purpose of living a ripe old age? My mom lived to be 97 or 98 (always get this mixed up) and my dad 89. I doubt I can come up with any real purpose to live a ripe old age, and thus choose to reword the question. What age is the best to die or, if you prefer, how long is it best to live? Of course there is no pat answer since we all live unique lives, all differing, one from the other. I suppose another way to ask the question is "When is enough, enough?" If anything is personal, this certainly is. I personally resent those who insist that by law, God will decide when enough is enough. I assume they also then feel it is God who decides to get heart by-pass surgery, or undergo chemotherapy for cancer, etc. There are those, like myself, who don't believe that at all. This does not follow that therefore people like myself do not believe in God. I guess it all depends on what kind of God one believes in. I believe God created the evolutionary process and all the laws which govern the process. Humans have the ability to reason out and control many aspects of their lives. This, to me, includes choosing healthful living, and control over our own dying process. If I have terminal cancer and choose not to spend $100,000 to live a few more months, it is not the Devil or God calling the shot. If God were calling all these individual decisions it would be a perfect world. There would be no need for diversity, for change, for tragedies of any sort. For the sake of moving on here let's assume an individual does have the right to control their own dying process. If they do, at what point then, is enough enough?
I really don't think anyone can say in advance when enough is enough. Some would no doubt tough it out longer than others. The alternative is never to die and live forever. That option is closed. You don't want to ever die? Good luck with that one. During my productive years, like others, I had places to go, people to see, things to do. Even at 70, many of those most important to me in life are already dead, live in Timbukto, or the friendships evaporated for any number of valid reasons. The longer you live the fewer the important people in your life left. The longer you live the more you are destined to be twice a child. But in this case you become a child who is in reverse, not going forward in life. A child's life is full of hope and potential, of this or that sort. The aged child has only a question of when enough is enough. I meet so many people, mostly young, who insist if good health prevails it would be great to live to be, for example, 95. Let's get real here. At 95 you will not be able to do almost all the things in life that made your life worth living. You either physically can't do these things or mentally there are precious few things you can do that used to mean so much to you. There is no right or wrong here, just individual nuances. My dad, in his later years, felt enough was enough. He had a good life, knew it, and fumbled along with life in his later years as best he could. My uncle who lived next door lived to be in his late 90's and to the end he wanted to keep going.
In more recent times a new reality has entered the picture of aging. We often, through modern medical interventions, keep someone alive for decades, in one form or fashion. The old days of having your heart attack and dying are gone for those who have access to modern medicine. There are sons and daughters who now spend decades saddled with the endless and not small burden of caring for an aging, no longer self sufficient parent. The emotional and physical toil from this endless responsibility can be high. Then there are the aging others who have no immediate family in fact, for all practical matters, to bear the burden of care for them. This leaves the taxpayers or charitable organizations.
SO, when is enough enough? This is no exercise in morbidity, but to me, an exercise in responsible aging or dying, wherever you want to put the emphasis. In the past few years I have dodged several potentially fatal medical events. Each time I dodged the bullet. It was luck, not God protecting me and ignoring the plight of people with far greater needs. I don't really believe God thinks I am so precious and others are not. Or that I have earned the grace of God and others have not. Or that some inherited religious dogma has saved my life. Whatever God is, He is fair and not aligned against anyone or any species. His created process will continue to play itself out and I wish I had the capacity to see the future---how interesting that would be. But I don't. In one sense, all these medical 'escapes' as I refer to them, are kind of emotional practices for the inevitable medical event from which there will be no recovery. How then will I handle that in the most realistic, mature, fair way?
I hope to avoid any anger, any denial, any selfish and useless burden on others, financially or otherwise. If the quality of life becomes unacceptable to me, then enough is enough. No big deal. Pull the plug and send me gently down the stream to that great leap in the dark. If we yet lived in a rational climate of death and dying I would have the right to a dignified dying process of my own choosing. I don't know, not being there yet, but maybe I would just like to say goodbye to the few remaining survivors of my productive life and then just be put to sleep. I certainly don't want some caring but idiotic soul to tell me, "God is not through with you yet". I feel, if anything, that God has designed a system in which it is my call. Why should someone else's beliefs top my own beliefs regarding my own dying process?
My personal wish is that my acquired wealth be returned to the global society from which it came and be given to charitable causes which enable young people with a life ahead of them to have a better chance of a good life. I certainly don't want tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of my money to be spent to keep me alive a few more months against my own wishes. As my dad would say, "To hell with that". Nor do I wish taxpayer money to be spent on this. What a total misuse of ethical priorities----cut back on programs to help those in need so we can keep me alive a few more months or even years. If I say enough is enough, then enough ought to be enough.
There is no other period in life, except the terminational years, when one can truly appreciate the wonders of life just passed through. I used to be a track runner, and only after winning or running a better time can one feel the real contentment of all the effort put into the exercise. And so it is with the bigger picture of life, only after you reach the terminational years can one truly appreciate the wonder of being not only a survivor but appreciate the individual successes one managed with one's life. Materialistic possessions, gilded and glittering or otherwise, are not high on anyone's list. People, nature, and experiences are. What an amazing spectrum of diverse personalities were met along the way. What challenging and difficult adventures happened along the path of life, some good, some bad, but all so real at the time. When you have learned enough to really live you are old enough to die. We die, it seems, because we have had our bit part in God's evolutionary process, and it requires a whole new set of players on the stage for progress to continue. That is the nature of the beast. There is always some sadness with success. You graduate from school, you participate in your final athletic contest, you watch a child leave the nest, you watch some sort of a relationship come to an end, you watch many of those most important to your own life die or suffer. But even the sadness is a reflection of just how valuable the experience of interacting with them was. If all this wasn't good, there would be no reason to be sad. If God were to say to me, "If you want I'll spin the wheel of evolutionary fortune and let you be born again with whatever the luck of the genes, place of birth, etc. the spin of the wheel churns out----well, I don't know, I wonder if I would take the chance? If you succeed with one hand of cards in a game, there is no assurance, with a different hand you will succeed again. I think I will just smell the flowers, relax with all the good feelings from memories, and do just whatever the spirit of the moment dictates, and try to be a gentleman when my time is up. Perhaps this will be a first.
I have long held that any years after 50 are bonus years. After all, 50 years of a relatively good life is luck enough. SO, at 70 what feelings about life engulf my mental state? The early years seem so long ago now, the productive years seem a bit unreal, and the present is filled with a feeling of having been very lucky. In no way do I look at the less lucky and pass off their less fortunate lives with any form of "well, they could be as contented as me if they would have gained such contentment the old fashioned way---EARNED IT". The most ludicrous and yet oft comment I hear from so many is that "It is my money, I earned it!!!". And they actually mean it. Or they humbly give the credit to the grace of God, a grace no doubt, in their mind, earned also.
I, like most people, believe in God. Life is a gift, and where there is a gift, there has to be a gift giver. The gift giver is God. HOWEVER, I consider it an absurdity that God would pass on religious dogma via inherited religion. And even more absurd that God's dogma would be written down by humans decades after a prophet of some sort dies. I doubt God is illiterate. And if one believes God is a fair God then He doesn't pass on words of salvation by inherited religion.
SO THEN, just how is ethical behavior instilled in the human psyche? Ethical behavior, like every other aspect of life, is a consequence of the evolutionary process---a process created by God and driven by the laws of evolution---laws created by God Himself. There is no need to debate the brilliance of the evolutionary process or the endless onward progress of the process. So many life forms, ever more complex and advanced, have been generated from this process, including the human species. Humans like to place themselves as some sort of favored species or even create an image of God which casts Him in the role of giving each of us individual protections IF---the big IF---we follow the certain tenets of human devised inherited religious rituals and dogma.
I like to think with maturity I outgrew these self centered notions. I simply no longer believe God arranged for a certain sperm to meet a certain egg so that I might exist. And of course for that to happen God would have to have arranged for my parents to marry too, or at least pause in an alley for sex. Of course anyone is entitled to believe any religious concepts they choose. Beliefs are not facts although beliefs can be structured around known facts and logic. Because sectarian religious beliefs are not facts such sectarian dogmas should never be allowed to become the law of the land. Over time, less and less of them are. That is the nature of the evolutionary progress. The evolutionary process is governed by genes, environment, and chance. Survival of the fittest reigns and since the fittest, in the big picture, are the best such evolutionary laws can generate, evolution has an upward progress. To postulate that God actually micromanages His created process outside the laws He created to drive the process is irrational--- IF we perceive God to be a good and just God.
At some point in my life I decided it was ludicrous for me to pray for certain outcomes in my life. Luck has been good to me, or chance if that is a better word, and for me to think a just God would intercede for me with my relatively minor problems and let children in other places die from starvation, let brutal rapes occur, let really moral and good people die a slow and painful death from a cruel debilitating disease, etc. is just beyond logic. This would be the ultimate in self serving beliefs. Either God cannot intercede to prevent all this human misery across the globe, and is therefore powerless, or He could but won't, and therefore He is unjust and evil. Put more bluntly, if God could, but won't stop a brutal rape of a child, then just what is it that God could ask of anyone of us who could, but won't stop any similar cruelty? The best sectarian religious leaders have ever come up with is "Well, God acts in mysterious ways". Yeah, I guess so, but that is like the parent who tells their child, in some form or fashion, "Yours is not to reason why, but to do or die."
It is illogical to say ethics cannot be a reasoned process or an inherent human characteristic. The ability to do math is an inherited human characteristic evolved during the long drawn out evolutionary process. There is no reason to believe that ethics is any different in origin. Most humans everywhere (minus mental conditions) understand right from wrong. Whether any particular human chooses to do the right rather than the wrong is another story. Some of the worst human behavior in history has been done in the name of inherited sectarian religion. And this continues to be the case. Like with inherited mathematical ability, some humans are better at math than others. So too with human ethics. The golden rule is never refuted as the ultimate standard of ethical behavior. To the extent humans collectively follow this universal ethical principle, then justice, mercy, and peace prevail. This, condensed, is essentially my religious belief. Does God ever intercede with His own laws of evolution? Hard to say, but it clearly cannot be often. I suppose one could argue that Lincoln was given a certain wisdom by God to break the back of slavery and get our country through the Civil War. There was certainly nothing in anything Lincoln ever said or did prior to his run for the Senate four years before the war which can remotely match the quality of what he wrote and said from that point on. Just seems strange that a man could so suddenly become possessed with such wisdom and literary excellence---especially given only a few months of formal schooling.
Like I said, with such religious belief as above, at 70 years of age I feel mostly fortunate more than anything else. With patience, my good fortune will certainly end and like everyone else, I will GO, TIME will STAY. One of my good fortunes was to have parents who parented by example, not autocratic discipline. For a child of my own genetic make up, it turned me into a neutral observer of life, gave me the freedom to have a lot of experiences with a wide range of other people, to appreciate diversity, not resent it. Along with this parental franted freedom came a steady reminder that when I was 18 I was going to be on my own. Period. And that pretty much came with a strong period. This strategy worked well given my own personality, but not so good with my brother who had a much different personality. As a teacher I quickly observed that raising kids is individualized, the methodology employed has to match the inherent nature of the parents and child. What may work for one child may not work for the other. Being a good parent seems to be an awesome task. Some clearly are not up to it and how easy it is to raise a kid varies greatly from kid to kid. It is all part of how evolution works. Not much in the evolutionary process is easy.
At 70 I view life in three stages---the formative years, the productive years, and the terminational years. My productive years have been over for almost 15 years. Each stage is different. I certainly lucked out in my formative years, those years in which a child has the least control over their own destiny. The productive years are by nature the most self centered. One wrestles with their social life, career, materialistic gains, power, love, religion, loyalty, politics, etc. Each person enters their productive years with certain cards in their hands, then chance is thrown in, and the desired results to be achieved are always tenuous at best. I guess for everyone contentment is the goal.
BUT, contentment is often elusive and frequently a mirage which evaporates before our eyes. True love is sometimes found but often lost, escaped, or of limited duration. Much of contentment seems based on knowing when ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. When the bottom line becomes material possessions, power, sex, recreational drugs, a compulsive hobby or activity of any sort including eating---then contentment will become elusive. The new 'family values', really little more than self centered obsession---with a circle the wagons mentality---well, these people do not come across as skippidy do dah dey families at all. They have little tolerance for diversity, little interest in others outside their own families, and I get the impression if they smiled they would fracture their face. If one likes serious fussing about self serving peculiar issues, being around modern family valuers is a genuine party.
The terminational years, for me at least, have necessitated a change in priorities. Good health becomes not something assumed but the foundation upon which all else hinges. For those who ignored preventive health matters most of their life, the chickens are likely to have finally come home to roost. HOWEVER, even those who have lived a healthy life need luck once again. Nothing fundamentally changes in life, the evolutionary process involves genes, environment and chance. You can pray incessantly, center your whole social life around the church, waddle around in material wealth, have the communities best personality and looks, have a herd of grandchildren and YET, none of this will bring more than transient moments of contentment in your terminational years. That is not to say any of the aforementioned is bad or inconsequential, but it is to say therein is not to be found the kind of entrenched contentment we all seek in our terminational years.
SO, from whence do we find contentment? As Lincoln said contemplating the state of our nation, we need start with the same assessment when we enter our terminational years: "If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it...." There is no period in life which requires more self independence for contentment than the terminational years. If, after all these years you cannot amuse yourself in ways attuned to your personal nature, then the terminational years are going to be a bumpy ride. To depend on others to amuse you, to entertain you, to center their lives around you, to take you places, to attend your daily emotional needs is, simply put, almost always FOLLY. FREE AT LAST is most applicable to the terminational years. Free, of course, requires a certain level of economic independence. It takes a comfortable safe place to live, adequate food, and good health to pursue contentment. Of course none of this is guaranteed but for most achievable. Only good health must eventually dissipate.
For the first time in life you are not overwhelmed with learning how to function, learning how to succeed, enmeshed in tangled adventures of love, have a need to look constantly over your shoulder, be responsible for the behavior and success of kids or employees, and all such stuff of which earlier life was comprised. Essentially one becomes, in their terminational years, a retired performer relegated to a permanent seat in the grandstands.
FOR ME, a seat in the grandstands is welcome. Again I have lucked out. To muse, to wander around, to observe people and places, to put all the pieces of life's puzzle gathered up in earlier years---to put them together as some sort of final analysis of life---this is fun, challenging, and leaves me contented. Each day is truly my own, there is no depending on others to amuse me, to take me places, to visit me, to obligate me to do this or that, etc. Let's face it, older people are a threat to younger people who naturally wonder to what extent they are obligating themselves if they are friendly or get involved in any way with an older person. The more independent a terminational person is, the less threatening such a person is to others. It is far better to have people pester you to engage with you on occasion than to have you be the pesterer. I get far more invitations to attend this or that or go here or there than I ever accept. This is good, others don't worry then that they are starting something which will become a burden or precedent.
How broad the following application is I cannot state. But at least for me, contentment can only come when one finally learns that ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. If there is any cultural failure in the current American mentality it is the failure to ever comprehend when enough is enough. When 1-3% of our population own 90% of the wealth it seems clear, that for whatever the reasons, we have a problem. This obsession goes way past any need, and being around these kind of people does not reveal accomplished souls waddling around in contented bliss. Their disgruntled, focused energy in amassing more and more leaves me puzzled as to what the hell they are achieving from it all. They are seldom happy campers. As much as possible I avoid them. I sense for those who are fortunate in this evolutionary process to be content it is necessary for them to share their good fortune with the less fortunate. Show me a sharing person and I will show you a contented person. Less complex species may not have the same need to share because they are not wired for ethics. Any species wired for ethical emotions cannot be content individually if ethical behavior is absent or stunted. It took some time but I finally understood this. Teaching makes this finding easier. There are so many in need of help, in varied ways, that it is hard to feel right about yourself or anyone else by turning away. I don't know that there is any simple formula for meeting ethical responsibilities. For me, I need to make things simple. Thus, anything I spend on myself past basic needs has be be met by an equal expenditure on the needs of the less fortunate. Thus if I need a car that is a basic need. But the basic need can be met for like $22,000. THus if I choose a more expensive model, a $32,000 car then $10,000 must be spent on the less fortunate. In my mind this translates into others count as much as myself. Now, with whatever I do have, has to shared, and it teaches me to understand that 'enough is enough'', as a practicing concept, creates contentment---a sort of immediate 'heaven' on earth. I have no idea whether there is an afterlife. If I can't remotely understand exactly how life here and now exists, I am not going to pretend I can understand wether any life exists after death. If this is it, well---I'll do the best I can, given the cards in my hand, use ethics to achieve some personal contentment, and take the time to smell the flowers along the way. IF I could control my own dying process without the interference of religious dogma and governmental laws, the terminational years would be less fearful. I don't fear death, I fear being trapped into a lengthy unacceptable dying process. My understanding is that about one third of medical costs in this country are spent on the the last few months of peoples lives. I totally resent my money or anyone else's money being spent to keep me alive a few more months because of the misguided BELIEFS by some that God demands this. I say let each person control their own dying process, at the time or via antecedent directives, and if a person wants tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars spent to keep him/her alive for a few more months then let that expense, by law, come out of their own estate or their relatives come up with the money. To spend that kind of money to keep someone alive for a few more months and let millions of people younger, with a life ahead of them, die for lack of medical care is about as unethical as it gets. I can never understand why anyone would want to lie around dying for months instead of letting go in a civilized realistic painless fashion. I know a person can be doped up until they are in a mental fog, oblivious to much of pain (physical or emotional), but if a prisoner of war was treated this way it would be called torture---well maybe not by Cheney. This realization, that a person ought to be allowed to control their own dying process, is finally starting to take hold and maybe in the next decade this will become a new legal right.
The religious right, as the evolutionary process proceeds, loses ground on more and more of their unethical human devised religious dogmas---dogmas which fly against the Golden Rule. Slavery, the right of women to vote, child workforce protections, desegregation in schools and the military, gay rights, female rights, torture protections (no more inquisitions), etc. are all ethical advances earned by overriding established sectarian religious dogmas.
Accepting that in one's terminational years death will come, sooner or later, is a mental process necessary for contentment. There is really no reason to fear death since obviously if one is dead one feels nothing. The person in the casket cannot be stressed by anything anymore. Oddly enough the biggest stress on the terminational stage of life is sectarian religious dogma. To be able to control one's own dying process is a fundamental right. Etched, as in stone, on my mind is the picture of this paster who was in the same hospital room with me after I had a surgery. The poor guy was there because he had a stroke and was totally paralyzed except for the ability to move his eyes. He constantly choked on his own saliva and the only thing I could see in his eyes was pure terror. Family and parishioners came by, read bible verses to him, another minister told him "God is not through with you yet". Doctors and nurses asked him questions and asked him to move his eyes right for yes and left for no. He had no hope of recovery. No one ever asked him if he wanted to be put to sleep permanently. I fail to understand what kind of God do some people worship who would relish or condescend watching anyone go through a painful, stressful dying process? It is ok to use our own intelligence to prolong our life through healthful living and medical interventions but then claim God Himself insists we cannot use the same intelligence and feelings to control our dying process and decide ourselves, if we want, when enough is enough? No rational person lets their pets suffer needlessly when they are dying, we put them to 'sleep'. But then so many strangely insist that God's attitude toward human death is just the opposite. Even when we allow a person to die we have to be totally asinine about it. We remove breathing machines and let the person suffocate to death, we remove feeding tubes and let them starve to death, etc. I mean really, how perverted is this, and by what reasoning do we attribute such perversion to God?
If one has been lucky enough to have had a healthy, productive, challenging life in a good environment, then by the terminational years there is little, if anything, left to accomplish or do. That is a good feeling which raises one's contentment level. Earlier in life I used to ask my aging parents why they didn't go here---or there---or do this, or that---or buy this or that? The answer was always the same: "What for?" At the time it seemed an absurd answer. Today, I finally understand. In the terminational years there is much to be said for a simple peaceful daily routine in life which is tailored to your own peculiar nature. A doctor recently asked me what exciting plans I had for a holiday. At my age I don't really seek 'excitement', peaceful healthy relaxed living will do just fine. The game or race in life, whatever the adjective used to describe the formative and productive years, is over---along with all the obligations, stresses, manipulations, competitions, out maneuvering, looking over one's shoulder, and commotion over illusionary matters of importance. Free at last replaces all of that. Of course health issues will increasingly rise, sooner or later, in any number of unpredictable ways. THIS and DEATH have to be accepted as an inevitable conclusion to life. Few are going to make any final curtain call in front of any appreciative and applauding audience. And regardless, MOST EVERYONE DIES ALONE. They really do. If the dying process is not personal, nothing is. If you cannot derive comfort from within at this time, no one else can impose any comfort on you. I am not talking here about physical comfort, but the mental state of the person dying. Any lively or intense personal interrelationships will be gone, replaced by a relatively useless empathy and sadness from others. Whatever the nuances of the dying process it is quite internal and all the external impacts of earthly keep fading and are almost nonexistent. TIME STAYS, WE ALL GO. In the latter stages of my mother's life the best I could do for conversation was to mention names of people in her past and let her talk. The past still had some relevance, the present had little.
My dad used to ask, what is the purpose of living on at his age? The question is not silly at all. If we could live on forever what the hell would we do---same old, same old, same old. God's evolutionary process is all about change. Always about change, diversity, and chance. No species in the evolutionary process has ever been an end in itself, certain self conceived human religious notions aside. There is no need for this to be a depressing thought. After all, "out of a million million spermatozoa might have chanced to be......" YET it was each of us when the wheel of chance stopped. We all hit the jackpot, we had the chance to be part of the evolutionary process. No one who hits the jackpot has any logical right to complain, period. The alternative would be to have never existed, to never have won the jackpot, to never have had any chances at all.
THUS, I feel grateful, fortunate, and still awed by everything around me, the complexities of human existence and the absolute beauty of nature. HE/SHE who learns to appreciate nature can never be distraught or angry. I never feel less alone than on my walks in various nature settings. It is like the eons of time, and the very molecules which have been around since the beginning, and whose rearrangements have led to endless diversity of the genetic code, permeate one's personnel essence and you feel at home as a part of the whole amazing evolutionary process. When you feel a part of something so amazing and important you cannot feel alone. You don't feel alone, you feel very very lucky. If you are third string defensive end on the winning Super Bowl team, you feel lucky. And if you don't, you are a fool. Everyone can't be the head engine in the train of life.
Back to my dad's point. What is the purpose of living a ripe old age? My mom lived to be 97 or 98 (always get this mixed up) and my dad 89. I doubt I can come up with any real purpose to live a ripe old age, and thus choose to reword the question. What age is the best to die or, if you prefer, how long is it best to live? Of course there is no pat answer since we all live unique lives, all differing, one from the other. I suppose another way to ask the question is "When is enough, enough?" If anything is personal, this certainly is. I personally resent those who insist that by law, God will decide when enough is enough. I assume they also then feel it is God who decides to get heart by-pass surgery, or undergo chemotherapy for cancer, etc. There are those, like myself, who don't believe that at all. This does not follow that therefore people like myself do not believe in God. I guess it all depends on what kind of God one believes in. I believe God created the evolutionary process and all the laws which govern the process. Humans have the ability to reason out and control many aspects of their lives. This, to me, includes choosing healthful living, and control over our own dying process. If I have terminal cancer and choose not to spend $100,000 to live a few more months, it is not the Devil or God calling the shot. If God were calling all these individual decisions it would be a perfect world. There would be no need for diversity, for change, for tragedies of any sort. For the sake of moving on here let's assume an individual does have the right to control their own dying process. If they do, at what point then, is enough enough?
I really don't think anyone can say in advance when enough is enough. Some would no doubt tough it out longer than others. The alternative is never to die and live forever. That option is closed. You don't want to ever die? Good luck with that one. During my productive years, like others, I had places to go, people to see, things to do. Even at 70, many of those most important to me in life are already dead, live in Timbukto, or the friendships evaporated for any number of valid reasons. The longer you live the fewer the important people in your life left. The longer you live the more you are destined to be twice a child. But in this case you become a child who is in reverse, not going forward in life. A child's life is full of hope and potential, of this or that sort. The aged child has only a question of when enough is enough. I meet so many people, mostly young, who insist if good health prevails it would be great to live to be, for example, 95. Let's get real here. At 95 you will not be able to do almost all the things in life that made your life worth living. You either physically can't do these things or mentally there are precious few things you can do that used to mean so much to you. There is no right or wrong here, just individual nuances. My dad, in his later years, felt enough was enough. He had a good life, knew it, and fumbled along with life in his later years as best he could. My uncle who lived next door lived to be in his late 90's and to the end he wanted to keep going.
In more recent times a new reality has entered the picture of aging. We often, through modern medical interventions, keep someone alive for decades, in one form or fashion. The old days of having your heart attack and dying are gone for those who have access to modern medicine. There are sons and daughters who now spend decades saddled with the endless and not small burden of caring for an aging, no longer self sufficient parent. The emotional and physical toil from this endless responsibility can be high. Then there are the aging others who have no immediate family in fact, for all practical matters, to bear the burden of care for them. This leaves the taxpayers or charitable organizations.
SO, when is enough enough? This is no exercise in morbidity, but to me, an exercise in responsible aging or dying, wherever you want to put the emphasis. In the past few years I have dodged several potentially fatal medical events. Each time I dodged the bullet. It was luck, not God protecting me and ignoring the plight of people with far greater needs. I don't really believe God thinks I am so precious and others are not. Or that I have earned the grace of God and others have not. Or that some inherited religious dogma has saved my life. Whatever God is, He is fair and not aligned against anyone or any species. His created process will continue to play itself out and I wish I had the capacity to see the future---how interesting that would be. But I don't. In one sense, all these medical 'escapes' as I refer to them, are kind of emotional practices for the inevitable medical event from which there will be no recovery. How then will I handle that in the most realistic, mature, fair way?
I hope to avoid any anger, any denial, any selfish and useless burden on others, financially or otherwise. If the quality of life becomes unacceptable to me, then enough is enough. No big deal. Pull the plug and send me gently down the stream to that great leap in the dark. If we yet lived in a rational climate of death and dying I would have the right to a dignified dying process of my own choosing. I don't know, not being there yet, but maybe I would just like to say goodbye to the few remaining survivors of my productive life and then just be put to sleep. I certainly don't want some caring but idiotic soul to tell me, "God is not through with you yet". I feel, if anything, that God has designed a system in which it is my call. Why should someone else's beliefs top my own beliefs regarding my own dying process?
My personal wish is that my acquired wealth be returned to the global society from which it came and be given to charitable causes which enable young people with a life ahead of them to have a better chance of a good life. I certainly don't want tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of my money to be spent to keep me alive a few more months against my own wishes. As my dad would say, "To hell with that". Nor do I wish taxpayer money to be spent on this. What a total misuse of ethical priorities----cut back on programs to help those in need so we can keep me alive a few more months or even years. If I say enough is enough, then enough ought to be enough.
There is no other period in life, except the terminational years, when one can truly appreciate the wonders of life just passed through. I used to be a track runner, and only after winning or running a better time can one feel the real contentment of all the effort put into the exercise. And so it is with the bigger picture of life, only after you reach the terminational years can one truly appreciate the wonder of being not only a survivor but appreciate the individual successes one managed with one's life. Materialistic possessions, gilded and glittering or otherwise, are not high on anyone's list. People, nature, and experiences are. What an amazing spectrum of diverse personalities were met along the way. What challenging and difficult adventures happened along the path of life, some good, some bad, but all so real at the time. When you have learned enough to really live you are old enough to die. We die, it seems, because we have had our bit part in God's evolutionary process, and it requires a whole new set of players on the stage for progress to continue. That is the nature of the beast. There is always some sadness with success. You graduate from school, you participate in your final athletic contest, you watch a child leave the nest, you watch some sort of a relationship come to an end, you watch many of those most important to your own life die or suffer. But even the sadness is a reflection of just how valuable the experience of interacting with them was. If all this wasn't good, there would be no reason to be sad. If God were to say to me, "If you want I'll spin the wheel of evolutionary fortune and let you be born again with whatever the luck of the genes, place of birth, etc. the spin of the wheel churns out----well, I don't know, I wonder if I would take the chance? If you succeed with one hand of cards in a game, there is no assurance, with a different hand you will succeed again. I think I will just smell the flowers, relax with all the good feelings from memories, and do just whatever the spirit of the moment dictates, and try to be a gentleman when my time is up. Perhaps this will be a first.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
To Make The Planet Better
TO MAKE THE PLANET BETTER
1. Globally enforce responsible reproduction. Reproduction is more a responsibility than any right. Human Overpopulation generates almost all of the other major problems our planet is now facing. (Golden Rule applies)
2. Cut out the inane gift giving between affluent people. If all the money wasted by one affluent person, having no need for anything more, who gives a gift to another affluent person, having no real need for anything more, was INSTEAD directed to those with real financial needs, a lot of poverty would be alleviated. (Golden Rule applies)
3. Eliminate inherited sectarian religious dogma and everyone just practice what is universally accepted as genuine ethics----The Golden Rule. Most contentious issues can be resolved by the application of this logical and inherent ethical nature of humans everywhere.
4. Establish minimum global wages so that every country is not slowly driven to a third world economy. If not paying an honest price for the labor which produces something you want is not wrong, little else is wrong. If you wish to be paid a living wage for your work, then it is only fair that others be paid a living wage for their work. As Terrell Owens would say, "fair is fair". (Golden Rule applies)
5. Require by law that every war engaged in has to be paid for immediately by the generation which declared the war. (Golden Rule applies)
6. Require every citizen to share the burden of any declared war via a military draft, increased taxes, increased workload, etc. (Golden Rule applies)
7. Eliminate almost all foreign military bases. There is no moral reason why the United States should be the only country to suffer the cost of military bases all over the world or get so intrusively involved in the internal politics of other sovereign nations. (Golden Rule applies)
8. Adopt as our foreign and domestic policy the wisdom that "violence begets violence" A country which uses violence to solve conflicts will become seeped in violence at every level, at home and abroad. Even worse, global terrorism will thrive in such an atmosphere. (Golden Rule applies)
9. Decriminalize the abuse of recreational drugs and provide everyone having a recreational drug abuse problem with medical help. Drug abuse is a medical problem, The War on Drugs has been a colossal failure for over 50 years, worse then the valid reasons why alcohol prohibition only lasted 10 years. It has destroyed large parts of our cities, burdened us with the cost to track down suppliers, at home and abroad---plus the cost to find, arrest, prosecute and keep jailed drug users and dealers is outrageous----$30,000 a yr to incarcerate mostly young poor teenagers. (Golden Rule applies)
10. Return the taxes on the wealthy to where it was back in the early 1900's when the country went after the barons---the Rockefellers, VAnderbuilts, etc. The tax on the wealthy then was 90%. (Golden Rule applies)
11. Put back in heavy taxes on inheritance. Unearned wealth is not really the American way. There is no logical or ethical reason why 1-3% of our citizens own 90% of our wealth. (Golden Rule applies)
12. Require by law that the same about of money per student be spent on every child in America. Let states and local communities compete to find the best way to spend this money, but the amount per student should be the same. (Golden Rule applies)
13. Guarantee every person a job. If they do not make an honest effort to work in a responsible and meritorious fashion at their level of skill, then sentence them to hard labor. It certainly makes more sense to pay some kid a minimum living wage than to spend $30,000 to house him in jail. (Golden Rule applies)
14. Require accumulated wealth upon death to be returned to the society from which it came. This ensures a good pool of money for all young people to have access to for their own accumulation of wealth the old fashion way---earn it. (Golden Rule applies)
15. Every person should be entitled to good health care, a good education, freedom of religion, a plot of land upon which to live. (Golden Rule applies)
16. Every person should be entitled to control their own dying process and be required to update their medical directives every 5 years in case they become unable to make decisions at the time. (Golden Rule applies)
17. It is claimed that one third of all health costs come in the last few months of people's lives. No one should be forced to spend their own money to give themselves a few more months of life instead of letting the money be used to provide medical care for those with a potentially long life ahead of them. And taxpayer money should not be used to do this either. If a person feels the need to spend this kind of money for a few more months of life let the person or their relatives/friends pay for it. If it is a religious thing, let the church pay for it, before taxpayers . Golden Rule applies.
18. Recently billionaires like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have started a 'Club' dedicated to promising half of their wealth will go to charitable causes upon their deaths. This is, of course, laudable and remarkable. My own position is that the rights of society trump the right of individuals to hoard wealth past their own lifetimes. In other words, the wealth ought to be, by law, returned to the society from which the wealth was "borrowed". Each person, in a just society, should be expected to EARN their own wealth. Inherited wealth has no relevance to justice or merit. (Golden Rule applies)
19. If billionaires have a moral obligation to return extracted wealth from a society back to the society from which the wealth was extracted, then I reckon every person has a moral obligation to share wealth past necessities of living. Everyone has a right to shelter, food, medical care, transportation, entertainment, etc. "Sell everything you have and give it to the poor" is overkill. A person should not be required to maim themselves to show their concern for others. HOWEVER, when it comes to materialistic gains past reasonable necessities, at this point ethics (the Golden Rule) requires others, at that point, to count as much as yourself. You may, for example, need a car for transportation. One could buy a decent car which would comfortably get you from place to place for say, $20,000. You may, for whatever reasons, really want a car that costs, let's say $30,000. Fine, if you can afford the car, buy it BUT then $10,000 (the amount you spent past the basic $20,000) should be given to charity to demonstrate that the needs of others count as much as your own needs. The most absurd moral stance is to assert that you earned your wealth, let others get theirs the same way you did---earn it!!!!!!. Really? Did you earn your parents, your place of birth, your physical, mental, or personality genes, your schools sent to as a kid, your religion, your neighborhood child peers, your health, the lucky breaks you may have had, etc? Of course you didn't so stifle the nonsense. Of course the way we play the cards given to us in life is very important. Good decisions pay good dividends in life. STILL, take away the cards given, not earned, and what do you have left? So, at least it seems to me, that past the necessities of life, sharing any additional bounty with those most in need is an an ethical obligation. Dumping wealth on your kids or anyone else not in need is not meeting the ethical obligation ingrained in the Golden Rule.
20. God's gift to all life is the environment which enables life to prosper. Therefore protecting the environment is always---always---a priority. When politicians say we can't afford to protect our own environment this is an absurdity. The same slime ball politicians who take this stance (for cowardly, immoral reasons) are the same ones who scream the largest for spending money on military adventures, military bases, military hardware, police wars on recreational drug use, tax cuts for the wealthy, subsidies for giant corporations, and anything else that is demanded by powerful lobbyists of this or that group. Then, for icing on the cake, they remain mum on any laws to implement responsible reproduction. If God really thought multiplying was a virtue in itself, then amoebas would rule the planet. If life under any circumstances is valuable then let viruses and bacteria etc. live their life unmolested by human interventions. After all, if life is life, and if God is really controlling the destiny of every life, then just stop all this medical intervention to manipulate life. Let God do all the manipulating. God's evolutionary process gave us the ability to control our own health as we see fit and as is possible at any particular moment in time.
21. We license people to drive, to own guns, to run certain kinds of businesses, etc.
We do this, I assume, to protect the public from harm or abuse. But any nitwit can be a parent. Every child born should be afforded protection from poor parenting or absence of sufficient role models for healthy maturation. If every 'blessed' adult citizen would volunteer to be an 'uncle', 'aunt' , 'grandmother', 'grandfather', for a child in need, the prospects of that child maturing properly during their formative years would rise appreciably. Hilliary Clinton was right when she said it takes a village to raise a child. The notion that God actually blesses those who focus all their attention on their own offspring is suspect at the very least. (Golden Rule applies).
1. Globally enforce responsible reproduction. Reproduction is more a responsibility than any right. Human Overpopulation generates almost all of the other major problems our planet is now facing. (Golden Rule applies)
2. Cut out the inane gift giving between affluent people. If all the money wasted by one affluent person, having no need for anything more, who gives a gift to another affluent person, having no real need for anything more, was INSTEAD directed to those with real financial needs, a lot of poverty would be alleviated. (Golden Rule applies)
3. Eliminate inherited sectarian religious dogma and everyone just practice what is universally accepted as genuine ethics----The Golden Rule. Most contentious issues can be resolved by the application of this logical and inherent ethical nature of humans everywhere.
4. Establish minimum global wages so that every country is not slowly driven to a third world economy. If not paying an honest price for the labor which produces something you want is not wrong, little else is wrong. If you wish to be paid a living wage for your work, then it is only fair that others be paid a living wage for their work. As Terrell Owens would say, "fair is fair". (Golden Rule applies)
5. Require by law that every war engaged in has to be paid for immediately by the generation which declared the war. (Golden Rule applies)
6. Require every citizen to share the burden of any declared war via a military draft, increased taxes, increased workload, etc. (Golden Rule applies)
7. Eliminate almost all foreign military bases. There is no moral reason why the United States should be the only country to suffer the cost of military bases all over the world or get so intrusively involved in the internal politics of other sovereign nations. (Golden Rule applies)
8. Adopt as our foreign and domestic policy the wisdom that "violence begets violence" A country which uses violence to solve conflicts will become seeped in violence at every level, at home and abroad. Even worse, global terrorism will thrive in such an atmosphere. (Golden Rule applies)
9. Decriminalize the abuse of recreational drugs and provide everyone having a recreational drug abuse problem with medical help. Drug abuse is a medical problem, The War on Drugs has been a colossal failure for over 50 years, worse then the valid reasons why alcohol prohibition only lasted 10 years. It has destroyed large parts of our cities, burdened us with the cost to track down suppliers, at home and abroad---plus the cost to find, arrest, prosecute and keep jailed drug users and dealers is outrageous----$30,000 a yr to incarcerate mostly young poor teenagers. (Golden Rule applies)
10. Return the taxes on the wealthy to where it was back in the early 1900's when the country went after the barons---the Rockefellers, VAnderbuilts, etc. The tax on the wealthy then was 90%. (Golden Rule applies)
11. Put back in heavy taxes on inheritance. Unearned wealth is not really the American way. There is no logical or ethical reason why 1-3% of our citizens own 90% of our wealth. (Golden Rule applies)
12. Require by law that the same about of money per student be spent on every child in America. Let states and local communities compete to find the best way to spend this money, but the amount per student should be the same. (Golden Rule applies)
13. Guarantee every person a job. If they do not make an honest effort to work in a responsible and meritorious fashion at their level of skill, then sentence them to hard labor. It certainly makes more sense to pay some kid a minimum living wage than to spend $30,000 to house him in jail. (Golden Rule applies)
14. Require accumulated wealth upon death to be returned to the society from which it came. This ensures a good pool of money for all young people to have access to for their own accumulation of wealth the old fashion way---earn it. (Golden Rule applies)
15. Every person should be entitled to good health care, a good education, freedom of religion, a plot of land upon which to live. (Golden Rule applies)
16. Every person should be entitled to control their own dying process and be required to update their medical directives every 5 years in case they become unable to make decisions at the time. (Golden Rule applies)
17. It is claimed that one third of all health costs come in the last few months of people's lives. No one should be forced to spend their own money to give themselves a few more months of life instead of letting the money be used to provide medical care for those with a potentially long life ahead of them. And taxpayer money should not be used to do this either. If a person feels the need to spend this kind of money for a few more months of life let the person or their relatives/friends pay for it. If it is a religious thing, let the church pay for it, before taxpayers . Golden Rule applies.
18. Recently billionaires like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have started a 'Club' dedicated to promising half of their wealth will go to charitable causes upon their deaths. This is, of course, laudable and remarkable. My own position is that the rights of society trump the right of individuals to hoard wealth past their own lifetimes. In other words, the wealth ought to be, by law, returned to the society from which the wealth was "borrowed". Each person, in a just society, should be expected to EARN their own wealth. Inherited wealth has no relevance to justice or merit. (Golden Rule applies)
19. If billionaires have a moral obligation to return extracted wealth from a society back to the society from which the wealth was extracted, then I reckon every person has a moral obligation to share wealth past necessities of living. Everyone has a right to shelter, food, medical care, transportation, entertainment, etc. "Sell everything you have and give it to the poor" is overkill. A person should not be required to maim themselves to show their concern for others. HOWEVER, when it comes to materialistic gains past reasonable necessities, at this point ethics (the Golden Rule) requires others, at that point, to count as much as yourself. You may, for example, need a car for transportation. One could buy a decent car which would comfortably get you from place to place for say, $20,000. You may, for whatever reasons, really want a car that costs, let's say $30,000. Fine, if you can afford the car, buy it BUT then $10,000 (the amount you spent past the basic $20,000) should be given to charity to demonstrate that the needs of others count as much as your own needs. The most absurd moral stance is to assert that you earned your wealth, let others get theirs the same way you did---earn it!!!!!!. Really? Did you earn your parents, your place of birth, your physical, mental, or personality genes, your schools sent to as a kid, your religion, your neighborhood child peers, your health, the lucky breaks you may have had, etc? Of course you didn't so stifle the nonsense. Of course the way we play the cards given to us in life is very important. Good decisions pay good dividends in life. STILL, take away the cards given, not earned, and what do you have left? So, at least it seems to me, that past the necessities of life, sharing any additional bounty with those most in need is an an ethical obligation. Dumping wealth on your kids or anyone else not in need is not meeting the ethical obligation ingrained in the Golden Rule.
20. God's gift to all life is the environment which enables life to prosper. Therefore protecting the environment is always---always---a priority. When politicians say we can't afford to protect our own environment this is an absurdity. The same slime ball politicians who take this stance (for cowardly, immoral reasons) are the same ones who scream the largest for spending money on military adventures, military bases, military hardware, police wars on recreational drug use, tax cuts for the wealthy, subsidies for giant corporations, and anything else that is demanded by powerful lobbyists of this or that group. Then, for icing on the cake, they remain mum on any laws to implement responsible reproduction. If God really thought multiplying was a virtue in itself, then amoebas would rule the planet. If life under any circumstances is valuable then let viruses and bacteria etc. live their life unmolested by human interventions. After all, if life is life, and if God is really controlling the destiny of every life, then just stop all this medical intervention to manipulate life. Let God do all the manipulating. God's evolutionary process gave us the ability to control our own health as we see fit and as is possible at any particular moment in time.
21. We license people to drive, to own guns, to run certain kinds of businesses, etc.
We do this, I assume, to protect the public from harm or abuse. But any nitwit can be a parent. Every child born should be afforded protection from poor parenting or absence of sufficient role models for healthy maturation. If every 'blessed' adult citizen would volunteer to be an 'uncle', 'aunt' , 'grandmother', 'grandfather', for a child in need, the prospects of that child maturing properly during their formative years would rise appreciably. Hilliary Clinton was right when she said it takes a village to raise a child. The notion that God actually blesses those who focus all their attention on their own offspring is suspect at the very least. (Golden Rule applies).
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