RsjLifeMusings

Time Out Until Fall

2011-07-30T22:34:00.000-07:00

There are not likely to be new posts here until sometime this fall. Am involved in some rather lengthy literary projects that take up considerable time which would otherwise be spent on shorter discourses.

The 16 worst of Asinine Politics--Part 2

2011-04-20T22:12:00.000-07:00

The 16 worst of Asinine Politics---Part Two.

9. Family values

This latest attempt to justify self serving attitudes by wrapping them in some sort of 'family values' mentality is little more than a claim that 'me and my family' are, and should be, the focus, of community and political affairs. It becomes just another variation of the circle the wagons and see others as enemies. Fairness, justice, compassion, tolerance, sacrifice all become inconvenient obstacles in the way of self serving advantages of survival. Survival is often just protecting one's social or economic status as all sorts of others try to gain their piece of a shrinking pie. There is nothing Christian about modern family values. Christ of course always sided with the less fortunate, and family to Christ meant all humankind, not genetic related enclaves.

10. Tax codes

The tax system has become an absurdity in both any fairness or effectiveness.
Those in the best affordable position to pay taxes pay the least percentage-wise. Some of the wealthiest pay no taxes at all. Any idea that the American way is to earn your own way in life has been replaced my massive incomes via inheritance. Those who own wealth the old fashioned way (earning it legitimately) are now overshadowed by those who earn vast wealth via inheritance. It would be scary to know what percentage of young Americans see their financial security now based on what mom and dad can leave them via inheritance. Wealth via inheritance is a pervasive destructive force on family togetherness, as offspring often vie to insure they get the maximum amount of money via inheritance. People who save money to care for them selves in old age often find the money instead is legally hidden away so taxpayers pay for medical care and the kids get the money. Who is now paying for what in our society is lost in a maze of a complex shell game. It is now cleverness more often than useful work which amasses wealth. It is so bad now that many American Corporations move their headquarters abroad to escape the 35% tax bracket imposed on them. Of course, in this global economy, with no minimum wages, it is true that American Corporations often need to pay no taxes to survive. So there we have it----the wealthy don't pay a good percentage in taxes, many corporations pay little or none at all, the poor have no money to pay taxes, so just where is the tax money to come from? The middle class? It is kind of hard to hit them since if they are not promised tax cuts they vote for anyone who will. Talk about funny math this takes the cake: the poor have no money, the middle class demands tax cuts, the wealthy demand tax cuts, tax, breaks, tax loopholes and ways to escape paying any taxes at all, and corporations, to compete against slave labor abroad, can't afford to pay taxes either. The Governor of Wisconsin has the wackiest idea of all: we will reduce expenses of government by finding those groups who still have decent pensions, health care, job security, and wages and do away with these perks. The logic here is darkly clear: if so many have lost all these perks why do some still have them? When these people then have less money to spend, the recession will sink lower, then unemployment will go up. But not to worry because then the question will of course be----if so many are unemployed why are some 'favored people' still employed? They will then need be fired. In the end, all will be free for everything will be worth nothing but everyone will be free.

11. Attitudes towards death and the dying process.

If any thing is personal, a person's dying process ought to be. Every person should be allowed to control their own dying process without the interference of someone else's religious beliefs or government policy. Every person, every five years, should be required to fill out health care directives about their own dying process and what they want done under this or that circumstances. Death itself is nothing to be feared, it is a natural part of life, but the dying process, or rather the lack of personal control over one's dying process, is greatly to be feared. One third of a person's health care expenses are said to occur in the last 6 months of life. The ability to prolong life is rapidly becoming a very scary and expensive phenomenon. We can now find ways to keep some cells functioning some way or another for months, years, even decades now. Who is to pay for this? What is the purpose of it? Few are willing to address these questions. Realism is replaced by charges that people are trying to kill grandpa and grandma. Aging IS the dying process and in all cases there comes a time when enough is enough, either because a person his/her self says it, or society cannot afford to humor those who have religious beliefs that life in any form is sacred. Some people now find themselves caring for a parent who has long since 'died' in any meaningful sense of the term, decades ago. What caring and reasonable person would ever want to be such a burden on anyone, let alone their own kids? Ronald Reagan, for example, had ceased to exist a decade before he was officially declared dead. Because the issue is complex hardly negates any reason to do nothing. But doing nothing, because the burning issues of today are complex, has become a global policy. Well, God's created evolutionary process and the laws which govern it, will survive. Mother Nature bats last. Always has and there is no reason known while She won't continue to do so. We can face problems and do something constructive or we can be like deer caught in the headlights and become frozen in time. No matter, we go, Time stays, God's evolutionary process continues. It is simply not an individually focused process, no matter how much we wish otherwise. We are fortunate enough to be a small part of the process but the process is not particularly focused on any of us as individuals. We can pretend otherwise, but pretending does not make it so.

12. Gun Control

Few phrases in American politics has gotten more mileage than "guns don't kill people, people do." The silliness here has gone so far that a good number, if not a majority of people, believe the way to make everyone safe is for everyone to pack a gun. Texas is currently considering a law which makes it lawful for both teachers and students to pack guns in a classroom. Can this brilliance be carried much higher? The stats, on the other hand have been consistent. The more guns loose in society the more violent deaths. No country has more citizens packing guns than Iraq and we all know the kind of security which exists there. Did you ever get the urge to kill someone? Probably. If only, at the moment you had a gun and your object of anger had a gun, you could be the quickest on the draw and poof, the SOB would be dead and it all just be self defense. Obviously, if you had waited a moment later the SOB in question might have pulled their gun and you would be dead. Wouldn't you feel quite safe if you could pack a gun strolling down some ghetto street after dark (or before dark) or you could attend school with everyone packing a gun? We all know how street robberies and home invasions happen: The robber, half a block away, announces that he/she is now approaching you to rob you. You then take out your gun and shoot the robber. Of course. Or, you are inside your home and some burglar breaks a window or knocks down your door and says "Here I come looking for the goodies". You then go to where you keep your gun and shoot the robber." You know, if I decide to kill you, my preferred modus would be to take out my gun and approach you somewhere in a situation where you have not yet taken out your gun. And of course, the street punks who want your wallet, once you feel your head in a headlock, or your ass hit the ground, instead of having just their fists or bat or whatever, will now have the gun you are packing. It is always kind of thrilling to see some hormonally charged teenager with a gun wanting something of yours. Every time someone saves their life because he/she had a gun in their home or on their body, it makes the headlines big time. And just how often do you see these headlines? Not very often. There is only one way to make this more often: have everyone pack a gun. I bet if everyone packed a gun these headlines would at least triple, which of course would pale compared to the number of people being killed by guns. And then there is the 2nd amendment which guaranteed the right of people to own guns to protect them from their government. I am trying to remember when is the last time an individual or a group of individual ever managed to overpower a police force, let alone a military army in this country. If it really came down to that. you might have an Uzii, but the government has smart missiles which can locate your ass and enter. It might be best to remember that violence begets violence and cruelty begets cruelty. We can be civilized or we can be barbarians.

14. Ownership of Professional Sport Teams by Wealthy Individuals

National Professional Sport teams deserve a bit better control than to let them be used as toys by a cabal of wealthy royalty status buffoons----often senile, often incompetent inheritors of wealth, often polished con artists of various ilk. The logic for this is surreal. Yet the vast majority of Americans, complain as they do about ticket prices, player salaries, blackmailing of cities, pampering of athletes, etc., are equally aghast that ownership should be any different. "What would you rather have done----have the government own sport teams?" is the usual response. Really, compared to what----having these rich owners and a players union jack fans and cities around forever? It makes more sense for cities to own the teams. First, cities need the revenue. Second, at least fans can once in a while vote out any mayor who misrules a team. Government is inefficient, among other drawbacks ,but no one suggests social security or military units be run by wealthy sops. When these owners are interviewed the vast majority are blithering idiots, some half senile, treated as royalty by the networks (of course), and are seen sitting in a skybox as some sort of benevolent despot. Despot for sure.

It now costs, I read recently, more than $300 for a family of four to go to a baseball game. And many other professional sports are a lot more expensive. If these are truly national sports why are they only available to attend by the affluent? If these are national sports why are we, as citizens, deprived on any say on the manner in which they are run? Why are only the owners and player union at any bargaining table? Don't the cities and fans have a vested interest in these bargaining sessions? Is Mrs. McCaskey, some sort of descendent of someone ages ago who originally owned the Bears, the best person to be running the show? Please. Hell, if my father had owned a professional basketball team I could be the owner of one and I don't know diddly about basketball. Why should individual owners and 'greed has no limit' players be allowed to bilk the public ad nausea to the point of 100 million dollar salaries, and set all the rules? While I still think cities are the appropriate entity to own their professional sport teams, if this is an annoying pill for most people, then why not let legitimate charities own these teams? Maybe the Red Cross could own a team and use the profits for charitable purposes or an environment organization, the Salvation Army, etc. Please, no religious sects, that would be worse than the wealthy sops, and an irritant to those of a different religious sect. I know several things: teams should build their own stadiums not the city they play in, there need to be legitimate salary caps, all citizens of every economic class should have some method whereby they can afford to attend some games, that corporations should not be allowed to buy up huge blocks of tickets unless no one else wants them, that season tickets should not be available unless the seats cannot be filled by non season ticket holders, that owner profits should have legitimate ceilings, and that the financial operation of these leagues (teams) should be properly regulated and monitored. What is going on now is absurd, unethical, unfair to the non affluent, and making spoiled brats out of certain high school and college athletes. Why in hell do we continue to support this farce? Frankly, compared to the present absurdity, I would rather have the owners drawn at random from the Chicago phone directory.

15. Stock Prices

Remember when the price of stocks was primarily a measure of how well a company was doing? Those days are pretty much past. While there are some remnants of this remaining, stock prices today are essentially a managed numbers game with the primary players the huge monied interests, both corporate and individual. It works this way----when stock average prices hit a certain key number this triggers a massive sell or buy stampede. The major players in this game are pretty much aligned on the same page and when the trigger goes off the selling or buying is immediate. A solitary investor of modest means will have difficulty in this game. You can decide to sell or buy but by the time your more cumbersome time consuming efforts are realized the prices have already risen hundreds of points or fallen hundreds of points. You end up selling at the end of the buying or selling spree, thereby getting none of the benefits of those who en mass created the rise or fall. Notice these huge variations have nothing to do with the value of individual stocks. For the big profits to be made one has to be part of the sell high, buy low. Over a 3-4 month period of time considerable money is made simply selling high en mass to create a profit then buying back low to create another eventual profit for the next huge fall. When these huge gyrations in prices start, the rise or fall is over in a pittance of time. The game is eventually going to be self destructive. The same billionaires are piling up more and more money, not by making anything or producing a service of any kind, but my simply manipulating this rise and fall of stock prices.

Conclusion: There hardly needs to be any search for an elusive conclusion of these 15 worst of asinine politics. Number 1 is sufficient to topple everything, and the rest just sort of fall in line like a series of dominoes. If you are my age you don't worry about it much, the terminational years---if good health prevails----are a time to go gently down the stream. If you are in your productive years you are no doubt overwhelmed by all this, mostly likely it all becomes a blur, with little seen clearly.
For those in their formative years I really am at a loss as to what must be the mental state. There are maybe a dozen young kids of school age in my high rise building. I never ever see them except getting on or off a school bus when they go through the lobby. What do they do locked inside a condo all day? They must be engrossed in their gadgets of various ilk. Reality, for them, is inside those little gadgets. I walk a lot in nature settings and in urban city centers. It is rare to see teenagers in larger groups of two or three, up to anything. I can't remember the last time I saw any teenagers loose in a forest preserve. Matter of fact, I hardly see anyone unless they are on a bicycle or jogging for exercise. Nature is passe, social interaction except via gadgets is boring, and all these 15 problems listed above are irrelevant to their mental activity. These problems, in today's atmosphere, are simply not real to hardly anyone. So there you have it, old cantankerous guys like me, who like to write, muse about all of this, but it serves as meaningless banter----useless as a witches' tit. My conclusion is more a benediction than any solution: Turn Out the Lights, the Party's Over.

16. The length of Presidential Campaigns.

It is outrageous, that in the name of so called democracy, Presidential elections are now structured so that they extend for nearly two years, are sustained now by those groups with large amounts of money to spend, and are so professionally manipulated that Solomon himself would be unable to discern any meaning to the ads and debates. Everyone knows these campaigns go on too long, are too expensive, too controlled by lobbyists with vast amounts of money, and too disingenuous on issues. It was better when party officials, with clear political issues, chose their leaders at a convention, a campaign for two months took place, and people voted. It is hard to imagine how many really good potential candidates are lost because they would be unwilling to subject themselves to this madness for two years. It becomes an endurance test, a dog and pony show, no real debate over meaningful issues. It is really appalling.

Related Quotations to Ponder:

"A tyrant is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader" . (Plato) Remind you of any Presidents?

"The remedy in the United States is not less liberty but real liberty---an end to the brutal intolerance of churchly hooligans and flag waving corporations and all the rest of the small but bloody despots who have made the word Americanism a synonym for coercion and legal crime." (Archibald MacLeish)

"For de little stealin' dey gits you in jail soon or late. For the big stealin' dey makes you emperor and puts you in de Hall O' Fame when you croaks." (Eugene O'Neil)

"I shall give a propangandist cause for starting the war. Never mind whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked, later on whether he told the truth or not. In starting and waging a war, it is not Right that matters but Victory. Have no pity. Adopt a brutal attitude....RIght is on the side of the Strongest." (Adolf Hitler)

"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet or fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason." (Ernest Hemingway)

"You will kill ten of our men, and we will kill one of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it" (Ho Chi Minh)

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets." (Voltaire)

"We are always making God our accomplice, that so we may legalize our own iniquities. Every successful massacre is consecrated by a Te Deum, and the clergy have never been wanting in benediction for any victorious enormity." (Henri Frederic Amiel)

"The enthusiasm for war, and the predatory temper of which it is the index, prevail in the largest measure among the upper classes, especially among the hereditary leisure class" (Thorstein Veblen) And of course these are the biggest supporters of a voluntary army, of which few of these people will ever be found. They are busy amassing wealth, titles, power, demanding tax cuts. Let the inferior nobodies go into a voluntary army and wander outside green zones until some road bomb or sniper sends them to the real La La land. Just like in Hitler's day these noble, but discardable wretches will be honored during half time of athletic contests while the paid fans restlessly wait for the field to clear and the game begin.

"Man is a very strange animal. In much of the world half the children go to bed hungry and we spend a trillion on rubbish---steel, iron, tanks. We are all criminals. There is an old Hungarian poem, 'if you are among brigands and you are silent, you are a brigand yourself'. (Albert Szwnt-Gyorhyi)

"The sectaries of a religion, which preaches in appearance, nothing but charity, concord, and peace, have proved ;themselves more ferocious than cannibals or savages, whenever their divines excited them to destroy their brethren. There is no crime which men have not committed under the idea of pleasing the Divinity or appeasing his wrath," (Paul Henri Thiry)

"You believe you are dying for the fatherland---you die for some industrialists." (Antole France)

"I have always given it as my decided opinion that no nation has a right to intermeddle in the internal concerns of another; that every one had a right to form and adopt whatever government they liked best to live under themselves; and that if this country could, consistently with its engagements, maintain a strict neutrality and thereby preserve peace, it was bound to do so by motives of policy, interest, and every other consideration." (George Washington)

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle---be THou near them!....O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells, help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief...For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their was with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it in the spirit of love, of Him who is the Source of Love, and who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all who are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen" (No, not George Bush speaking from his heart, but Mark Twain, tongue in cheek)

"Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice; for indeed it seems we have no other test of truth and reason than the example and pattern of the opinions and customs of the country we live in." (Michael Montaigne)

"We must repudiate one of the two, either Christianity with its love of God and one's neighbor, or the State with its armies and wars." (Leo Tolstoy

"These solid people of capital, the press, the pulpit----where have they ever fought? They are accustomed to find out by telegraph and telephone the results of the battles which settle their fate," (Leon Trotsky)

"All through history it's the nations that have given the most to the generals and the least to the people that have been the first to fail". (Harry Truman)

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience...In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industiral complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist". (Dwight Eisenhower)

"The greatest wealth is to be content with little, for there is never want where the mind is satisfied." (Lucretius)

"This then, is held to be the duty of the man of wealth: First, to set an example of modest unostentatious living....to provide moderately for the immediate wants of those dependent upon him, and after doing so to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer....the manner which, in his judgement, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community....the man of wealth thus becoming the mere agent and trustee for the poorer brethren," (Andrew Carnegie).

"Liberty produces wealth, and wealth destroys liberty." (Henry Demarest Lloyd)

"The most dreadful of all wars, the war of the poor against the rich, a war which, however long it may be delayed, will come and come with all its horrors". (Orestes A. Brownson)

"He mocks the people who proposes that the Government shall protect the rich and they in turn will care for the poor." (Grover Cleveland)

"So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent". (Henry George)

"When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of highest virtues." (John Maynard Keynes)

"How unjust it is, that they who have but little should be always adding something to the wealth of the rich!". (Terence)

"No business which depends for existence by paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country." (Franklin Delanor Roosevelt)

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism---ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power." (Franklin Delanor Roosevelt)

"I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes and....a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate." (Theodore Roosevelt)

"We consider capitalism as the exploration of man by capital and Communism the exploitation of the individual by the state." (Juan Peron)

"The alarming development and aggressiveness of great capitalists and corporations, unless checked, will inevitably lead to the pauperization and hopeless degradation of the working masses. It is imperative, in the desire to enjoy the full blessings of life, that a check be placed upon unjust accumulation of the power of evil of aggregate wealth". (Knights of Labor)

"Indeed, the religious bodies, as the almoners of the rich, become sort of auxiliary police, taking off the insurrectionary edge of poverty with coals and blankets, bread and treacle, and soothing and cheering the victims with hopes of immense and inexspensive happiness in another world when the process of working them to premature death in the service of the rich is complete in this." (Jacques Rene Hebert)

"These capitalists generally act harmoniously, and in concert, to fleece the people". (Abraham Lincoln)

"This is a world of compensations, and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God cannot long retain it." (Abraham Lincoln) This would apply to our current foreign slave labor force (no minimum wage) and the underground illegal immigrant slave labor force.

"Above all things, good policy is to be used that the treasure and monies in a state be not gathered into few hands....And money is like muck, not good except it be spread." (Francis Bacon)

"Centralize property in the hands of a few and the millions are under bondage to property---a bondage as absolute and deplorable as if their limbs were covered with manacles". Lewis Henry Morgan)

"Aristocracy of Feudal Parchment has passed away with a mighty rushing; and now, by a natural course, we arrive at the Aristocracy of the Moneybag.....the basest yet known." (Thomas Carlyle)

"Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of wealth; the tyranny of plutocracy". (J.P. Morgan)

"Every economic system, whether Capitalist or Socialist, degenerates into a system of privilege and exploitation unless it is policed by a social morality, which can only reside in a minority of citizens....Every Church becomes a vested interest without its heretics.....Freedom is always in danger, and the majority of mankind will always acquiesce in its loss, unless a minority is willing to challenge the privileges of its few and the apathy of the masses." (Richard Crossman)

"The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance to the public than all the property of all the rich men in the country." (John Adams)

"On one occasion Aristotle was asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated. 'As much', said he, 'as the living are to the dead.'" (Diogenes Laertius)

"Probably no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and esucation." (Abraham Flexner)

"There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness." (George Washington)

"The tax which weill be paiid for the prupose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests, and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people to ignorance." (Thomas Jefferson)

"Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in, That everyone may receive at least a moderate education...appears to be an object of vital importance." (Abraham Lincoln)

"Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is a great equalizer of conditions of men,----the balance wheel of the social machinery----It does better than to disarm the poor of their hostility toward the rich, it prevents being poor." (Horace Mann)

I want nothing to do with any religion concerned with keeping the masses satisfied to live in hunger, filth, and ignorance. I want nothing to do with any order, religious or otherwise, which does not teach people that they are capable of becoming happier, and more civilized on this earth, capable of becoming true men, master of his fate and captain of his soul. To attain this I would put priests to work, also, and turn the temples into schools." (Jawaharial Nehru)

"Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?" (Ronald Reagan)

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential cause of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxed, her consuming wars." (Will and Ariel Durant)

"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny." (Thomas Jefferson)

"I believe in an America where the separation of the Church and State is absolute." (John Kennedy)

"The strongest bond of human sympathy outside the family relation, should be one uniting all working people of all nations and tongues, and kindreds." (Abraham Lincoln)

"We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it." (George Bernard Shaw)

"The effectiveness of political and religious propaganda depends upon the methods employed, not on the doctrine taught. These doctrines may be true or false, wholesome or pernicious---it makes little or no difference.....under favorable conditions, practically everybody can be converted to practically anything." (Aldous Huxley)

"The mischief springs from the power which the moneyed interest derives from a paper currency which they are able to control, from the multitude of corporations with exclusive privileges which they have succeeded in obtaining...and unless you become more watchful in your States and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges you will in the end find that the most important powers of Government have been given or bartered away, and the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations." (Andrew Jackson)

"The press of this country is now and always has been so throughly dominated by the wealthy few of the country that it cannot be depended upon to give the great mass of the people that correct information concerning political, economical, and social subjects which it is necessary that the mass of people shall have, in order that they shall vote and in all ways act in the best way to protect themselves from the brutal force and the chicanery of the ruling and employing class." (Edward Scripps)

"Force----that grimmest and ugliest of gods that men have ever erected for themselves out of the lusts of their hearts. You will find yourself hating and dreading all other men who differ from you; you will find yourself obligated by the law of conflict into which you have plunged, to use every means in your power to crush them before they are able to crush you; you will find yourself day by day growing more unscrupulous and intolerant, more and more compelled by the fear of those opposed to you to commit harsh and violent action." (Auberon Herbert)

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the houses of its children. This is not a way of life.....Under the cloud of war, its humanity hanging itself on a cross of iron." (Dwight Eisenhower)

"To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love." (George Santayana)

"When the rich wage war it is the poor who die." (John-Paul Sarte)

"There are in fact four very significant stumbling blocks in the war of grasping the truth, which hinder every man however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win clear title to wisdom, namely, the example of weak and unworthy authority (political or religious), long standing custom, the feeling of the ignorant crowd, and the hiding of our own ignorance while making a display of our apparent knowledge." (Roger Bacon.

"Think of the dull functioning dogma, age after age. Ho many millions have been led shunted along dogmatic runways from the dark into the dark again.....endless billions, and at the gates, dogma, ignorance, vice, cruelty, seize them and clamp this or that band upon their brains." (Theodore Dreiser)

"Those who are convinced they have a monopoly on the Truth always feel that they are only saving the world when they slaughter the heretics." (Arthur Schlesinger Jr.)

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." (Blaise Pascal)

"It would now be technically possible to unify the world, abolish war and poverty altogether, IF men desired their own happiness more than the misery of their enemies." (Bertrand Russell)

"Birth control, family planning and population limitation are most important in any effort to bring real peace into the world." (Margaret Sanger)

"Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions. It sanctified, quite like Mohammedism, extermination and tyranny. All this would have been impossible if, like Buddhism, it had looked only for peace and the liberation of souls. It looked beyond; it dreamt of infinite blisses and crowns it should be crowned with before an electrified universe and an applauding God.....Buddhism had tried to quiet a sick world with anesthetics; Christianity sought to purge it with fire." (George Santayana)

"The greatest power in the world today is the power to change.....The most reckless irresponsible thing we could do in the future would be to go on exactly as we have in the past ten or twenty years. I can imagine no more dangerous policy than the conservatism that exists today." (Karl Dutsch)

"(Violence) has no head and cannot think, no heart and cannot feel. When she moves it is in wrath; when she pauses it is amid ruin. Her prayers are curses, her God is a demon, her communion is death, her vengeance is eternity, her decalogue written in the blood of her victims, and if she stops for a moment in her infernal flight it is upon a kindred rock to whet her vulture fang for a more sanguinary desolation." (Caniel O'Connell)

"Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.... A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness....It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. Imitation is suicide. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. "Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood." Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileao, and Newton, and (Terrell Owens) and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"Sit down before a fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing". (Thomas Huxley)

"Persecution if the first law of society because it is always easier to suppress criticism than to meet it." (Howard Mumford Jones)

"The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie---deliberate, contrived and dishonest----but the myth----persistent, persuasive and realistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. (John Kennedy)

"Those who make peaceful revolutions impossible will make violent revolutions inevitable." (John Kennedy)

"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common." (John Locke)

"A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search for truth and perfection, is a poverty stricken day, and a succession of such days is fatal to human life." (Lewis Mumford)

"A dying people tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatness and half remembered glory." (John Steinbeck)

"Deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their self-esteem, to defend their self-image, and to demonstrate that they, too, are significant......violence arises not out of superfluity of power but out of powerlessness." (Rollo Max)

"A devotion to humanity....is too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously blood thirsty." (James Baldwin)

"If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him" (James Baldwin)

"In the same way let us judge the religious organizations which we see all around us. Do not let us deny the good and the happiness which they have accomplished, but do not let us fail to see clearly that their idea of human perfection is narrow and inadequate; and that the Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion will never bring humanity to its goal." (MAtthew Arnold)

"I came to the conclusion long ago...that all religions were true, and also all had some error in them." (Gandhi)

"Prayer: to ask that the laws of evolution in the Universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy." (Ambrose Pierce)

"And we all have known
Good critics, who have stamped out poet's hopes
Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state
Good patriots, who for a theory, risked a cause
Good kings, who disemboweled for a tax
Good Popes, who brought all good to jeopardy
Good Christians, who sat in easy chairs
And damned the general world for standing up
Now may the good God pardon all good men!." (Elizibeth Browning)

"The question before the human race is whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles." (John Adams)

"The moralist preaches reason, because he believes it necessary to man; the philosopher writes, because he believes truth must sooner or later prevail over falsehood; theologians and tyrants necessarily hate truth and despise reason because they believe them prejudicial to their interests." (Paul Henri Thiry)

"All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All separated from government are compatible with liberty." (Henry Clay)

"Man is a religious animal. He is the only Religions Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion----several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight." ( Mark Twain)

"If we submit everything to reason, our religion will have nothing in it mysterious or supernatural. If we violate the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous." (Blaise Pascal)

"The mob that would die for a belief seldom hesitates to inflict death upon any opposing heretical group." (Ellen Glasgow)

"What kind of truth is this which is true on one side of a mountain and false on the other? (Michael Montaigne)

"There is nothing men more readily give themselves to than pushing their oown beliefs. When ordinary means fail, they add commandment, violence, fire and sword." (Michael Montaigne)

"The hope of science is the perfection of the human race. The hope of theology is the salvation of a few, and the damnation of almost everybody." (Robert Ingersoll)

"Christendom has done away with Christianity, without it being aware of it. Therefore, if anything is to be done about it, the attempt must be made to reintroduce Christianity." (Soren)

"Let us worship god again in simplicity, instead of making a fool of him in splendid edifices." (Soren Keirkegaard)

""Minorities need the majority to free them from their fears. The majority needs minorities to free them from their guilt." (Paraphrased from Martin Luther King)

"People fashion their God after their own understanding. They make their God first worship him afterwards." (Oscar Wilde)

"How many things which served us yesterday as articles of faith, are fables for us today?" (Michael Montaigne)

"You have got our country, but are not satisfied; you want to force your religion upon us....Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it?" (Redjacket)

"There is no creed so false but faith can make it true." (Henry David Thoreau)

"The death sentence is a necessary and efficacious means for the Church to attain its ends when rebels against it disturb the ecclesiastical unity, especially obstinate heretics who cannot be restrained by any other penalty from continuing to disturb ecclesiastical order.....to despise legitimate authority, no matter in whom it is invested, is unlawful, it is rebellion against God's will....women, again, are not suited for certain occupations; a woman is by nature fitted for home-work, and it is that which is best adopted at once to preserve her modesty and promote the good bringing up of children and well being of the family." (Pope Leo XIII)

"Men have broad and large chests, and small narrow hips, and more understanding than women, who have but small and narrow breasts, and broad hips, to the end they should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children...Either God must be unjust, or you, Jews, wicked and ungodly. You have been about fifteen hundred years, a race rejected of God....what shall Christians do now with depraved and damned people of the Jews? I will give my faithful advice. First, that one should set fire to their synagogues...then that one should also break down and destroy their houses....since we punish thieves with the lather, murders with the sword, and heretics with fire, why do we not turn on all those evil teachers of perdition, those popes, cardinals, and bishops, and the entire swarm of the Roman Sodom with arms in hand, wash our hands in their blood.....because the sword is a very great benefit and necessary to the whole world, to preserve peace, to punish sin, and to prevent evil....whoever wants to be Christian should tear out the eyes of Reason....Reason, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid to the aid of spiritual things but ----more frequently than not---struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God." (Martin Luther)

"All great religions in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely." (Henry Mencken)

"No miracle has ever taken place under conditions which science can accept. Experience shows, without exception, that miracles occur only in times and in countries in which miracles are believed in, and in the presence of persons who are disposed to believe in them." (Ernest Renan)

"When the state intervenes to insure the indoctrination of some doctrine, it does so because there is no conclusive evidence in favor of that doctrine." (Bertrand Russell)

"That they (the dogmas of religion) do little harm is not true. Opposiiton to birth control makes it impossible to solve the population problem and therefore postpones indefinitely all chance of pwrld peace." (Bertrand Russell)

"Always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice and corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty." Joseph Pulitzer)

"To cling to the principles of the Judeo-Christian ethic---honesty, integrity, compassion, love, ideas of hope, charity, humility---is an integral part of any person's life no matter what his position in life may be.....My prayer is that my life be meaningful in the enhancement of His Kingdom on earth, enhancement of the lives of my fellow human beings; that I may help translate the natural love that exists in this world and do simple justice through government." (Jimmy Carter).

"The great law of culture is, Let each become all that he was created capable of being; expand, if possible, to his full growth, resisting all impediments, casting off all foreign, especially all noxious adhesions, and show himself at length in his own shape and stature, be these what they may." (Thomas Carlyle)

"Living is not the good, but living well. The wise man therefore lives as long as he should, not as long as he can. He will think of life in terms of quality, not quantity." (Lucious Annaeus Seneca)

"It is a cruel crime thoughtlessly to bring more children into existence than can be properly taken care of." (Rabindranath Tabore)

"Creeds must become intellectually honest. At present there is not a single credible established religion in the world. That is perhaps the most stupendous fact in the whole world situation." (Bernard Shaw)

"The Popes, like Jesus, are conceived by their mothers through the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost. All popes are a certain species of man-gods, for the purpose of being able to conduct the fuctitons of mediator between God and mankind. All powers in Heaven, as well as on earth, are given to them." (Pope Stephen V)

"Of all religions, Christianity is without doubt the one that should inspire tolerance most, although, up to now, the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men. (Voltaire)

"Still, instead of trusting what their own minds tell them, men have as a rule a weakness for trusting others who pretend to supernatural sources of knowledge." (Arthur Schopenhauser)

"Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one." (Thomas Jefferson)

"This is what you should do; love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men....reexamine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss what insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem." (Walt Whitman)

"I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world,
And upon all oppression and shame....
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and prisoners....
I observe the sights and depredations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon others who are different,
All these----all the meanness and agony without end
I sit looking out upon,
See, hear, and am silent" (Walt Whitman)

"They (the clergy) believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." (Thomas Jefferson)

"....it cannot be lawful for the press, under the pretext that it is free, to make daily and systemic attempts on the religious and moral health of mankind." (Pope John XXII)

"Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.....He that never compares his notions with those of others, readily acquiesces in his first thoughts, and very seldom discovers the objections which may be raised against his opinions; he, therefore, often thinks himself in possession of truth, when he is only fondling an error long since exploded." (Samuel Johnson)

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot....they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose." (Thomas Jefferson)

"I never came across anyone in whom the moral sense was dominant who was not heartless, cruel, vindictive, log-stupid, and entirely lacking the smallest sense of humanity. Moral people, as they are termed, are simply beasts. I would sooner have fifty unnatural vices than one unnatural virtue." (Oscar Wilde)

"Christian,n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teaching of Christ so far as they are no inconsistent with a life of sin." (Abrose Bierce)

"I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The Still, sad music of humanity." (William Wordsworth)

"In order to see Christianity, one must forget almost all the Christians...the efficacy of religion lies precisely in what is not rational, philosophic, nor eternal; its efficacy lies in the unforeseen, the miraculous, the extraordinary. Thus religion attracts more devotion according as it demands more faith---that is to say, as it becomes more incredible to the profane mind>" ( Henri Frederic Amiel)

"Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it; anything but---live for it." (Charles Colton)

"Religion has lost itself in cults, dogmas, and myths. Consequently the office of religion as a sense of community and one's place in it has been lost." (John Dewey)

"There is only one step from religious fanaticism to barbarism". (Denis Diderot)

"Religion is the idol of the mob; it adores everything it does not understand." (Frederick the Great)

"As a general rule the classes that are low in economic efficiency, or in intelligence, or both, are peculiarly devout---as for instance, the negro population of the South, much of the lower-class foreign population, much of the rural population, especially in those sections which are backward in education, i the stage of development of their industry, or in respect to their industrial contact with the rest of the community." (Thorstein Veblen)

"Just as no one can be forced into belief, so no one can be forced into unbelief". (Sigmund Freud)

"A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives." (Albert Schweitzer)

"Even those who do not regret the disappearance of religious illusions from the civilized world of today will admit that so long as they were in force they offered those who were bound by them the most powerful protection against the danger of neurosis." (Sigmund Freud)

"Nothing in the whole world, or even outside of the world, can possibly be regarded as good without limitation, except a good will. No doubt it is a good and desirable thing to have intelligence, sagacity, judgment, and other intellectual gifts, by whatever name they may be called; it is also good and desirable in many respects to possess by nature such qualities as courage, resolution, and perseverance; but all these gifts of nature may be in the highest degree pernicious and hurtful if the will which directs them or what is called the 'character' is not itself good." (Immanuel Kant)

"Fear of death was the first thing on earth to make the gods." (Lucretius)

"But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable fo the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes." (John Adams)

"No one can walk backward into the future". (Joseph Hergesheimer)

"The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.....it is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority." (Lord Acton)

"Let them innovate in nothing, but keep the tradition." (Pope Stephen I)

"To live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often." (John Henry Newman)

"There is danger in reckless change, but greater danger in blind conservatism" (Henry George)

"Western thinking has become conservative; the world situation should stay as it is at any cost; there should be no changes. This debilitating dream of status quo is the symptom of a society that has come to the end of its development." (Alexander Solzhenitsyn)

"Every great scientific truth goes through three states: First, people say it conflicts with the Bible; next they say it has been discovered before; lastly, they say they always believed it." (Louis Agassiz.

"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage." (John Kenneth Galbraith)

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are rearranging their prejudices" (William James)

"There is nothing permanent except change". (Heraclitus)

"A religion that requires persecution to sustain it is of the devil's propagation." (Hosea Ballou)

"There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning---devotion to individuals, to groups or to causes, social, political, intellectual or creative work....One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion." (Simone De Beauvoir)

"In the best sense of the word, Jesus was a radical...His religion has so long been identified with conservatism...that it is almost startling sometimes to remember that all the conservatives of his own times were against him; that it was the young, free, restless, sanguine, progressive part of the people who flocked to him." (Phillips Brooks)

"Our country, right or wrong! When right, to be kept right; when wrong to be put right." (Carl Schurz)

"...the seed of imperial ruin and national decay---the unnatural gap between the rich and poor---the exploitation of the boy labor, the physical degeneration which seems to follow so swiftly on civilized poverty---the horrid havoc of the liquor traffic, the constant insecurity in the means of subsistence and employment---the swift increase of vulgar, jobless luxury---are the enemies of Britain." (Winston Churchill).

"All that is necessary to make this world a better place to live in is to love---to love christ loved, as Buddha loved." (Isadora Duncan)

"To criticize one's country is to do it a service...criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism---a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation". (William Fulbright)

"Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established." (Ludwig Feuerbach)

"Famine seems to the the last, the most dreadful resource of nature. The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to provide subsistence....that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race." (Thomas Malthus)

"Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking: where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless. (Count Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy).

"We come inevitably to the fundamental question: What are people for? What is living for? If the answer is a life of dignity, decency, and opportunity, then every increase in population (at this point in time) is a threat to every single being." (Marya Mannes)

"Truth is compared in scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. A man may be heretic in the truth; and if he believes things only because his pastor says so., or the Assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy." (John Milton)

The 16 Worst of Asinine Politics--Part 1

2011-04-16T22:03:00.000-07:00

The 16 Worst of Asinine Politics--Part 1

Humans are most distinct from other species in their ability to reason and their innate sense of ethics. Contrary to common notions, ethics is not dependent on religious inherited dogma, but an inherited trait, like many other inheritable traits which are developed by reason and practice. The Golden Rule is the universal end point of such reasoning about ethics. Unfortunately, humans suffer the fate of believing a lot of notions based on 'faith' not reason. A lot of faith based malarky is harmless enough, and may be provide the emotional strength to handle the stresses of life. Anecdotal medicine and inherited religious beliefs are prevalent everywhere, and are harmless enough unless they are allowed to ruin one's health or harm the rights of others who become the target of religious intolerance.

In the arena of politics, some policies or lack of policies are bad and the worst of the bad policies I have tried to identify in this musing. Worst is based mostly on the severity of damage such policies cause. Written with the United States in mind, there may be policies in other countries which would make the list if I lived in these other countries. But I do not, and therefore all this has a distinct American bent, albeit most apply on a global basis. There are 3 overriding influences on this selection of the worst. Empires in human history come and go including Greek, Roman, Ottoman, British, French, American, etc. Most all of them collapsed because some sort of global empire became too expensive to maintain and too much of the wealth at home accumulated in the hands of too few at the expense of others. Today, one has to include policies which feed the rapid environmental effects of human overpopulation. There is no attempt to go into a lengthy discussion of each worst policy past pointing out the main reason it is listed.

l. Lack of any policy to enforce responsible reproduction.

The global population has doubled in my life time. For unchecked human population to proceed is disaster WRIT LARGE. While we are able to precisely define overpopulation of all other species, we are blind to the same standards which define human overpopulation. Instead, all the many problems being caused by human overpopulation are instead defined in terms of form of government, human rights, religious beliefs, culture bias, nature of parenting, etc. There is not an effective responsible reproduction program in place anywhere on the globe, albeit China has at least tried somewhat. Mindless reproduction remains a sacred right, albeit it would be hard to define what is sacred about it. Some religions even make it a sin to practice birth control outside the absence of sex. Fortunately, many people in religious sects manage to ignore some of the more outrageous and nonsensical religious dogmas. Those who are against enforcement of responsible reproduction are, by any logical standards, a bit off in la la land. Quality of life counts. And the same people who scream about abortion are quiet as a herd of mouses when it comes to the millions who now live in refugee camps, have no land, no job, etc. And in the last analysis, the abortion issue is really over---it just takes a pill to abort these days; so what makes these tunnel visioned faith based religious dogmatics think they can stop someone from getting a pill anymore than they have been able to stop anyone from getting marijuana if they want it? More La La land reasoning.

The rest of the worst would be hard to put in order of worst to least worst, but the absence of any control over irresponsible reproduction is easily the absolute worst of the worst.

2. The expenditure of money on military matters which exceeds the military budgets of all the other industrialized nations combined.

Defense against military invasions by other countries seems reasonable enough. Still, there are countries in the middle of all the war zones across the globe which have survived quite nicely without military mania to protect them. Switzerland comes to mind. Canada comes to mind. New Zealand comes to mind. It mostly comes down to this: those countries whose attitudes and greediness tend to impose interference in the affairs of other countries, need to have military defenses in order to protect against reprisal. The U.S. has taken military defense to absolute absurdity. I can't really think of any country on the globe which remotely contemplates capturing the United States via military means. Yet every invasion of every country is always portrayed as an invasion to protect the security of the United States. What the United States really seems to want is the ability to control the politics and economic policies of other countries. Any loss of this is then defined as a security threat to the United States. Ironically, most of the costly weapons of mass destruction, which we lavishly spend money to produce, and all the military bases all over the globe, which we lavishly spend money to maintain-----so much of this is now irrelevant in modern wars. We arrive in mass in some distant country, with soldiers and equipment and smart missiles, drones, surveillance cameras, and what not----only to find there are no uniformed armies to attack, little way of identifying the enemy and so we are forced to hunker down in established 'green zones', venturing outside these green zones at the risk of being blown up by roadside bombs, suicide bombers, and sniper fire. Essentially, we financially bankrupt ourselves to build weapons and maintain military bases which are almost useless in modern day conflicts. In the 'old days' the country with the most soldiers and most guns could win a war. We killed 2 million Vietnamese and lost only 35,000 American Soldiers and lost the war. And after we lost the war, to the best of my knowledge, Vietnam has never been any threat to the security of the United States. So what was the purpose of the war?. Why do we continue with this mindless nonsense?

3. The police war on drug abuse.

There are a good number of medical experts who understand why people abuse recreational drugs. These experts understand why anyone ever uses a recreational drug: it simply alters the drug users mindset, to boost their spirits, or release inhibitions, or reduces the feelings of stress, etc. Different recreational drugs appeal to different people based on the different mental needs at the time. Many people simply have no real need to alter their mental state and don't use recreational drugs at all or use them sparingly. But way back in the mid 20th century the notion began to gain popularity that those people who used recreational drugs outside of those used by the majority were to be criminally prosecuted. And thus began the police War on Drugs. The underlying cause of recreational drug abuse is medical. Yet we have allowed this whole issue to become one of criminal behavior. It doesn't take an Einstein to understand that if someone needs to take a drug in order to feel better, to bring on some sort of mood they can tolerate better or enjoy more-----that if you tell them to stop, they won't. The solution is not so complicated, albeit difficult. To stop the abuse you have to change the environment which is causing the mental state being altered by the drugs or provide them medical help to alter their brain chemistry. Everything about this issue is medical, social, or economic. But instead we continue to support a police War on Drugs that costs an astronomical amount of money, ensures that the United States has a greater percentage of people in jail than any other country (at a cost of $30,000/inmate), and virtually ensures these incarcerated inmates, once released, will become dredges on society for the rest of their lives.

4. The inability to tax the wealthy in a way which prevents too much wealth accumulating in the hands of too few.

It seems rather obvious that for any country to have a healthy economy the distribution of wealth cannot be allowed to become too skewed in favor of the rich. This tendency happened back in the late 1800's and early 1900's in this country. Back then people had the good sense to impose steep graduated income taxes up to 90% and steep inheritance taxes. It worked. It worked so well that this country had an economic prosperity unmatched across the globe. Today it is a whole new ball game. The wealthy control elections via funding candidates, lobbyists control Congress to be sure the wealthy get endless tax breaks, tax cuts, tax shelters, tax deferments, and the list of perks goes on and on. Even when 2-5% of the people own 90% of our wealth the issue is simply ignored. Even I, at the shallow end of the affluent pool, pay around 10.7% as my tax rate. And everyone wonders why both state and federal debts are so high? If the affluent pay less percentage wise in taxes, just where is the money to come from to run government? It is really bad now----meaning that the poor and those of modest incomes have nothing left for the wealthy to take in order to make the wealthy wealthier. So, now to save expenditures, pensions, health care, salaries, job security etc are the target. We have pathetically entered the stage where if any group still has decent pensions, health care, salaries, job security----well they have become the political targets to have such 'perks' removed. After years of building up these benefits as 'desirable' we now refer to them as perks which must go. There is a new kind of freedom on the horizon, and already exists for many across the globe---even in our own country----a kind of freedom where there is nothing left to lose, and nothing is worth nothing, but it is free. Wow.

5. An education system that spends 3 or 4 times more to educate some kids than others.

The right wing conservative and religious segment of our population has convinced most Americans that the children of our urban, rural, and suburban ghettoes---these ghettoes, in large part a product of our War on Drugs----are not victims in need of a level playing field, but rather mere budding dregs of society who need to be locked up as soon as age makes them eligible, preferably with mandatory sentences for crimes, most often related to drug/gang trafficking. Certainly every religion would support the need for government to spend equal amount of money to educate all our children. Whatever children are, they are not responsible for their own youthful environment. Whatever would be the Christian or any other religious dictate of conscience, it certainly would support providing all children with an equal amount of money being spent on their education. Using property taxes to fund education is nothing more than a deliberate act of injustice to innocent children. It is understandable that their own children are first and foremost to parents, but it is equally understood that God, whatever anyone perceives God to be, would consider all children deserving of a good education. On this basis our current method of funding the education of children, all God's children, is unjust. Period.

6. Permitting wars to be fought on borrowed money.

It has to be the height of irony that the political and religious right have been the strongest supporters of every invasion of other countries by the U.S. over the last 4O-50 years. There has never been a war during this time which this segment of our population has not supported. Strange, but this patriotic commitment does not come from any willingness to sacrifice on their part for these wars. Imagine a country going on for decades invading countries, maintaining military bases all over the globe, spending more on military matters than all other industrial nations together, and doing it not only by borrowing the money to do all this, but simultaneously insisting that the wealthy be given tax cuts, and using a voluntary army to fight these battles. When is the last time the U.S. went to war and everyone sacrificed to pay for the war? Probably World War II. In fact, all these wars have made the rich even richer while many of the poor, which make up most of the voluntary army, are made dead. It just seems a cruel and disrespecting attitude to exploit so many of our own citizens in this fashion. My generation ought to be ashamed of ourselves for doing this. Whatever happened to everyone sacrificing and armed service be via a draft?

7. Blaming the poverty levels across the globe on political systems

The bull shit is at least consistent. Every country would be prosperous and peaceful and full of freedom and justice IF democracy were the form of government. I don't know, they have been voting in countries like Haiti for decades and their situation just gets more dire. There is no form of government on earth which can, by itself, save Haiti. Haiti is a perfect example of what happens when human overpopulation passes a certain level. They destroyed all their forests for the wood; in the absence of trees, the topsoil went to the sea, and in the absence of good topsoil, food becomes scarce, and with natural resources depleted, jobs are scarce, and with all this resulting chaos, brutality rule via thugs becomes the reality. Yet the prevalent political mentality is that if Haiti, and other countries like Haiti, could just have clean free elections----well, everything would just be ok. Wow. This La La land politics gets annoying.

8. The inability to keep Church and State separate---all of History has repeatedly shown what happens when any kind of religion becomes the power behind the state. Almost, if not every one of the founders of our Constitution, insisted that religion be kept out of our government. As George Washington said, we are not a Christian government. Jefferson and others were even more blunt about clergy of any sort meddling with governing. The matter is plenty simple enough. Religion is based on beliefs, every person has a right to their own religious beliefs, and no one's religious beliefs should ever be made the law of the land. The Golden Rule suffices rather nicely as an ethical guide for good government.

Part 2 will follow (9-16 + assorted quotations)

Happy Occasions

2011-03-12T20:05:00.000-08:00

Happy Occasions:

I have written a musing on happiness earlier. But here I attempt to identify the happiest times in my life. I think I'll skip the unhappiest since we fortunately tend to shove these experiences deep in our psyche. I think I'll leave them there.

It would be difficult to rank from the happiest down in any kind of accurate order, so I will go chronologically.

Pets have always meant a lot to me. And I have had a lot of pets right up to now. Making a pet happy makes me happy. But pets die too soon.

Sports have always been mostly happy adventures for me, especially the sandlot games in childhood. If arguing can be titled happiness sometimes, then those sandlot games were happy times. Setting the local crosscountry track record was high on the happiness level (relatively new course so not an earth shattering record) but it came so suddenly (the first time I finished a race) and I still remember the kids in my homeroom class, upon hearing this over the loudspeaker, turning around and staring in disbelief. The jocks in the school began to speak to me, that was cool.

Winning the neighborhood Morningside Olympics was a happy thing, although it was structured so the achievement was more luck and manipulation than any real athletic accomplishment. Going to country and western shows were real happy events for me. So was the time later on when I, along with a boyhood friend, promoted our own country and western show, and I met the Louvin Brothers in person. My dad was wrong about the need for a Brinks truck to haul the money away. We actually lost a little money.

I was ecstatic about receiving a major scholarship to the college of my first choice. It was my high school track coach that really convinced them to give it to me. A lot of good things one owes to others.

Being appointed the senior Biology Department Assistant in undergraduate school was up there as a happy moment. I wasn't the best biology student by far, so this too came out of nowhere. So much in life is luck and dependent on others that it's hard to be serious about any "I earned it" mentality.

Being a track and crosscountry coach was a happy and challenging experience. Myself and a lot of students accomplished a lot in a short time, and I think we all remember that in highly positive terms. I got fired for all the turmoil generated from the efforts, but it was not tragedy at all as it forced me to go back to school and get a doctorate in physiology. I learned never to take a job where you are not allowed to do your job your way. For most jobs this is not possible so I lucked out again.

I was allowed to do my doctoral thesis while teaching at another university. This is rather unheard of in science, and once again I don't know why the Chairperson of Physiology let me do such a thing. I think sometimes a person gives you some slack if you are a bit off the wall in a good sort of way. Earlier, when getting my Master's in that department, I refused to put down a particular dog (for experimental purposes) being kept up in animal care by my advisor. I stole the dog out of animal care and kept him in in the Graduate Assistants Office complex. I threatened to go to the Humane Society if anybody touched that dog. The dog tore up the Graduate Assistant Office during a violent thunderstorm. I still remember so well the Chairperson of the Department calling me in and telling me "There is a rumor someone is keeping a dog in the Assistants Office. I would like you to investigate this and hopefully within a month you can report back that there is no dog being housed there". The dog and I made a crosscountry train trip back to my parents and they got the dog as a surprise. Some surprise, but they grew to love the dog too. The point is I sense the Chairperson let me do my Ph.D. thesis off campus because of the dog thing. My guess is he liked dogs and admired what I did. My advisor did not like it at all.

I guess being elected by students as teacher of the Year at every place I taught was up there in my happiest moments. But it was also embarrassing. I was not the smartest teacher, not the best lecturer, not the most organized, not an easy grader, and not very sociable in the normal sense. I think my talent was in getting students to try exceptionally hard to pass, some sort of ability to endlessly make a mountain out of a mole hill. I also took serious a high school teacher who lectured constantly about FANAFI---Find a Need and Fill It----as a life mantra. In teaching there are endless needs of students in a zillion different ways. Life is full of trade-offs. Never once did I ever get chosen by administrators for teaching awards which came with monetary rewards. Well, they say you can't please everyone. I think it is better to serve the needs of those under your supervision than the needs of those above you. I recently established a FANAFI Fund in memory of that high school teacher to distribute some of my money over time to worthy causes. This makes me happy.

Genuinely falling in love is no small feat for someone of my personality and plain looks.. So that has to be at the top of my happiness list. Unfortunately love is not something that can occur in a social vacuum and it was not destined to last, primarily because I was not strong enough to make it last. To let down someone you really love is a character deficiency of major sorts. Love for me became the Best of all possible worlds and the Worst of all possible worlds. For some failures one has no right or ability to forgive oneself. I guess it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. God's created evolutionary process gives no real evidence of being centered around any particular species, let alone any individual of a species, and so we really are 'our brother's keeper' if the less fortunate are to have a better life. Praying is not the mode to bring more justice to human lives.

Meaningful social friendships bring happiness. My own personality does not mix well with non meaningful social banter. If I am not going to see someone again, or very often, I have difficulty being genuinely interested in knowing much about them or telling them much about me. Somehow it seems mostly irrelevant. Others thrive on this kind of thing. Thus, my happiest encounters are not social groups of any sort. One could count on one hand how many groups I have ever joined. Not good or bad, just the way I am. This is not to say I have had little contact with all sorts of people. It is just the opposite. My students in class became an intimate group to me almost immediately. They became like my family for the semester or year, whatever the case. People that worked for me became like family. Outside of my parents and a select group of formative years neighborhood friends, family to me is always those with whom I interact with at any given moment in my life. That worked out well for me-----I do what I can, they do what they can, and then we all move on, like ships passing in the night. STILL, these kind of interactions, albeit temporary had a big impact on me as a person, and I would hope had an impact on these other people. I doubt most of them will ever forget me or me them. People build people, they really do. Those whose whole life is a close family unit, to me, have reduced the quality of their life, and by limiting their meaningful interactions to a few genetic relations, will never develop any true appreciation of diversity. If one cannot truly appreciate diversity one cannot be a happy contented person. Some sort of US vs THEM will invariably develop. The only long term group interaction I can be proud of is the 'gang' of my youth. We continued to get together every year for over 50 years, and managed somehow to have meaningful interactions over those years. Distance and time have changed the dynamics of the group and the same kind of interaction in our current lives has diminished, but a few of them are going as strong as ever. One has to admire that. Anyway, special friendships, mostly transient, have brought a good deal of happiness and contentment to my own life.

Retirement is right up there as a happy moment. One definitely feels "Free at Last". A lot of contentment for me revolves around being able to understand the many aspects of life. To understand these matters one has to read a lot, observe a lot, ponder a lot, and in my case----write down my thoughts in a deliberate slow paced, logical manner. Different people arrive at different conclusions about the same topic, but one feels contented only when one has arrived at his/her own personal conclusions.

I understand God's created evolutionary process is governed by chance, diversity, environment, luck, and genetics. In a world where misfortune out numbers good fortune, I consider my self quite lucky. Happiness is, to a degree, a product of being lucky. That there are others luckier than myself in life is of no importance. This is expected. For every person who wanted to see me fail---more often than not, there were others whose kindnesses and loyalty were definitely note worthy; sometimes from someone titled and powerful, and other times from the commonest of common people. I learned early on that if the battle I fought was for others least able to defend themselves, you can stand tall and force more powerful elements in the battle to yield---at a personal price. They will wait eagerly for the chance to pay you back. In my case, never seeking further advancement, they waited forever, and their ass was gone from the scene before mine. People who spend too much time chasing titles and power and financial gain live stressful lives, have to look over their shoulders constantly, and lose a good portion of their soul in the process---not to mention their title of the moment. I think my peculiar oddness, used in ways to help the less fortunate, gave me a pass with some administrators who admired my manipulative abilities for good causes and the audacity I had to confront those not used to being confronted. I have, as a consequence, endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice intended and have received a great deal of kindness, not always quite free from ridicule.

SIMPLE THINGS bring me more contentedness than anything else. Lucky again, but these simple things make me happy: walking, eating good meals, music, pleasant friendships, assisting underdogs attain some justice, reading, musing about life, writing, sleeping, limited traveling to nature places, pets, joking around, horse racing, football (fading away some), and being retired. There was a time when titles, power, money, competition, and material wealth mattered more, but I never was consumed by any of it. Enough is as good as a feast and that helps one's happiness index to rise. It seems to be true that those who are satisfied with little are happier than those for whom enough is never enough.

I have seen a lot of tragic things in my time, as have most others. I have always felt bad to see underdogs of most any ilk get squashed by those more powerful than them. Part of my empathy with these less fortunate came from my inquisitiveness about diversity among human cultures and personalities. This appreciation of diversity has enabled me to get along with a wide assortment of personalities and ethnicities. It is always makes me happy to see others receive some justice in their lives. Furthermore, people with whom you come in contact really do know whether you are on their side or against them. You cannot hide this no matter how politically correct your verbiage. To some extent, kindness towards those who least expect kindness from you will be rewarded by genuine friendship and respect. It brings happiness to be respected by those different from yourself. You feel more attuned to the nature of the evolutionary process. And that is about as close as one will get to God. All other communication is illusionary.

As I have said elsewhere I have learned that happiness is related to contentedness, and contentedness is measured by the extent to which one uses reason, not faith not culture, not inherited religious dogma to govern ones life. Reason and the reasoned universal principle of the Golden Rule bring happiness to yourself and justice to others. Fair enough.

Planetary Perspective: The Big Picture

2011-03-09T06:24:00.000-08:00

Planetary Perspective: The Big Picture---Seeing the Forest for the Sake of the Trees.

It is not easy for me to be concise. With this topic the challenge is daunting.
Our planet and life on it is millions of years old. All of us living on this planet today are but a brief and miniscule portion of the life having existed on the planet before us. We do our best to invent notions that try to make us more important in the whole scheme of God's created evolutionary process, but these are defensive efforts to assuage our fear of death. None of us wring our hands over not having been present in the past and none of us should spend time wringing our hands over our future after our death. All we have, for sure, is the present. The past could not affect us personally and neither can the future of the planet after our death.

I sense most people, everywhere, realize something huge and tumultuous is about to happen on our planet. But we can't see the forest for the sake of the trees. This discourse is about the forest, not the trees. I kind of separate the new factors facing our planet and societies, and the old, usual factors. In the interests of being concise I will refrain from any elaborate discussion of any of these factors. Books are written about each. The object here is not to get lost in detail.

THE NEW FACTORS:

Overriding everything is human overpopulation of the globe. Global population has doubled in my own lifetime, and for it to double again will be catastrophic for all species on the planet. To date, humans---for all our cleverness----have not been able to practice responsible reproduction. We still pretend the individual right to reproduce like rabbits overrides the welfare of planetary life as a whole. Of course individual rights never trump the rights of society as a whole. And more amazingly, politicians of almost every ilk won't even talk seriously about this topic. Of course not, people just don't want to hear it. This is a brand new factor in the history of evolution---human overpopulation on the globe. In the past there was always frontiers of some sort, some place to run and start anew. Not anymore. Where would one run to?

Consequent to the above all sorts of natural resources are becoming depleted, whether it be gases in the atmosphere, life in the oceans, species extinction, loss of arable land, depletion of fresh water sources, energy sources. building materials, fish in the ocean, trees on the land, etc. Right now, today, there are not enough natural resources for all humans to live the kind of lifestyle the affluent now live.

To deny any of these two NEW FACTORS is purely a faith based denial, much like many people accept their inherited religious beliefs on faith. What separates humans from other species is our ability to reason and our inherent ethical nature.
Whenever humans fail to use reason to solve problems or fail to practice and develop their inherent ethical nature, the eventual consequences will be grave. All humans everywhere understand the Golden Rule. For the most part, it is not a question whether we understand right from wrong, but whether we will do the right instead of the wrong.

THE OLD FACTORS:

Every civilized powerful society has collapsed and most of the time it has been for two reasons: the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many, and the financial burden of trying to maintain a global empire of some sort.

To this old factor has been added a NEW TWIST: In the past societies were relatively self sufficient. Not anymore. We now have a global economy. That may or may not be a good thing, but it probably is not an avoidable thing. HOWEVER, to have a global economy without minimum wages will reduce every national economy to a third world type economy with production of more and more things being done with slave labor (without plantations). The price of all these 'bargains' will be self destructive in the not so long run. Freedom will be reduced to nothing left to lose because we have nothing with which to purchase anything. For millions and millions of people, they are already there. Even in the United States, right now 30% of children are being raised in poverty; not the old fashioned type of poverty where a family lived off the land peacefully and healthfully. No, many children today live in refugee camps or urban/rural/suburban ghettoes, socially isolated, over stressed, undereducated, and fearful of personal harm from others.

The social fabric is changing rapidly, even in our own country. The social unit now is rarely the neighborhood, the community, an economic class---but the family unit. Family values has been promoted as an ethical concept when it is really an excuse for circling the wagons and viewing all matters as self serving family challenges. The concept of spreading wealth around or taxes around, or anything else around has become passé. In our own country we wage war on borrowed money, we fight drug addiction with an expensive police War on Drugs instead of treating it as a medical problem, we give tax breaks to the wealthy and reduce benefits to the poor, we have eliminated the steep graduated income and inheritance taxes on the wealthy to ensure none of the money gained gets returned to the society from which it came, and we spend three times as much to educate some of our young and three times less to educate most of our young, the very ones most in need of a good education.

Regulation, and 'enough is enough are no longer legitimate and necessary restraints on free enterprise. The concept of "I earned it" is being replaced more and more by inherited wealth. To pay off state and national debts we use political clout and maneuvering to pit one group against another as to who is going to pay off the debt. Ironically, in many cases those who supported all the wars, and military expenditures on weapons of little use in modern warfare, and the police War on Drugs, on maintaining military bases all over the globe, are the very ones who demand the debts incurred be paid off by others and they get a tax break. Greed flourishes and fairness becomes something only on a personal basis.

To me, all of the above is the big picture---the context from which all the particulars we address are being fought. We see today, for our immediate self interests, and have no objective view of the future. All forms of government seem to be failing, for different reasons, and the multitude of complex endangerments to our planet have left us relatively paralyzed. In some respects we are like deer in the headlights, we see it coming but until it hits us we cannot bring ourselves to act. Of course then it may be too late.

The good news, which we as individuals need accept, is that the process of God's evolutionary process will continue. Our 'free will' can help make our personal lives better, but in the big picture, we are but one species participating in moulding the future nature of the planet, and it will be the laws governing this process which determine the future. We are not, as individuals, or as a species, any kind of end product nor do we have any reasonable basis to assume we are a favored species, or a favored individual member of our own species. Believing otherwise does not bring any real contentment (the religious right of any religion are not exactly known as happy campers brimming with contentment). What we have received, by chance, and our environment, is a chance to exist as part of this evolutionary process for a very limited time. Humans are blessed with the ability to reason and an inherent sense of ethics. To the extent we use both in all aspects of our life we can be contented. Remember, it is ethics which allows the less fortunate to reach a level of life for which to reach contentment. Yes, we are our brother's keeper both for his sake and our own sake. One can choose not to help the less fortunate as much as we help ourselves, but in so doing we can never be a really contented person. We are wired to use reason and we are wired to be ethical. Success in these areas is the basis for contentment, and never one without the other.

Team Chemistry Part 2

2011-02-11T06:48:00.000-08:00

Team Chemistry Part II

This issue of team chemistry is less a difference of opinion about the value of team chemistry as it is about the purpose of team chemistry. Team chemistry, according to my take on the issues, is a bonus benefit of winning, not in itself a major cause of the winning. Most all teams at the Professional level have coaches and organizations which stress team chemistry. And of course one of the major benefits of participating in any kind of team sport is to learn that no individual, by themselves, can bring victory. Even a sport like cross country cannot have success with one good runner. It takes 5 or 7 good runners to win a meet. It may well be as difficult a feat for someone to finish 5th in the race as it did for someone to finish 1st.

Be all this as it may, one cannot get carried away with the team chemistry bit---after all, only one team in the NFL can win the Superbowl. That means, out of 32 teams participating only one team gets to go on national TV and deliver the obligatory message of how great each person on the team is, how much of a family they are, how the credit goes to everyone on the team etc. And this is just before the exuberant credit sharing goes to parents, God, the fans, etc. All of this is good, and is not untrue to the extent of just how they feel at that moment.

Before the Super Bowl a small army of experts and commentators debate which team is the better team. Considering all the uncontrollable factors that occur in a football game, this debate is a bit silly. Yet non of these debates ever center around team chemistry. No one said, for example, that Green Bay would win because they have better team chemistry. For one thing the term is so vague that it is hardly definable. IF team chemistry could be defined and measurable the issue could be resolved. Every team has some sort of chemistry and that chemistry is going to be defined by the team players and coaches. I always love to use the Chicago Bull's trio of Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman as an example at the extreme side of the issue. No one can define team chemistry in a way which would make any of these players the kind of team players portrayed by the victory speeches. Dennis didn't talk to his teammates, Jordan was focused on Jordan, and Pippen seethed that his contributions were not acknowledged enough. And the coach had to find a way to get them to accept that reality and that what mattered and what would make them appreciate each other in the end, was for each to perform their respective team assignments well. If they win then each of them will be up on the podium graciously thanking their teammates for the great 'team effort'. If they lose, the same generous attitude will not likely prevail. After all, there had to be weak link somewhere, and all parties involved will try to cover their ass, so to speak. Those least fitting the image of a team player will be the first target. Dennis hurt the team because he didn'teven bother to talk to his teammates, Jordan needs to understand there are others on the team and not hog the ball so much, Pippen needs to quit pouting and just concentrate on playing etc.

The stated goal of the Super Bowl is to find out who has the better players on their team. There is no attempt to claim beforehand that the game, or all those before it were really about the team chemistry of the various teams. How the hell would you even start to measure that? Team chemistry operates in all social and employment enterprizes. Most people work in situations which involve team chemistry. Team chemistry is most important in order to make the working conditions more palatable. Everyone would rather work in a job where the workers get along.

In Professional Football talent is pretty much where it starts and where it ends. Add the quality of the coaching and all the uncontrollable variables, and therein lies success or failure. The question becomes one of do you have the talent? Then do you have a coach who can develop the talent, put in the right plays, and keep them focused on their individual assignments, not be too occupied with external family or social activities. Team chemistry is a given---it will be there of some sort. And because the individual personalities vary, the chemistry will vary.

Granted, some coaches are better suited than others to deal with particular personalities. Most people have certain personalities with which they have difficulty dealing. So you avoid hiring them or coaching them. A different coach or employer will form a successful relationship with them. That is just the way life is.

To get the best out of certain team members may take the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job. Favre, in retrospect, was no ideal team chemistry contributor. Favre is Favre, and he had the needed talent. So, team chemistry gives, the owners, the coaches, the other players, all know Favre is treated with kid gloves and allowed to get things his way. That, for such a team, is the price to be paid for winning games. As long as 'Hot Stuff' is irreplaceable everyone just accepts the reality. It was only when age caught up with Favre and he kept changing his mind about retirement that they decided he was expendable. Team chemistry was never the issue.

Condensed, team chemistry exists in a zillion forms, and is important. At the professional level this means the coaches have to find a way for the varied, sometimes difficult personalities to co-exist and stay focused on their individual assignments. IF winning results then some real appreciation for each other amongst the players will develop. If winning does not come the focus changes, and scapegoats sought by everyone on the team. Teams that win Championships do not look to clean house. Those who fail to win Championships do look to clean house. The teams that win face a different dilemma. Now all sorts of team members believe they deserve a huge raise, I mean after all, they heard all the speeches by their own teammates and commentators of all sorts, and it all gives testimony of just how important they are to the team. Salaries for the next year become a nightmare.
And the players have increased market value---I mean other team administrators also heard all these laudatory comments about all these players. Now lets get real one more time here. If this team chemistry stuff and all this 'we are family' stuff had the meaning we all want to think it has, then why do so many of the players go where ever the money trail leads them? What happened to 'family'? For many players to varying degrees, when all the hoopla dies down they decide, often for money, that all the 'shit' and pressure that goes with being a professional football player can be put up with just as well one place as another.

After thoughts: When a player says on the victory podium "We are like family" one need give pause for thought about that. Like whose family? Some families don't get along together at all. In some family certain family members get along and certain other ones do not. In some family all family members get along just fine. And then what do we mean 'get along'? That would be hard to define also. I think most people in any group try to get along---at work, with church members, waiting in lines, etc. This 'team chemistry' under different titles, is pervasive in all our lives. And then there is the numbers game. A football team has 17 different assistant coaches and like 50 different players and then all the support staff. And they are only together half of the year. The amount of genuine personal interaction between most players is cursory. Then there is the age factor. A college coach one time told me he missed high school coaching because in high school you get to really develop raw talent. In college he felt most of the job was recruiting talent and then just ensuring that the effort in practice was going to play a big role on who is a starter. When a professional football player reports to a team, these days maybe the 4th team, they are primarily motivated by salary and public approval of their performance. Kids in high school are going through a difficult social stage in their life---and they really do need to learn the importance of respecting others on the team. If a coach wants to feel like he has turned raw talent into something special, including getting along with diverse personalities, then high school is were he will maximize this kind of satisfaction. In a professional sport like football these guys are adults---maybe pampered, sometimes irresponsible, oversized egos, etc. All coaches preach team unity, tolerance for each other etc. I suppose it is a version of Rodney King's plea "Can't we all just get along?". But in the last analysis it is money and fame which drives these players to be the best they can be.

There is this saying which says, "God gives us our relatives, thank God we can choose our friends." I reckon a football player could say, "Management gives us our teammates, thank God we can choose our friends." Families are bound by genetics and law. Professional football teams are bound by contracts and skill. Whether Mary becomes a good doctor and Harry becomes a good lawyer is not closely related to family chemistry. They are almost separate issues, related but not in any clear way.

Sport arguments, which is what they are, serve a good purpose in that it forces one to take impressions, some assorted observations, combine all this with some stats, and come to a formed opinion. We then defend our opinions with all the tools at our disposal. Rarely do sports opinions change. The arguments are seldom about facts, like exactly how many points did a team score, but about things which are not facts---who is the better player, which team is better, which team is going to win a game, why did this or that team win the game, etc. All this if fine, healthy and dandy---as long as one realizes opinions are not likely to change. And there is little need to. Sports is entertainment. Whether I am right or wrong on any of my opinions about sport debates has no bearing on the rest of my life. No harm is done. It is in the area of politics and religions where the harm is done. Big time.

TEAM CHEMISTRY

2011-02-07T22:12:00.000-08:00

Team Chemistry

After the Super Bowl all the Packer Players could not say enough about their teammates and how well they all work together with no bad apples. We all like to hear that talk and it makes us feel good about all the players on the team. I have had long standing discussions with others about the importance of team chemistry in sports like football. On the surface it seems a slam dunk---of course team chemistry is a key ingredient to success on the field. The players just told us that, as did the coaches.

HOWEVER, the issue is not so simple. It is just another one of those questions of which came first, the chicken or the egg. First of all, talent is needed at all the different positions. That is also a slam dunk. Then, winning also breeds contentment, with oneself and then with the rest of your teammates. I can't recall any team winning where the players do not give effusive praise to all their teammates. Whenever we win we get into an effusive praise mode---to all sorts of others--- teammates, parents, coaches, spouses, children, God, etc. One of those 'everybody is great' moments.

ONE OF THE GENUINELY ADMIRABLE THINGS about winning is that it brings to the surface genuine respect for some teammates who otherwise would be on the athlete's subjective 'biggest jerk' list. Now they become an affectionately designated 'our jerk' and they understand they 'need' such 'jerks' to continue to be successful. If one wants to call that team chemistry, I would accede the point but then, winning came first. When a team is losing the easy targets are those who are 'different', those who keep to themselves, or talk to much, or brag too much, or break rules, etc. These are the 'cancers' of the locker room and the reason for the losing. This brings to mind an athlete so many love to hate, which is their right, but a 'cancer in the locker room is hard to establish. A person who is different does not, by that in itself, make him a cancer. Terrell Owens has been on several teams and those who can't stand his personality refer to him as a cancer in the locker room. Really? Then why, without exception, has every team he left gotten worse after he left? By what logic can one argue that someone is a cancer in the locker room, a poison to team chemistry, and then when the poison is removed the team does worse? Either team chemistry is not that important or the player was not harmful to team chemistry. In the case of Owens, when in his prime, his presence on a team made the team record better. Now, in his declining years, put on teams that are weak, even though he does well, the team does not. To me, this kind of proves that a given wide receiver cannot make a poor team good.

ON THE OTHER HAND, when a team loses a lot of games the finger pointing begins. Clearly there has to be a reason why the team is losing. Some players or coaches are not performing well enough. And each is trying to figure out where to place the blame. After all, if you can't figure out where the weak links are on the field how can corrections be made? Things get said or implied and team members start to get a little cranky and defensive. When the season ends no one is in front of a camera touting how wonderful their team chemistry was, and gushing forth with effusive praise for teammates, God, coaches, spouses, etc.

IT NEEDS TO BE NOTED that no one is kept on a team because they are nice guys. The nicest players with the best attitudes and efforts and personalities get traded or dropped all the time. They just are not good enough at their position. No coach ever says "we know Charlie is not that good on the field but we love him in the locker room so he stays." Of course not, team chemistry doesn't enable you to catch the ball, throw it better, tackle better, block better etc. What team chemistry does is make it more pleasant to go through practices and enjoy going to work more. And that may help you train better. That is about it.

FINALLY, we all know many teams who do real well with a team composed of starkly different and incompatible personalities. I mean a team composed of Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman is not exactly a picture of harmony and team chemistry. Rodman didn't even speak to the rest of the team most of the time.
Jordan worried about Jordan, and Pippen wallowed in envy. BUT, they won championship after championship and with each Championship trophy they all had wonderful things to say about each other. Winning does that. And THEY SHOULD say nice things about each other. They couldn't win without Rodman's rebounds, Jordan's scoring, or Pippens defense and assists.

The 1985 Chicago Bears are considered one of the best football teams ever and Dikta and Ryan wouldn't even talk to each other, the quarterback was off doing his own thing with attitude sky high, Perry eating his way to fame, etc. They were good simply because each player performed well during games.

Bellicheck is not noted for being a great coach because he specializes in building team chemistry. He is about as methodical and impersonal as a coach can be.
You perform well or you are gone. Bellicheck knows if you have an excellent quarterback and competent players at all positions, you will win most of the time. He doesn't spend a huge pile of money to attract the best at one position because that leaves him short money to get a competent player at some other position. Both Bellicheck and the Eagles dump players who get so good they demand a huge contract. You can't afford to be the best at one position (excluding quarterback) and weak at other positions.

Realistically, the Packer players can effusively praise every player on the team, and it is well and decent that they do, BUT the Packers did well this year because they had Aaron Rodgers, Woodson, Matthews, Jennings, a good coaching staff, and fairly competent players at other positions. Take Rodgers out of the mix and see how far all this team chemistry stuff carries them. All those dropped passes during the game were not a product of any kind of team chemistry, good or bad. That is just silly.

A good coach (like Phil Jackson) is able to take diverse personalities, even weird personalities and get them to allow teammates to live and let live with respect to each other. Bubba doesn't talk much---so what? Doosey doesn't ever shut up---so what? Doosey brags too much---so what? Everyone do your job on the field and all will be well. If that is team chemistry then so be it.

OLDIE:2004 Worrisome Trepidation

2011-01-30T22:06:00.000-08:00

Worrisome Trepidation:

Maybe I spend too much time, of late, mulling over ethical behavior and ethical politics. It would have been better had I spent this much time mulling away at an earlier age. Maybe I kind of always have, but it takes time for me to process input and reach conclusions. Plus, youth is characterized too often by personal progress and blind patriotism. Americans were always the good guys and our leaders always morally above reproach. If our government said we had to invade Vietnam to save freedom for the world and protect America from harm, it was good enough for me (but not good enough for me not to seek a deferment from the draft). I and Barry Goldwater thought more bombing was the answer, more will power to stay the course, etc.

Now that I am older and useless in terms of being part of any solution, I realize how relative all this bullshit is. And finally I can do the math. If killing 2000 Americans in the World Trade Center bombings (what Al Queda would call an act of war) is a tragedy, then jailing for more than a decade 450,000 young poor people for selling us our recreational drugs is, if I can do the math, a tragedy 225 times as great. If Hussein killing up to 20,000 of his own people over a ten year period is an unacceptable atrocity, then a Sudanese government which is about to genocidally kill 1.5 million in the next three months, is an atrocity 8 times as great.

For the richest country on the earth to have 39.9 million people in poverty---a population greater than that of this country just 150 years ago, then to me this is a stunning indictment of our priorities and values.

And I am finally tired of this insidious campaign to always paint Americans as somehow the ethical superior of other groups, whether it be one class of people in htis country against another, or one religious group compared to another, or one nation against another. Bush always likes, as only Bush can do with such inane simplicity, to target an atrocity committed by others and boast, "This is not what America is about, we don't kill innocent people", etc. When the religious right sing a hymn they can feel their moral superiority raising their righteousness to new levels; no logical thought process is required or desired. I understand all this because I have been there, but we would be far better off to accept the premise that human nature is human nature, that the fight for justice must take precedence over selfish individualistic or patriotic greed. It is not clear at all to me that the Al Queda bombing the 'world Trade Centers and killing innocents,in an attempt to get our military bases out of their countries, is much different than our wiping out entire Indian villages because we wanted their land, or wiping out entire Vietnam villages because we suspected they sympathized with our enemies, or creating urban ghettoes across our land in an attempt to save the rest of us from the personal responsibility to control our own use of drugs. It hardly takes a genius to understand why the rest of the world is increasingly and very rapidly viewing Americans as arrogant self serving intolerant terrorists in our own right, and in our own peculiar ways. The same pride Bush instills in his followers, not unlike the pride Hitler instilled in his followers, is frightening other nations across the globe. Where they ask, is the American they once knew?

The same crowd that goes apoplectic over abortion or allowing people to control their own dying process, or thinks putting to death a human 'vegetable' is murder, thinks little, if at all, about real live fully conscious PERSONS who will be genocidally killed by the millions, or live PERSONS by the millions in abject poverty not too far from their doorsteps, or real LIVE CONSCIOUS KIDS receiving but one third of tax monies for their education compared to the education of their own kids, or find no problem with their own kid getting a fine for using a drug while the kid who sold it to him, as the only means to put money in his pocket, goes to jail for more than a decade, or finds anything wrong with other kids or adults having no health insurance. When this crowd begins to worry about REAL PERSONS, not living cells with the potential to be a person, or living cells that will never again be a person, then maybe they can argue they have their priorities right. Then everybody's kid is precious, not just their own kids; when every couple in love are precious, not just their own choice of a lover; when the religious beliefs of all are protected, not their own religious beliefs made the law of the land; when this crowd expands their feelings of warmth and affection past their own family unit, then, and only then, does family values have a meaning inclusive of all humanity----all variants of family units---not just their own particular family unit. It puzzles me how some of the finest and best among us (in their own personal lives) can end up so oblivious to the richness of diversity and the pressing needs of others. I have news for them, I doubt God is blessing American right now. More likely HE/SHE is pissed off.

DATED: 2004 Domestic Irremissibility

2011-01-30T09:00:00.000-08:00

OUR ULTRA NATIONAL DOMESTIC IRREMISSIBILITY
A May/June 2004 Musing
R. S. James

Because I expended a greater effort, including partial revisions, this musing got lengthy. In the effort to be concise, clear, and get to the hub of this matter I got frustrated by the limitations of the human mind. Unfettered thinking on moral principles invariably becomes an inextricable Gordian knot. If we think enough, if we live long enough, maybe we end up clueless, the certainty of youth evaporated. Logical panoramic thought is laborious. It is easier to turn on something electronic and be amused. Truth, it is said, will set you free. But before it does it will make you angry. In the end “the pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple”(Oscar Wilde). If I tend to harp on the selected topic for this musing it is a reflection of just how outrageous and cruel this business is of destroying lives of the young before they ever really have a chance to escape the fate imposed on them by others. And the others is us in a collective fashion. The 35,000 soldiers who died in Vietnam was a tragedie (Fr) and a disgrace that most Americans, including myself, were compliant participants. We believed our purpose was noble---to bring democracy to Vietnam and protect us and the world from a hostile communist threat to national and global security. It was all bullshit. Vietnam was a sovereign artificially divided country with the right and obligation to determine it’s own form of government and they posed no threat to anyone’s security. The 600 or so American soldiers who have died in Iraq already and who will die in what is clearly likely to be a long siege, is being considered by more and more a similar tragedy. Old people dying is not a cataclysmic tragadie, it is a part of life, it comes with the gift of life, it is unavoidable and a natural event. Young people whose lives are needlessly sacrificed---terminated early in their productive years---by deliberate actions of those who should be protecting them, these deaths are the disgraceful deaths, the preventable deaths. If you are going to die young, it ought be for a worthwhile cause, as a last resort, or it is tragic. Any parent who loses a son or daughter at a young age from a disease or condition knows the cruelty of losing a life before the person really had a chance to develop their potential and enjoy the many good things life has to offer.

But when it comes to the wanton destruction of young lives in this country nothing compares remotely to the 450,000 young people imprisoned long term for selling varied recreational drugs to those who have chosen to use them. For the most part, you may as well line these young people up and just slowly strangle the Promethean breath of life, the vitality of life, from them.. Their life is over: death by sesquipedalian terms of incarceration. Born into an environment they did not create, cornered into seemingly hopeless poverty, jailed for a decade or more with the worst of peers, they emerge from prison middle aged, emotionally and mentally damaged, no skills, no friends, and little or no prospect of gainful employment, social fulfillment, or good health. On a comparable basis, in many respects, those who died in Vietnam or Iraq at least mercifully died in a short period of time. These 450,000 young people, mostly from black urban or white rural ghettoes, die the slow cruel death of abandoned lonely ‘nothingburgers’. Let’s put this 450,000 ‘legal and religious coup de grace’ purge in proper perspective. It is almost 13 times the number of our soldiers killed in Vietnam. It is 3 times the number of soldiers currently in Iraq. It is almost as many who died in the Civil War. It is more than Hussein is purported to have killed over a 20 yr. period. It probably exceeds the number of pages of all my musings.

To me, the first and foremost obligation of any society is to protect and nurture the less fortunate. This trickle down bullshit is nothing more than a concocted excuse to further the financial status of the already affluent. If there were an ounce of truth to this cruel hoax, then the share of the financial pie for the non 5 and 10 percenters would be growing, not shrinking. As part of our communal obligation, the first and primary effort at rebuilding areas devastated by war should be our own war ravaged communities. The War on Drugs, like any other war, generates casualties, creates war zones, drives out businesses and all those who can afford to live elsewhere. Whatever the good intentions, after 40 years of failure, this war is a wicked iniquitous war. It has accomplished nothing, we hardly lead the world in having the least drug problems, recreational drug use is as rampant as ever, what is legal is not based on medical toxicity, but on majority rule. When the govt. tried to make illegal a drug used by the majority, namely alcohol, they abandoned such a war because of the crime such prohibition caused. We tolerate this current war for two reasons only---the drugs involved are not the recreational drugs used by the majority of us, and the devastation caused by this war is mostly limited to the ghettoes across the land. This indifference to the plight of these areas is a national disgrace.

I believe recreational drug use is best controlled by education and rehabilitation. That is the approach we take to alcohol and nicotine and that is the approach we should take with the others. If a small portion of the money being spent on this political and religious war on drugs were to be spent on education for all, and rehabilitation for those with recreational drug abuse problems, the gang and crime problem in the urban ghettoes would be drastically reduced. Almost all the gang stuff is over drug selling turf rights. In prohibition it was adult gangs, in this modern attempt at prohibition it is young gangs who control the turf. I know I may supererogate my attacks on organized religion, but the indifference of organized religion to the needs of the poor, minorities, and the different in our society has slowly over the years simply enraged me as no other issue has. I can’t count the number of times a young student sat in my office and poured out their frustrations on the varied stresses and burdens they faced from their environment. The problems were all over the place from family, from poverty, from gangs, from health matters, and it just goes on and on. I, of course, was just a physiologist, a Reaganistic Christian patriot with the requisite obliviousness to the needs of the least amongst us, and hardly trained to understand or solve their problems. These were the people Jesus and every other major prophet in every major religion spent their lives among. These are the people Jesus and every major prophet demanded their followers assist . I can tell you with all honesty I can’t recall a single case in which any of these students were assisted by organized religion. Early on I would often, seeking some way for them to receive assistance from some organization, suggest the student approach a church for help. Such a suggestion just generated a laugh or sigh, and in some form or fashion the student would tell me, “The churches in my neighborhood are as poor as me, just some old ladies in raggedy clothes yapping about God. The most they can do is give you a sandwich or some raggedy pants to wear. And they know nothing about the real world, just babble about being saved etc.”. Sadly, the churches in the better neighborhoods are totally wrapped up in rituals, choirs, luxurious temples, social events, meaningless sermons, ceremonies like marriages or funerals, stained glass windows, running educational schools, organizing social outings, building recreational centers, and God knows what else. Jesus spent most of his time directly dealing with those in need. Would anyone like to guess what percentage of time most ministers or priests ever spend directly with such people? Would anyone like to guess what percentage of the money contributed to an organized religion ever gets directly into the hands of those in need? And would anyone like to guess what percent of the time most affluent parishioners of organized religion ever spend in direct contact with those most in need? I ceased going to church when I realized it was a waste of my time and none of the robotic like ceremonies I participated in had anything to do with real religion. Name one prophet in any major religion, including Jesus himself, who ever suggested expensive cathedrals be built, that children be isolated from others and taught to read and write by church members, who ever organized complicated ceremonies or rituals to be practiced, or ever suggested their followers band together, isolate themselves from the poor, the different, minorities and any others most in need. Finally, what religious founder, Jesus or any of the others, ever suggested religious leaders need be college degreed and salaried?

I feel real uncomfortable about those 450,000 kids we slam in jail for selling recreational drugs. To remotely suggest this is what Jesus would do to them, or Buddha, or Confucius, etc. is absurd. These kids did not elect to be born with a single parent, or to live in a ghetto, or be born into a certain religion, or to be a certain race, or be sent to the poorest schools, or to have the poorest teachers (who often despise their asses like my teacher neighbor Sue) or to be exposed to the worst of peer pressures, or to live in a neighborhood where there are no jobs, or to have a parent so low on the totem poll as to be shoved around by everyone with whom their parent comes in contact. And no real Christian nation would ever let such kids be alone, to be left surrounded by that kind of environmental baggage, living in squalor with bars on the window while Numskull Rumsfeld pitter patters his way hither and thither among his 7 chateaus in New Mexico. To say that none of us has any responsibility for these kids--- no direct responsibility---is to declare ourselves non Christians. For any minister or priest not to demand his parishioners directly assist these kids, be there for them as extended family---is to make anything else they do as ‘disciples’ of God almost irrelevant.

If a government undercover agent sets up someone, to entice them to commit a criminal act, a Judge often throws out the arrest as being an illegal setup. I charge our society sets these kids up so that as teenagers, in the absence of any other job prospect, and desperate for material possessions like the affluent have coming out of their ears---that these kids do what we have set them up to do---sell drugs on the street corner so they too can have some sort of income. What other realistic alternative do these kids have---how many of us, in the same environment, would not run the risk and try to make a few bucks? Judges complain all the time about these mandatory drug sentencing laws, fostered by political pressures, especially from the religious right . Imagine having Judges and then having sleazy politicians, egged on by religious dogmaniacs, decide how to sentence defendants. God, how bad is that?

So, it can be asked, just what are we as a society supposed to do about it? I think it starts with priorities. If this environment we allow so many kids to grow up in really is a national disgrace, then we do something about it. We can go to the moon, we can spend most of our tax monies building and using weapons of mass destruction, we can provide more and more tax breaks to the wealthy, we can irresponsibly overpopulate the earth, we can exploit our God given environment, we can spend hundreds of millions occupying Iraq, we can grease the wheel for so few to take so much from so many for decades etc. “The world we have created is a product of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking” (Albert Einstein). Well I claim, if we want to, we can rebuild urban and rural ghettoes and meet the needs of all our kids. To imprison kids by the hundreds of thousands rather than deal with their needs is the ultimate censure of our so called Christian society. I have seen sufficient numbers of these ghetto mothers and sometimes fathers in my classes. They have lived all their life with their backs up against the wall, not by their actions, but by an environment that the rest of us are collectively responsible for creating. Some of these mothers, in an evening class, would have their teenage son pick them up after class to escort them safely back home. The scenario, for me, was always kind of chilling. Mom, wanting to show her kid that she was really somebody, and making something of herself, would find reasons to chat with me after class as her kid stood there waiting. The kid would invariably give me an icy hostile stare, and if spoken to would utter the briefest and least informative response. To the kid, his mother was once again forced to grovel in her life, this time for a grade, and the kid has long since learned to hate watching his mother grovel, whether it be with the landlord, a boss, a boyfriend, a relative, etc. Of course the mom is not groveling with me about a grade, but the son sees it differently. This kid is very angry, and he has long since learned the world is just one of domination or submission---take or be taken. He will be going to jail because he has decided to be one of the takers. Fuck it, for a while he is going to be in charge and have some money. There is only today, there may be no tomorrow, and if there is a tomorrow, he has seen all around him what tomorrow will be like for those of his fettle.

So, what then should be our obligation to these kids? It starts with education and making sure every kid has a quality extended family---every damn kid. In Illinois we spend in some areas (the ghettoes) $4000 per year per kid while in others we spend $17,000 per year per kid. We ought to put a stop to that. Hell we can go millions and millions of dollars into debt to finance a War against Iraq, but there is no money for our poorest of kids to be given a good education. I understand the reality that affluent parents want their kids to be in better schools and there is no practical way anyone is going to change that. They live where they live in large part so that the school their kids go to will be better than the ones poorer kids go to. If parents want anything, they want their kids to have advantages in life. So I grant one must pander to this fact of life. I suggest the state or federal govt. control the size of classrooms and the quality of teachers. All kids are entitled to the same size classes and the same quality of teachers. If necessary to get a fair distribution in quality of teachers, then pay teachers more to teach in ghetto schools. Never mind busing, that is a colossal failure and just drags down the better kids. Mixing oranges and peaches doesn’t work. The needs of one group are different than the needs of the other. Having done this, I would allow more affluent neighborhoods to build fancier buildings, add additional art, music etc. classes, build mammoth gymnasiums and athletic fields, swimming pools, and anything else they want providing they tax themselves for these extras. Appearance means a lot to the more affluent, myself included.

Next, all police stations in urban and rural ghettoes should be be located inside schools. And half of the police force should be quality teachers who teach half a day and be a police person the other half. I don’t mean policing inside the school, the police would do their police duties like they would in any other community but they would be school based. The object here is to make the police and teachers part of the extended family of the ghetto kids. Kids tend to like their teachers, and if half of their teachers are also police, then they grow up liking both teachers and police. And the police would then better understand and relate to the kids.

Next, if I had my way, most churches would be located in a ghetto in simple buildings. I know this would outrage parishioners, at least maybe wake them up. Most people live, in our urban and suburban world, close enough to an urban, suburban, or rural ghetto. And if they can traipse their butt some distance to get to WalMart to buy their bargains, they can travel an equal distance to get to church. Why should churches be located in ghettoes when ghettoes are near by? Because that , in every religion, is the arena of greatest need . If the foremost religious responsibility is to administer to the needs of the poor, the different, those with mental and physical limitations, the oppressed, the trapped, those most in need of ‘someone’ to be there for them----if all this is valid, then it seems to me one cannot be truly religious if your religion amounts to cultural, social, ritualistic pleasantries amongst a peer social group totally isolated from those of the lower socioeconomic/differing racial classes.

What good, in the last analysis, does it do to say to the 450,000 mostly ‘low life’ kids we throw in jail that “hey kid, I did what I could for you. I prayed for God to help the less fortunate, put a little money in a collection plate, served on committees at church, participated in communion, helped serve turkey dinners to the homeless on Thanksgiving----who the fuck do you think pays the taxes for the street that runs through your ghetto? After all I have have done ‘for you’ look at you and what you are.” Then we wonder, if we make a wrong turn and end up face to face with one of these kids, yet to be jailed, why they have that hard stare and might want to kick the shit out of us. All their lives they, like we, have needed others to be there for them, but for them hardly anyone was. Imagine the nerve of these slimy youthful dregs, living in conditions that bring them face to face daily with violence, disease, poor diets, and unemployment----imagine these little bastards trying to get their crummy paws on some of our money by selling us the recreational drugs so many of us or our kids want to buy. These little bastards are corrupting us and our kids. I just wonder, how and where did these ghetto kids manage to meet with our ‘good’ kids and talk them into using recreational drugs? I mean, these kids get around, even infiltrate the rich kids, athletes, movie stars, musicians, etc. They are as corruptive as the prostitutes, who I also wonder where and how do they manage to hold indoctrination sessions with us or our kids? Frankly, I feel real unwanted, I just can’t recall any prostitutes pulling me aside and corrupting me with lengthy sermons on the wonderful world of paying for sex. For me, it seems, if I want to pay for sex, I have to go to them,seek them out. And it is the same with recreational drug use, these sellers don’t exactly come knocking on my door.

It is time Christianity returned to it’s roots. In the face of injustice Christians, sure-enough true Christians, may not look the other way. If we could read the tragicodramatic history of these 450,000 ‘kids’ we so gleefully punish, perhaps we would find in each life enough grief and suffering to make us stop wishing anything more on them. Most are not just dirt poor economically, but wallow through life in moral poverty. Moral poverty is the poverty of being without loving, capable, responsible adults who habituate them to feel joy at other’s joy, pain at other’s pain, happiness when they do right, remorse when they do wrong. The mandatory pledge of allegiance in classrooms is not an issue with me, but I do wonder about the thoughts of 10 yr. old ghetto kids when they realize the flag which they are required to pledge allegiance to, along with everyone else, has not pledged any allegiance to them. Even Iraquians are now ahead of them on the allegiance/help is on the way scale. All the various religious prophets spent their time among the poor, the different, and those with the most needs in society. That is the core of Christianity. There is nothing wrong, if some so choose, to meet in their own neighborhoods to sing hymns, carry on rituals, play bingo, have social get-togethers etc. There is nothing wrong with any of this sort of stuff, but it is not religion. Neither is spending a lot of money on glittering massive cathedrals. Compared to the practices of all major religious founders, building such glittering temples is almost paganistic. Jesus nor any of the others ever suggested people do such a thing. The goal of religion is always to go forth and lend a hand to the less fortunate----directly. If churches are located in the urban and rural ghettoes then it provides poor kids with access to quality extended family. Every kid deserves at least some quality uncles, aunts, grandmas, and grandpas. And since reproductive responsibility at this point in time necessitates limiting the number of children, everyone would have the time to be part of some kid’s extended family. All this stuff is what Christianity should be about. The rest is just irrelevant. No one is being told to stop doing a lot of things they insist is important to their lives. Keep doing it, but quit calling it religion. It is not. To those who insist they want to have their own religious school system, well, I would not stop them, but the federal govt. should not pay a penny for them to do so. I am not aware that Jesus ever encouraged his followers to isolate themselves from others, let alone spend time running school systems to further achieve such isolation. But I certainly would not make it illegal. What needs so desperately to be changed is the public school system.

Of course as part of all this above, the War on Drugs would have to be abandoned, and recreational drug use be an exercise in education and drug abuse treatment centers---for all, not just the affluent. I am at the point now on this topic where I wish to be quite blunt. If the majority insists they want recreational drug use to be illegal, of course for all except their recreational drug of choice, then ok, make these drugs illegal but only for the users. And give the users the mandatory 10 year sentences, no exceptions. That will spread the war to all neighborhoods, drastically change the racial and economic population of those in prison, and then let’s see just how long the affluent allow their kids to be jailed for recreational drug use. Suddenly education and treatment will seem so reasonable, so merciful, so Christian. In fact that is one more area church members can become active---working with those who need help with drug abuse.

There are a hell of lot of things we could all do, personally, to help those in greatest need. I was all for freeing Willy the whale, am all for no more Vietnams, am all for respecting the civil rights of others who march to differing drums, but I am most of all for freeing the 450,000 young people, in jail under our drug laws, from our jails and ensuring that all kids get a chance, a fair chance, to become useful, productive citizens of this country and world. If we could start here, I think all the other problems of the globe would then start to fall in place to similar solutions. We need to start addressing problems, not ignoring them or compounding them. “The failure to look reality in the face diminishes a nation as it diminishes a person....The American nation is in desperate need of honest self-examination. If we are not capable of this examination, we may yet become one of the most distinguished and monumental failures in the history of nations” (James Baldwin). We need all face reality: “Planet Earth is 4.1 billion years old. If we scale this inconceivably vast time span down to a more manageable 46 years, then modern man has been around for 4 hrs., and the Industrial Revolution began 1 minute ago. During those 60 seconds of modern biological time, man has multiplied his numbers to plague proportions, ransacked the planet for fuels and raw materials, and caused the extinction of countless species of animals and plants” (Jonathan Porritt).

I am aware most people would probably not dispute a lot of the above, but would just say it is all unrealistic, that people would never go along with such drastic changes in priorities and religious practices. Quite true and that is why I am not convinced Bush should lose. Most people think our overstuffed, greed infested, violence addicted pig at the trough government can right itself with just some tinkering here and there. I see the situation as past tinkering, past making some minor adjustments, and our wonderful experiment in government is, like every other global empire which preceded it, on the verge of self destruction. Until the people, en mass, especially the young, are willing to wage a revolution as redemptive as the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movements, or the sexual revolution, our goose is cooked. I don’t think the people are ready yet for real change. They sense things are not going right, but the forces in control of our govt. have amassed a lot of ‘THINGS’ most of us, fortunate to be front and center at the trough, want protected so change---real change, threatens the status quo. Sacrifice, justice, tolerance, charitableness, and any sincere commitment to the welfare of all humanity/environment is missing from our national psyche. Maybe four more years of Bush is the only way to generate the needed real revolution. Then again four more years of Bush might seal our fate. It would be nice to know just how close we American lemmings are to the edge of the cliff, just how much time we can afford to keep running nose-to-ass, blinders firmly in place, circling the wagons here and there, with bombs bursting in air, while all through the night our enemies amass in greater and greater numbers, picking away at stragglers, mutilating our ‘liberators’, and baiting us with incessant taunting. Sherman had his march across Georgia, Bush has his march across the globe. The scorched earth policy worked for Sherman, will it work for Bush? It hasn’t worked for Israel, but then that is such a small arena compared to the arena Bush has staked out as his eminent domain. Who says Bush is not a big thinker? His personal notions and religious beliefs are going to rule the world. Haven’t we seen this before in World History?

The life and example set by Abraham Lincoln serves, in my mind, to bolster the arguments put forth here. When people refer to Lincoln as a self made man starting with the humblest origins, they usually refer to his acquisition of career and power. But Lincoln was a self made man in more important respects. His religious, moral, and social values he constructed himself, he simply did not choose to inherit the ideas, beliefs, or habits of others. His power of concentration on any subject that interested him was unique and powerful. By any normal standards Lincoln should have been an outcast in every community he grew up in or lived in at a young age. In a society of hunters, Lincoln did not hunt; among fishermen Lincoln did not fish; among many who were cruel to animals. Lincoln was kind. He shot a turkey at eight years of age and vowed he would never shoot another animal again. Surrounded by farmers, Lincoln had no interest in farming; In a community in which men smoked and chewed, Lincoln never used tobacco; in a rough, profane society, Lincoln did not swear; in a social world in which fighting was a regular male activity, Lincoln was a peacemaker; in a hard-drinking society, Lincoln did not drink; in a society seeped with hostility to Indians, Lincoln resisted it; in a southern-flavored setting soft on slavery, Lincoln always opposed it; in a white world with strong racial antipathies, Lincoln was generous to blacks; in an environment indifferent to education, Lincoln cared about education intensely; in a family active in church Lincoln abstained (the only family member not to be baptized). Aside from the fact I always am intrigued by Lincoln, there are two things here of note, one of which relates to the question of legalizing recreational drug use.

Because Lincoln never drank, the temperance/prohibition crowd pestered him to endorse their movement. He would not because he believed every person needed to accept responsibility for their own vices and personal behaviors. Lincoln liked to differentiate between bad choices and immoral behavior. The government was not there to prevent bad choices, and would not succeed on any account. While Lincoln was personally abstentatious, he did not join in the evangelistic and moralistic teetotalism and the use of the law to prohibit alcohol that marked the movement. In fact he explicitly rejected any claim of superiority on the part of nondrinkers and of temperance advocates over those who were then called drunkards. Rejection of others for their poor choices Lincoln found ‘repugnant’, ‘uncharitable’, and ‘feelingless’. Rather, Lincoln cautioned, those like himself who never fell victim to drink “have been spared more from absence of appetite, than from any mental or moral superiority over those who have (abused alcohol)”. Lincoln saw the need of those who abused recreational drugs as one for help, not condemnation. He thought it particularly useless to run around wrapped in a cocoon of moral superiority telling those making bad choices they were going to hell. He liked to tell this story: ‘Paddy’, who stole a shovel, was told that he would pay for it at Judgment Day. “By the powers” Paddy responds, “if ye’ll credit me so long, I’ll take another”. Lincoln was accepted by all around him because he did not prejudge the particular choices of others when it came to things like vocations, drug use, religious beliefs etc. He projected no airs of his being better than others. But the second thing that interests me here is that rather than be ostracized while growing up, Lincoln was highly popular among his peers. Apparently he was popular because he made his friends laugh and think. He was also strong as an ox which prevented any sinister peer from physically assaulting him. When he was mobilized into the armed forces to hunt down an Indian tribe, he was elected Captain of his unit. The only Indian his unit ever came across was an Indian whom his men captured and were going to kill. Lincoln was the lone opposition to killing him, challenging anyone to a fight with the weapon of their choice if they wanted to override him. They let the Indian go. Imagine Lincoln standing idly by today while the courts take a 18 yr. old ghetto kid and throw him in jail for 10 yrs. for selling a drug less harmful than alcohol. William Miller, who belonged to a different military unit said this: “His Men idolized him. Lincoln’s Unit was the hardest set of men I ever saw. No man but Lincoln could do anything with them and Lincoln was their idol and there was not a man but what was obedient to every word he spoke and would fight to his death for Lincoln.” This makes me think of Eugene Watson, my high school history teacher who had the same sort of effect on the rougher crowd. This may be an over generalization, but it seemed to me, while I was teaching, that the most moral students tended to be self made, not products of a strict religious family. Students raised in strict religious settings tended (there are exceptions) to be standoffish, snobbish, intolerant, indifferent to the plight of the less fortunate, and sort of shallow---rigid, with indoctrinated braces on their brains. It seems strange that most do not let their parents choose who they marry, their vocation, the music they like, their hobbies etc. and yet most across the globe just accept the religion of their parents. If religion is so important, sometimes important enough to kill, how can this be?

An analysis of Lincoln’s take on morality is relevant to this musing on recreational drug use. Lincoln, of all the Presidents, spent more time analyzing moral issues than probably any other President and, as a consequence, probably represents our most important leader on moral issues. To Lincoln, moral principles stand or fall by logic and reason. Therefore moral principles cannot be inherited via religious dogmas. To claim legitimacy of a moral precept based on inherited religious dogma is akin to the argument of a parent to a child: “It is right (or wrong) because I say it is so”. Accepting a moral principle on the basis of reason and logic, according to Lincoln, does not confer any moral superiority on the believer. This aspect of Lincoln’s nature is what distinguished him from most of the others opposed to slavery. Lincoln’s battle was always to bring moral principles into wider use, not persecute the offenders. “They (the Southern people) are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up”. The real battle, the eternal battle, according to Lincoln, was the battle between the selfishness of man’s nature and man’s intrinsic love of justice. These principles said Lincoln, “are an eternal antagonism”. He also believed only a small percentage of those who come into the world are natural tyrants. In the Lincolnesque concept of ethics and morality each person, in his own way must struggle with his own selfishness and his own sense of justice, lest moral laws become a far off abstraction utterly separated from intrinsic daily life (vis a vis organized religion). Proper leadership then, is really one of creating an environment in which the love of justice dominates over the selfishness of man’s nature. Advancement towards a more moral society is via education and leadership, not personal damnations or legalizing religious dogmas not defendable via reason and logic, or the persecution of offenders not breaking any existing laws which protect the rights of others. The key ingredient of our noble experiment in government, to Lincoln, is the Jeffersonian right of every citizen to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. This of course includes the right to use the recreational drug of your choice. It also includes the right to control your own dying process. It also includes the right to practice your own religious beliefs and not be forced, by any laws, to follow the religious beliefs of others. Abe would agree with Barry that ‘moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue”, and Lincoln certainly demonstrated that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice”. Ok, just had to sneak in a little Lincoln here and add moral behavior is by no means limited to organized religion. Lincoln, Jefferson and George Washington are prime examples.

I stressed the importance of education as a major tool to combat recreational drug abuse. The average person’s understanding of recreational drug abuse is abysmal. The typical mentality goes thusly: Recreational drug use can ruin one’s life, including health, family relationships, job security, and social life. Therefore recreational drug use is bad, people who use these drugs are bad, those who sell them worse, bad things should be illegal, and bad people incarcerated, the longer the better. So it goes, except for the two most popular recreational drugs, nicotine and alcohol. Even though these are the two most toxic recreational drugs, with these two drugs it is up to the individual to show responsible use. There is of course no responsible use of nicotine except nonuse since it is very toxic in many cases and very addictive. The average American thinks the other recreational drugs are more toxic, more addictive, and somehow more dangerous. What they really mean is that the kind of people known to use these drugs and the whole atmosphere surrounding procurement and use are the targets of their anger.

Recreational drug abuse (not use), except for nicotine, is really a symptom of a need for emotional or mental help. Pain is a symptom of physical damage to the body. We don’t jail people in pain, we treat them, try to cure the cause of the pain. Sometimes we can cure the cause and sometimes we can’t. An elevated body temperature is a symptom. We don’t jail people with elevated body temperatures, we try to cure the cause of the elevated body temperature. Recreational drug abuse is a symptom, a symptom of mental distress, and we ought to try to cure the cause of the problem. The problem of drug abuse is invariably the stresses associated with the abuser’s lifestyle, living conditions, social interactions, or a chemical imbalance in their brain. The wonder is not that some people abuse recreational drugs, the wonder is that we all don’t. In the case of alcohol there is sometimes a hereditary component that predisposes abuse and some people should therefore not use alcohol at all. It also needs to be understood that there is such a thing as responsible recreational drug use and that more people manage responsible recreational drug use than manage recreational drug abuse. It is not a moral sin to occasionally get high, of course with responsible limitations. I drink a glass of wine with every evening meal, except when I eat out and then I am too cheap. I know why I do it, because it creates a certain mellowness, maybe puts me in the mood to think up a musing (smile). People often use a recreational drug in some social situations, to elevate their mood or eliminate inhibitions. With some of the main recreational drugs one has to be careful not to create a medical problem. Nicotine, alcohol, and cocaine are in this category. The medical costs of nicotine and alcohol use is staggering. Nicotine use is all physical damage, alcohol can be both physically and mentally damaging, while the other drugs are usually more dangerous in terms of psychological quirks. There is definitely such a thing as the responsible use of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and heroin. Cocaine and heroin use will always be more associated with ghettoes since these drugs are used to provide relief from being boxed into an unbearable environment (socially, economically, medically).

One needs to remember that many good things can become addictive and damage one’s health, one’s family, one’s job, etc. Eating habits, considering all the associated consequent problems which can lead to death, is the number one killer in this country. Do we pass laws making certain eating habits illegal? Do we jail anyone who sells junk food?
Of course not, this is an individual responsibility. Should those who abuse food be persecuted, despised, or ridiculed? Of course not since the reasons why some abuse food are complicated and varied. Some people couldn’t gain weight if they tried. Gambling can become an addiction, religion can become an addiction, the pursuit of money can become an addiction, shopping can become an addiction, sex can become an addiction. And the list goes on. In some respects too much of anything can become a bad thing. Would anyone like to tabulate the number of people in the world killed or oppressed because of the religious fervor of some? Are we therefore to make religion illegal? I admit, there are times when one looks at what is done in the name of religion, and one is tempted to disown religion, or at least organized religion.

The next thing one needs to realize is that the abuse of recreational drugs is not all that much dependent on the legality. If one has a need for heroin to make life tolerable, one will find it. If one has a need to gamble, one will. If one has a need for certain kinds of sex or just becomes obsessed with having sex, one finds an outlet. Prostitution will always be there. Homosexuality will always be there. Only fools and those with braces on their brains think they can pass laws to stop these things. There is more misery and damage done by those who want to use the law to make everyone else carbon copies of themselves or prey upon the personal shortcomings of others, than is ever done by those who fail to responsibly control their use of recreational drugs. If anyone thinks it is remotely amusing to take the least toxic of all the recreational drugs, the least likely to ruin anyone’s life or health----marijuana----and then give a decade jail sentence to those young ghetto kids who sell it---well there is something real sick about that sense of humor. Every youth in jail for simply selling recreational drugs, with no charges of violence involved, all 450,000, should be freed, given some career training opportunities, and provided with whatever social support they need to recover from the damage society has done to them.

Imagine if you were dirt poor, a single parent, living in a dump with bars on the window, and the police nailed your son for selling drugs on the corner, money he shared with you to provide food to eat, money he badly wanted so he could buy nice clothes, or get a car, or whatever---and he gets a prison sentence of like 10 years and put in a jail on the other side of the state so you can’t even visit more than like once a year. These are kids---these are real parents----where the hell are family values here? Family values for many has a confined conceptual range, applying only to a particular family, socioeconomic, or religious framework. These damn kids might have sold some dope to your own kid---if your own kid is messed up with mental stresses or confused emotional states, and then seeks drugs for relief, or maybe just wants to use recreational drugs as an experiment, then God surely knows the kid who sells him the drugs has got to be punished. And if your kid shoots someone, jail the person who sold him the gun, not your kid. Of course your kid is basically a good kid. If your kid has a little tete a tete with a prostitute, jail the prostitute, your kid would never do that sort of thing without being enticed into it. If your kid steals a car parked outside a store while the person runs in to buy a paper, it is the guy who is dumb enough to leave his car running while he dashed into the store---it was entrapment. We all tend to be blinded----protect our own congenerous genetic and social associates, jail others. I understand this is human nature, but legitimate government and unbiased ethics protects all citizens, does not allow the persecution of some to protect the imperfections of others.

The injustice achieved by jailing youthful rural/urban recreational drug peddlers for decade sentences is a question of no small magnitude. Of the 2 million (2,019,234) individuals in jail in this country, 450,000 are there on non violent drug related offenses. This ‘Christian’ nation has the highest percentage of our citizens behind bars than any other country in the world, having recently overtaken Russia for the leadership here. There is no way any reasonable person can read the teachings of Christ and conclude any Christian community, remotely committed to the teachings of Christ, could ever be the leader in jailing their brethren. Our current jail population represents 22% of all the people in jail in the whole world. How did this become the American way? Perhaps we became ethically or religiously lethargic, it is easier to jail then to be there for those in need. Everything about this industry of incarceration reeks with injustice. In 1980 there were 40,000 drug offenders locked up. The law and order fanatics subsequently gained the upper hand, except for any reduction in the use of these illegal recreational drugs. This being the case, no reduction in recreational drug use, it is not possible, from any logical standpoint, to defend our current policies except to insist jailing 450,000 young poor kids is a moral good. And it gets worse. The percentage of people using these illegal recreational drugs is about the same for the black, Latino, and white population in this country. The black and latino population comprises roughly 20% of our population. Do they represent 20% of those in jail for recreational drug offenses? Hardly. 75% of those in jail for recreational drug offenses are black or Latino. This can be sliced and analyzed anyway one wants but what is left, when the dust settles, is a blatant mean spirited assault on the young poor and especially young poor blacks and latinos. Whether admitted or not, the only effect of our War on Drugs is to lock up as many of the poor kids, especially the minority ones, as we possibly can----get them out of sight and out of mind. The cost for this sadistic pleasure is somewhere between $25,000-$40,000 per prisoner per year.

On numbers alone, the 450,000 jailed recreational drug offenders is one eighth the number of slaves in this country 150 years ago, and easily matches the consequences to the victims. Southerners, of course, never referred to their slaves as victims. Those who support our recreational drug laws do not see these jailed youths as victims either. A lot of people in the ghetto do not see them as victims. People, after all, die from these gang rivalries. Like slavery, the current policies relating to recreational drug use and sale have generated a massive industry---to the tune of billions every year. To legalize recreational drug use, to relegate recreational drug use to individual responsibility, to concentrate our policies on education and treatment---is not, on the surface, such an outrageous alternative. Few can argue current policies have worked, reduced recreational drug use, or done much to provide most recreational drug abusers any relief. To redirect our efforts, to take this new approach, is not even risky. It could be stopped any time, revoked if necessary. “I’d support it (legalization of recreational drugs) just to see what would happen” (Barry Goldwater). Why then, it must be asked, is the current system so untouchable?

Like slavery, it has the same kind of economic and philosophical roots. The War on Drugs is a massive industry. If the war on Drugs, as fought today in this country, were stopped the economic ramifications would send this country, already economically fragile, into economic depression. On paper, to give these 450,000 ‘kids’ back their lives, among the costs, in no particular order would be:

1. Politicians would lose one of their most effective tools to get elected (tough on crime).
2. Parents and kids would have to assume personal responsibility for their use of recreational drugs. The fear is pervasive that if legal, kids and many of us would race out to become recreational drug abusers. There is no evidence of this in the history of the world and recreational drugs of various sorts, varying according to location and culture, have been around for many centuries.
3. Police would lose their easiest ticket to promotion---collaring ghetto kids (and prostitutes).
4 The number of police needed would be markedly reduced
5. The number of Correctional Officers needed would be markedly reduced
6. The number of parole officers needed would be markedly reduced
7. Court loads and the number of people needed to handle court loads would be markedly reduced.
8. Fewer kids in rural and urban ghettos would drop out of school and school costs would go up.
9. There would be a temporary increase in property thefts
10. The number of lawyers needed would be markedly reduced.
11. If the prison population were to fall by 450,000 @$30,000/yr. per inmate to house and feed them---then the number of supporting employees to provide such goods and services would drop markedly. That alone is a $13 billion dollar hit on our economy. The economic hit is higher here though than losing 450,000 inmates to feed and house---substantially higher. For example, in Chicago alone, 40% of homicides are attributed to hostilities between drug dealing gangs. Still, the supporters of this War on Drugs refuse to see it. The murder rate in this country rose with the start of Alcohol prohibition, remained high during alcohol prohibition, then declined for 11 consecutive years after alcohol prohibition ended. One suspects this is of little matter to the religious right since the current victims are seen as evil disposable diabolical ogres

Clearly, the economic burden for letting go of this war would be massive.

And the cost would not just be economic. The anger of the religious right would rise to a record crescendo. The immorality of recreational drug use (selectively) is one of those moral sins created by the religious right with no such biblical mandate. I don’t think it too unfair to state that almost all of the current emotional energies of the religious right are on matters with little or no biblical foundation and certainly were not any major theme of the religious founders. Of course it is not just the religious right---most Americans have philosophical reasons for opposing legalization of recreational drugs. I separate the two populations because most Americans are susceptible to logic and reason on moral issues. Genuine goodness is the same, whether found inside or outside organized religion. Perhaps at some point the non faith based portion of the public can be galvanized to understand one of the worst sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit. Ghetto kids don’t need to be our designated illegal suppliers for our use of recreational drugs. What ghetto kids need, during their formative years, is a sense of security and the ability to dream about wishes for a future that is hopeful---and attainable. Ironically, the affluent will never be secure themselves while life is insecure for millions of the poor. It is better to be branded a heretic, helping children of God out of ghetto gutters where the Churches and us have thrown them, then to live isolated from them, muttering under our breath, ‘the wages of sin is death’ (or sesquipedalian terms of incarceration). The religious right insist their faith based religious views are for the salvation of others---you can usually identify the others by their hunted expression. Moral issues for the religious right are faith based, any right or wrong once accepted as part of their faith becomes etched in stone. A religious ‘righter’ does not see him/her self as being mean to anyone on issues like recreational drug use, abortion, homosexuality, control over dying, religious prayers in schools, dress codes, sexual behaviors, marriage rights, suicide, unrestrictive accumulation of wealth, inheritance protection laws/shelters, underfunding education for the poor, opposition to universal health care, etc. The charge made here has nothing to do with moral superiority. The people of the north, during slavery, were not, in the broadest sense, a morally superior lot than the people of the south. Still, slavery was morally wrong. The object is to right moral wrongs in order to further justice in society. Holding as the religious right does, that the use of selected recreational drugs is morally wrong, and socially regressive, they cannot, as an act of faith, cease to demand full national recognition of their faith as a legal fact and social blessing. In their faith based prejudices they are as confident as Cleopatra’s pussy. Each difficult battle to bring justice to more and more in our short American history has never been led by the religious right. Isn’t it strange that some of those most determined to live a moral life have found themselves, throughout American history, relegated to playing, at best, a reluctant role in the battles to bring more justice and fairness to those so denied it in this land of the free? They are not so much immoral as just boxed in. Beliefs based primarily on faith, not reason and logic, cannot be altered without questioning all the other beliefs based on faith. Faith based religion, in it’s purest form, is an all or nothing endeavor rooted in inherited dogmas. To bring justice and salvation to these 450,000 young people in our jails is no small task. It will take a Lincolnesque type leader, using the powers of logic, reason, and sense of justice, to stop this War on Drugs. The religious right will never change, that is a given. It is difficult to achieve a dialectic buzz session, let alone achieve logical resolution on any moral issue with those who use inherited religious dogma couched in a tone of preemptory moral certitude. They seek moral goals but are trapped. Led mostly by living clerical fossils, who mutter away to themselves in isolated chapels, ignored often even by their own parishioners--- the inability to change is the albatross faith based religionists carry around their neck. Faith based virtue with the consequent intolerance of, and anger towards others, then becomes its own punishment. Radical religionists are not exactly known as ‘happy campers’.

How to stop this war and avoid the economic consequences is the key trick. There has to be a transition period, you can’t, for economic reasons, just close down a multi billion dollar industry with roots all over our economic tree. If education and treatment centers were to become the revised War on, not recreational drug use, but recreational drug abuse, then you don’t lay off police, correctional officers, parole officers, court system employees, and the millions who work presently to supply food and housing for prisoners. You don’t lay off these people, you transfer them and incorporate new workers too. We stop building prisons, we build treatment centers, we convert prisons, no longer being used, to treatment centers or educational schools, we staff treatment centers, not prisons. If we need less police, we will need more teachers---kids won’t drop out to make a living selling recreational drugs anymore. Take the billions of dollars spent to feed prisoners and use the money to seed businesses to return to ghettoes. The ghettos will still be poor, like ghettos were always poor, but with the gang drug turf violence gone, ghettos will be like before this massive War on Drugs---a lot less ridden with crime. With jobs available requiring a high school diploma, more kids will stay in school. To hell with Iraq, let us bring the reality of the American dream back into the lives of the 450,000 poor kids we jail for trying to improve their economic status. Let us uplift our own poor youth, not stand astride the necks of the least amongst us, those most in need of someone to be there for them. Let us engage, as we so ought, the eternal battle described by Lincoln: “the battle between the selfishness of man’s nature and man’s intrinsic love of justice”. In this case it is the selfishness of trying to protect ourselves and our kids from personal responsibility to control recreational drug use, versus the injustice of jailing ghetto kids for the poor choices of others. We have all kinds of choices to make with recreational drug use and many make poor choices and will continue to do so regardless of any legal restraints.

Not too long ago I saw this movie called ‘Midnight Express’. The claim is the movie is a true story. It won some kind of Oscar for something or other. It was not the intent of the movie, nor perceived by viewers, as a reflection of just how irrational and unjust we are about recreational drug use in this country. In this movie a young American preppy couple were vacationing in Turkey. The young man decides to smuggle in some pot to take home and share with his friends. He gets nailed at the airport in Turkey on his way home. He is treated very meanly and roughly by the Turkish police and courts, given 4 yrs. in jail, then after review, he is given a life sentence. We see the anguish the boy’s mother, father, and girlfriend go through, we see the hopelessness of his life in a Turkish jail where he is both physically and mentally abused until his sense of reality is pathetically distorted. After many years he either knocks out or kills the warden, dresses in his uniform, and escapes from prison, makes his way to Greece, and then home to America where he is welcomed as a hero. The point, of course is that the Turks are cruel, unsympathetic, intolerant brutes who revel in torturing young kids for minor indiscretions. Most of the countries where these recreational drug crops are grown, and have been grown for centuries, see it differently. We keep demanding that they get tough on the growers and the sellers of these drugs to Americans and they keep demanding that our government should stop the demand for these drugs if we don’t want our people to use them. In these countries there is no higher percentage of drug abusers than there are alcoholic or nicotine addicts in this country. Nixon was President at the time and he demanded forcefully that Turkey (and others) demonstrate they were serious about drug smuggling to our country or else their financial aid would be reduced. So of course they catch a smuggler, this American kid, and they give him a life sentence, I suppose rhetorically asking us, “is that tough enough for you?”. Aside from all of this, I too felt anger and sympathy over what this poor kid went through. But of course I also wonder why we cannot show the same anger and sympathy for our ghetto kids that we do the same thing to? At least this affluent kid had a lot of family, money, dignitaries, and lawyers fighting to get him released. Young Cornrow Kinkhead from Watts, arrested for the same crime, instead of tears (except maybe from his mom and siblings) there is only the regret the police had not shot him to death or had given him life instead of 10-12 years.

Radical off the wall me, the Morningside Olympic Champ, the TV film star, the ‘swinger’, the guy who sits these days in a King Tut throne chair, suggests every sizable community have a Community Help Center, open to all citizens, located right in ghettos, where any citizen can go when they feel overwhelmed by the stresses of their life, for help. Inside this Help Center would be the appropriate govt. agencies, volunteer organizations, and all organized religious groups. Let these varied groups compete to justify their existence. This Center would also register every child at birth and see to it that every child will have some quality extended family. Distance or personal situations/limitations of biological relatives may require adding uncles, aunts, grandmas and grandpas for many kids. Personally I think it would be great if the extended family of a kid included varied races, religions, etc. We all, even the busiest among us, can find time to maintain meaningful relationships with those in need. “What is faith”, Gandhi said, “If it is not translated into action.” Close down military bases across the globe, use the money to help all countries across the globe establish similar Help Centers, and reinstitute the draft for everyone---this time 2 yrs. after high school and two years after retirement for community service at these Help Centers. Each time a citizen is personally assigned to act to improve the lot of the less fortunate, or empowered to strike out against injustice he/she then, as directed by all the religious founders, is sending out a tiny ripple of hope, and these ripples, crossing each other from a million different centers of individual caring, build a current strong enough to sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and injustice. With these Help Centers in place and most all of our citizens engaged, early and late in their lives, maybe then, and only then should we have the right to call ourselves a Christian nation or the Land of Lincoln, or use that word compassionate as part of any political slogan. Fuck teaching kids how to kill, how to use violence to resolve disputes, how to get themselves killed over misplaced patriotic fervor, or how to stand around in foreign countries until someone blows up their ass. Peace need not be impractical and war need not be inevitable. Contacts among nations, religions, economic classes, or political groups need not be transformed into an exchange of death threats. Help people help the environment, help save plant and animal species, practice responsible reproductive limitations, and in essence become genuine religious disciples, practicing religion as Jesus and Buddha, and the other founders of religion practiced it, and instructed their followers to practice it. Using logic based ethics the environment comes first, people second, and unrestrained profits last. The cultivation and expansion of this mania to need more and more THINGS is the antithesis of wisdom. Only a reduction of materialistic needs can promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which are the ultimate causes of strife and war. Only responsible reproduction can save the future. If we don’t change directions we will end up where we are going. With these Help Centers ethics becomes a global circle around our now global economy, a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

If a certain amount of violence is required to give meaning or zest to our life, then we can take the largest ornate cathedrals, turn them into arenas open to the public, free of charge, to watch our current illustrious world leaders like Kaddafi, Bush, Hussein, Bin Laden, Pat Robertson, Cheney, Rumsfeld, certain Cardinals, certain Moslem clerics, Jerry Faulwell, and others of similar ilk--- be released from their pens and let them snarl and attack each other, a fight to the death, all in the name of their various perceived causes. Bush of course would get to wear a bomber jacket and carry bombs stored in his every orifice and other weapons of mass destruction gripped by his every appendage. May the most arrogant, intolerant, militaristic and pigheaded of the lot be the last standing. Then may the good Lord carry the victor and beaten opponents off to meet with the ghosts of all those who died or suffered at the hands of their policies and beliefs. I myself won’t be at the cathedral. All in all, given the choice, I would rather tip toe through the tulips with Tiny Tim. At least there would be no victims. I am tired of victims, of disposable ghetto kids, disposable species, disposable soldiers, and being led down the path of militaristic self serving greed glutted theocratic corpocracy.

DATE:12/2000 Things That Amaze Me

2011-01-29T06:52:00.000-08:00

THINGS THAT AMAZE ME

A Seasonal 2000/2001 Musing

R. S. James

1.. Skeletons of dinosaurs that lived 200 million yrs. ago. Both the size and age amaze

me. Or a mummy that was alive 4000 yrs ago. Wow! I hope no nosey bastards are looking at me 4000 yrs from now commenting……“notice the primitive brain”…

2.. People that give up a comfortable and safe life to help others in some unsafe,

unhealthy, decrepit environment. They are better than I.

3.. Sex. The diversity of human sexual inclinations, drives, and practices amazes me.

What is it all about anyway?

4. The insignificance of self. On an expressway or at an airport I just gaze at the mass of

humanity, all scurrying hither and thither, each one trying so hard to believe their life is important, each believing in different ways to the same or different God, that they matter. It just makes one wonder.

5. The fact that Jesus and Confucius and Buddha and Muhammad and perhaps other

religion founders never wrote anything. All their teachings and laws were written by others after they were gone. It just seems strange.

6. The inability of our society to understand the quickly approaching consequences of

overpopulation stress on the environment. It can’t be stupidity, just some sort of inherent necessity for denial.

7. That a complicated finely tuned human body can live so long. I mean, there are so

many possibilities for malfunction resulting in death, and yet most of us live a long time.

8. While most all of us strive so hard for money and fame, most of those who achieve it,

rarely, judging by their biographies and autobiographies, ever achieve much

satisfaction. They seem unusually tormented. This seems so strange. Perhaps our goals are misdirected.

9. The vast number of people in the world who live in misery with nothing---no money,

no property, no job, no security. How can they stand it?

10. The unfairness of life. Like my birth gave me my religion, my economic

environment, my looks, my town, state, country of origin, my peers, etc. What saved me from being born in Kosovo or in Palestinian territory, etc? The smartest thing I ever did was choose my parents carefully. Sure. A lot of what we are proud of is just good fortune.

11. People who survive tornadoes when their house is smashed to smithereens. Almost

all survive when it seems almost all should be dead.

12. Looking at a tree that is 2000 years old and still alive. Or that the early pioneers

actually cut such trees down just to watch them fall.

13. Treating drug abuse as a criminal, not a medical problem and then launching a ‘war

on drugs’ which creates an illicit drug trade which suckers the poorest of the young into selling drugs, then throwing them in jail, leaving their kids fatherless, turning their communities into violent war zones, overcrowding our jails, and leaving us with the world record for the highest percentage of citizens in jail. It is simply madness and has accomplished absolutely nothing.

14. People who torture other humans or animals. I can’t relate to the motivation behind

this at all. A person must have an awful lot of pent-up anger to do these things.

15. Computers and computer chips. I have difficulty visualizing how a car works---but

computers? Oh my!

16. Humor. I’m glad I laugh at so many things, many of which others may not, but how

come only humans laugh and why do we laugh? Keisha never laughs. Neither did

my mother at some really funny shit.

17. The earth. They say the earth has existed 4.6 billion years. Where was it before

that? Didn’t something at some point have to come from nothing? This is the question that drives home to me how helplessly limited my mind is.

18. Sleep. What is it anyway? I like it, but what does it do? And why is it now that I

can get as much as I want, I seem to need less? Is this some kind of joke?

19. Birds migrating thousands of miles and returning to the same area next year. Not

only is it brilliant mental activity of some sort, but how does a little bitty bird manage it physically, sometimes over oceans? Don’t they get hungry?

20. How the pioneers made it through the winter.

21. How the pioneers could live with 10-12 people in a little 1 or 2 room cabin. The lack

of privacy would drive me insane. And really, I need, just for me, 13 rooms for all my ‘stuff’. Nobody had much ‘stuff’ back then I guess. I wonder whether pursuing all this ‘stuff’ has anything to do with the fact that there are 5X more homicides/100,000 population today than in 1900? I, of course got good ‘stuff’. Some of your ‘stuff’ is witless.

22. Abraham Lincoln. Everything about his life, his intellect, his personality, and his

physical uniqueness is so intriguing and mysterious from so many aspects. Few that ever examine his life very closely do not get pulled into the Lincoln ‘cult’.

23. Love. Most movies have love as a major theme, and it seems so neat, but looking at

most couples it seems different, a little less neat. A lot of couples seem less like love birds, and more like trapped antagonists in a tenuous truce, each treading warily about the other, like any minute a skirmish could lead to open warfare.

24. Death. If there is no afterlife what could possibly be the reason for living? I don’t

fear death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

25. Salvation. Something strange and incomprehensible here. Like the playing field is

not level. We pretty much inherit our religion and the deeply religious are often the most intolerant and rigid souls on the face of the earth. It doesn’t make sense.

26. Gun nuts. Like how can they get so ballistic over any suggestion that, in these times,

maybe gun ownership should be an earned privilege, not a sacred right. Guns mean so much to them, yet any true tales of how a gun saved anyone’s life is a rarity. If I decide to nail their ass I doubt I will do it while they have a cocked gun aimed at me; more likely through the window as they doze in a chair. On the other hand, I feel safer with my 2 guns in the house. Amazing two-faced antagonist here.

27. Presidential races or being President. Where do these guys find the time and stamina to deal with all these issues and all these people? I think to relieve tension and retain my sanity I would need more than one ‘Monica’ kneeling in the wings. Tom Dewey, having been told he won the Presidency over Truman, commented to his wife: “How will you feel having sex with the President of the Country?” The next morning, when it was clear Dewey had lost, his wife asked: “Is Harry coming here or am I going to the White House?”

28. Crediting any President since Eisenhower with a quality quotation. Since Presidents

or Presidential contenders no longer write their own speeches why the hell do we credit them with the quotation? Shouldn’t it go to the speech writer who put the statement in the speech? “Ask not what your country can do for you”……. Now some of these mental midgets go down in history as having said some pretty admirable things, when the truth is they just read what somebody else had written.

29. People who go on shows like the Jerry Springer Show and make an ass out of

themselves. I guess some people will settle for attention of any kind. If I make an ass out of myself I do it in a musing to a restricted number of people.

30. The number of times we can laugh at sex jokes. Like perhaps after laughing at sex

thousands of times we should no longer find the subject funny. There must be a circuit built in our brain that says whenever the conversation is about sex, laugh. I think if you just blurted out in a group the word “sex”, everyone would just automatically laugh. Try and say something serious about sex in a group conversation---I think it would be nigh impossible: “My wife was very tired last night so I just masturbated”. Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha. “My husband has a urinary tract infection and so it is painful for him to have an erection” HA., Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha. Sex is a comedian’s best friend.

31. The fact that the most vulnerable citizens, in need of the most attention, rarely vote.

So the distance between the wealthiest and poorest in society just grows and grows and grows.

32. That anyone would bungee jump.

33. How Minnie Pearl could say “How-dee” a thousand times and each time get a laugh. If I say “Good-dee-biii” and wear a funny hat can I make a career out of it? Maybe I am on to something, is Hee-Haw still on television?

34. That people spend big bucks and an entire day to attend a football game in frigid

miserable weather seeing less, getting no analysis or play by play or rerun of plays as they would if they stayed home and watched on TV.

35. Addiction to anything. What makes us so compulsive about certain things, like

running till we drop, or eating till we become a whale, or drinking till we become an alcoholic, or working till we have a nervous breakdown, or fucking around till we die of AIDS? Is there something wrong with us?

36. If Jesus never sought an elaborate building to preach in, or had his audiences sing

hymns, or play bingo, or form social clubs (youth groups, women’s groups, prayer groups, etc), or collected money, why do we? Maybe we are smarter.

37. That people are so different from each other, not just in looks, but in practically

every other way too. What is the matter with the rest of you?

38. The physical or mental abilities some people have. It makes me feel so limited.

Some people can talk about a subject in such a way that I have no idea what they are talking about, and it won’t do any good for them to repeat it either.

39. How well behaved all my cats have been and I’ve had cats since the 60’s. All the

things broken or damaged in the house have always been by me. The cats have never damaged anything except for one broken glass and one roll of toilet paper. Is this some sort of record?

40. That something so funny to me can be so unfunny to others. What is wrong with

some of you?

41. That a movie I thought was so funny when young can be so unfunny at an older age.

They say a person never really changes, but we do, I for the better, you for the worst, and Rick just stays below scale.

42. How marriage can either be the greatest thing in the world or the worst thing to ever happen to a person. It seems like the happiest in the world are the happily married,the most unhappy are those in a bad marriage or after a bitter divorce, and the most peculiar are the single, myself the exception.

43. The human brain. Ask any physiologist to explain an original thought and it will be

a short discourse.

44. That logic so often betrays reality. Who put all this together anyway? Is there

something wrong with God? Did He die? Did Bullet eat Him? Maybe God looked at what He created, saw it was a blunder and walked away. I have been looking for Him, but there are so many places He could hide. Maybe if we sacrificed Rick, God would come back. Better yet, all of Texas. But I think God likes me, the rest of you kind of irritate Him so knock it off.

45. That human males are not totally exhausted. While a typical human female produces around 400 fertile eggs in her lifetime, a human male produces billions of sperm. Even when a male looks like he is just sitting doing nothing he is really churning out thousands and thousands of sperm. This is hard work, not to mention the effort required to set sperm free. Bill tries not to produce sperm during a church service, but his restless squirming indicates otherwise. Women stop producing eggs around 45 years of age, but males, the more stubborn and optimistic sex, just slow down, but never stop. I always reprimand elderly men on the street: “Just stop it you dirty old man, stop it.” Rick even does it in public, even on the job, even at the kitchen table while his mother is eating. When Rick was younger his mother used to yell: “Don’t stand there generating sperm with a smirk on your face while I am talking to you!”

46. That issues, which determine whether the next generation will have a good life, are rarely discussed by citizens or their politicians, while the private sexual capers and peculiarities of politicians, which have zero bearing on the affairs of the nation, the world or the future, become the subject of tiresome commentary and investigations.

47. That most of the vociferous pontificators about private sexual behaviors are riddled with past or present sexual peculiarities/indiscretions/hangups of their own,

or are themselves least comfortable with, or fulfilled by, their own sexual self. So there we have it, we laugh about sex all the time and then use it to hit others over the head, never of course, showing any interest in any public discussion of our own sexual life, as boring or as weird as it might be or not be. Perhaps we need a law whereby anyone who wishes to talk publicly about another’s sex life ought to be required to provide full and equally detailed public disclosure about their own sex life. That would at least give us more laughs.

Seasonal best wishes and may God, in his infinite kindness, give you the patience to

understand me, and the good fortune to have the best of New Years for both you and those you love. But only if I am included. Otherwise I hope God strikes you dead and a pack of stray dogs drag your body through downtown Chicago. Oh, just joking.

Mired in vis-a-vis Antipodal Exchanges

2011-01-28T16:44:00.000-08:00

Mired in vis a vis antipodal exchanges

A sign of the complexities and variegations of the times are exchanges like the following:

"The bastard Governor (of Illinois) just signed legislation to increase the state income tax by 66%" "He is trying to balance the budget so the state doesn't go bankrupt" "Well then he should reduce spending". You mean cut state budgets by laying off employees?" "Of course, there is plenty of fat and patronage to be weeded out." But to make any sizable dent in the state debt 20% of state employees would have to be laid off". "So what, the state and federal government should live within their means, they get enough money." "But if 20% are laid off where will they get a job? They then are on welfare of various sorts and costing tax money there. If they have no job, unemployment goes up, they have no money to spend, and the economy just dives further down." "Look, the federal and state deficits cannot be allowed to go any higher, we need to pay down the huge deficit." "Ok, shouldn't this cost of reducing the deficit be shared by everyone in some form or fashion?" " That's why the cuts need to be made across the board." "Ok, the laid off workers have paid their sacrifice to reduce the debt, the remaining workers have to pick up their work at no salary change, and so they have made a sacrifice. What sacrifice should you be made to pay since paying more taxes you feel is outrageous?" "Look, tax cuts are the answer, if I have more money I will spend more money and this helps revive the economy." "Are you saying that some should lose their job, some should have to work more for no more, or less money, others should lose their pensions, some should do without health care and you should get a tax break?" "Hey, I work hard for what I have, I have earned it the old fashioned way, and there are jobs out there if somebody really wants one." "But again, in what way are you personally sacrificing to pay back the huge federal and state deficits? Getting a tax cut is not exactly a sacrifice?" "Well, there is too much government regulation and red tape and interference. The government should just stay out of free enterprise. Things were better when the government left businesses alone.""You mean like the government does with private ownership of professional sport teams? That seems a great deal for the owners and the players who get million dollar contracts and multimillion dollar profits at the expense of fans and the cities in which they play. Without the fans or the cities being represented at the bargaining table, and with no judicial oversight, where will this pot of gold for the owners and players end?" "I am not talking about professional sports, why change what works?" "Ok, let's be silly and say the manner in which professional sports is run is just fine, but in the past the wealthy faced 90% income tax rates and an equally steep inheritance tax, are you willing to go back to that?" "Hey these wealthy people pay a good deal of the taxes in this country, a good percentage."

"Well, if the top 1-5% of the people in this country now own 90% of the wealth, what do you think would be a good percentage of the total taxes they should pay?" "Well, the wealthy spend this money, and that helps employment, and this 'trickle down effect' helps the poor." "Then why isn't the percentage of poor in this country going down? Are they avoiding the trickle?" "Look, labor unions have made it difficult for us to produce things in this country what with their ridiculously high wages." "Aren't the wages of professional athletes and corporate administrators a bit high?" "That's different, there are only a few of them." "Okay, let's exempt them. Are you suggesting we do away with minimum wages?" "Look, our companies have to compete with foreign workers, and labor unions just make it impossible to do so." "It is difficult to compete with slave labor. Isn't it ethically wrong to buy goods made by slave labor, even though the slaves don't live on plantations?" "People should be free to buy from whomever they want. This is what a free labor market is."

Okay, then are you saying in order to compete against slave labor, minimum wage laws should be revoked? Wouldn't it be better to have minimum wage laws globally?" "I suppose so if such a thing could be done." "You realize if such a thing were to be done you would be paying more for many of the things you purchase. Are you willing to do that?" "No. There is no need to do away with the wonderful bargains we finally get on the internet on sites like Amazon with no state taxes and often free shipping." "I see, said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw. So you find nothing unethical about buying goods made with slave labor, and you also think most retail stores in a community can survive with most things bought over the internet and the states can do without the income from the sales tax"? "I didn't say any such thing. I am just saying the state and federal government spend too much money. Look at some of the pension costs for state and federal employees. Other people don't get those kind of pension benefits." " It is true that pension and health care benefits are disappearing from the private sector as they try to compete with slave labor abroad. So, to be fair, you think everyone should lose good pensions and health care benefits, is this how you see it?" "You keep putting words in my mouth, I just said the government spends too much money on government benefits to their employees. Instead, the government should do things to provide jobs in this country so people can make money and afford to buy their own health care and set up their own pension plans." "How can the government create jobs if so many jobs are going over seas?" "Well, if we leave businesses alone and get government off their backs, employers will downsize, adjust wages, hire employees on temporary contracts, get free from health care obligations, leave employees free to set up their own pension plans, and we can then compete globally." "You seem to define freedom as nothing left to lose. I still don't understand what sacrifice you are personally willing to make to help reduce the federal and state debts? So far you are against paying more taxes or paying more for things made by living wage jobs, and think the solution is more people without jobs via government layoffs." "I know the government is wasting money. Look at other industrial countries with their fancy rail systems, their universal health care, their 6 wk paid vacations, their improved educational systems, what are we getting for all the tax money we give our government?" "Well, you get military bases all over the globe, you get to support two wars at a time, you get a military budget greater than the military budgets of all the other industrialized nations combined, you get a police War on Drugs that puts a greater percentage of citizens in jail than any other country at a cost of $30,000 per year per inmate, you get people running for office who can afford to spend $150 million dollars to get elected, you get candidates who run for office with unlimited contributions from corporations and the wealthy, and you get the lowest tax rate of any other major country. Do you agree with these priorities?" "We need a strong military to protect our security and are you saying we should legalize recreational drug use?" "No, I am saying that recreational drug abuse is an addiction, frequently a bad addiction, and should be treated like all addictions, as a medical problem---like we do for the affluent in this country." "Well, we are the richest country in the world and we can do all----support wars, support military bases all over the globe, put recreational drug users in jail---except alcohol users and nicotine users, and cut loose all these deadbeats who never work for a living." "Suppose we no longer can do all of this, should we raise taxes to continue to do it and what about the national debt, just forget about it like we have been doing for decades?" "Well, I grew up in better days, when we knew what we were doing, and decent people were the ones being taken care of, not all the riff-raft, sometimes even illegal, low class scum living off the work of the decent people. You want to know what I think we should do? Hey, I don't give a damn anymore. I just want the country to hold out a few more years until I am dead. We need someone like Sarah Palin to be President. I believe she would personally go up in a plane, like she does with the moose in Alaska, and start shooting all the unemployed, racial mongrels, sexual deviates, female feminists, urban and rural gangbangers, welfare moms, pot heads----bring back the good ole days when the 'right' people counted." " I am curious, can you name one historical empire of any sort that did not collapse from the financial burden of an over extended foreign 'empire' and the accumulation of too much wealth in the hands of too few? And at what point do you consider our planet to be overpopulated with humans? It has doubled already once in my lifetime. Do you really think there are enough natural resources for everybody on the earth to live a lifestyle that the affluent now live?

"We are supposed to be talking about government waste and you drag other issues into it. Reagan himself said the government was the problem. And who are you to question great thinkers like Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and others? When they say the planet is overpopulated, or that climate change is something to worry about, or that we are spending too much on military bases and wars and bombs, then I will believe it." " I see and understand. If faith based beliefs are the basis of your perceptions, then reason, logic, and facts are irrelevant. I still wonder exactly what sacrifice you personally are willing to make to eliminate our huge debts? It just seems strange that everything you suggest involves other people paying it off." "Yeah, well I wonder about a couple of things too, like I wonder whether Obama is a Muslim and was even born in this country. If we could just get these questions answered he will be discredited and all will be well again in this country. I am a strong 'family values' person----me and my family comes first." That sounds like a religious conviction. Do you think God or Christ or any of the major prophets ever preached that YOUR family comes first? That wars and military bases and slave labor and denying health care to the less fortunate is ethical? Is 'family values' the real basis for your feelings that others, not yourself, should be forced to pay off the state and national debts?" "Look!. I don't want to talk about this anymore!!!!! Goodbye!!!!! "

It might be well to remember, that in the whole long history of this planet, Mother Nature always bats last. It sure looks like She is standing in the on deck circle.

And it looks like either Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh or some sort of TEA Partyist is warming up to pitch to Her. So far Obama at bat can only hit singles and an occasional double, no miracle home runs to solve the planet's ills. If and when the Tea Party steps to the plate the National Anthem and the Lincoln/Jefferson notion of justice and freedom for all will be replaced by the song 'TURN OUT THE LIGHTS---THE PARTY'S OVER."

The Evolution of a Religious Credendum

2011-01-07T19:48:00.000-08:00

The Evolution of a Religious Credendum:

I can't remember at what age I seriously began doubting religious belief via inheritance. It was sometime after high school. It certainly was after I began to be exposed to a more diverse human population. Nothing about this process was sudden, no sudden revelation, no moment of being 'saved', no visions from on high. I had been raised to go to church every Sunday, attended Sunday School, even went to a Billy Graham rally, was baptized---the whole deal.

Despite a gradual evolution of my religious beliefs, I never really doubted the existence of God. After all, I am here, everybody else is here, all the animals and plants---I mean the whole planet was before my eyes----an amazing and profound gift to varied life on a splendid planet. Wherever there is a gift, there has to be a gift giver. The gift giver, in this case, is my concept of God. Like probably most everyone, I wanted to think God was, or could be, my personal friend---my protector from harm, my strength to better myself, my means to gain advantage for pursuits here on earth, and acceptance into some sort of Heaven after death.

In moments of more honest logic, I wondered exactly why would God be my friend over others less fortunate, and eventually (it took many years), on what earned basis could God have given me so much (like my parents, my place of birth, my neighborhood, my health, my personality, my athletic ability, etc) while allowing so many other children to be given so much less or so much more). I could have been born with less and could have been born with more. For no discernible tight logic I decided, whatever God really was, He/She was fair, brilliant, and compassionate.

Whatever was going on between God and this planet has been going on for millions of years. And life on this planet has clearly been changing a lot over these millions of years---ever so slowly and upwardly in complexity and abilities. I can remember praying to do well on exams, in athletic contests, to be able to get some material thing, to get better when sick, to be forgiven when I did something 'bad'. But I always had the nagging question of just why would I expect God to push me forward ahead of others? Clearly others are praying also for the same things. Interestingly enough, the religious dogmas of others was often different from mine---not by any process of creative mental activity, but by fact of birth---inherited religious dogmas. I realized some people changed their religious dogma, but mostly by reason of marriage. This just seemed an odd way of possessing a religion--inheriting it or gaining it via marriage.

I have seen a lot of awful things in my life, injustices that were beyond the pale, tragedies to the best of people, and unfairnesses---little and small--- that were imposed on all kinds of people. At some point I reasoned God could have created a perfect planet, but He/She didn't. Instead He/She created a process of life on this planet which progressed from less perfect to more perfect over millions of years. Perfect is probably not the right word. Maybe I should say more complex.
I mean, who is to say there is something imperfect about an amoeba?

Some aspects of sectarian religion seemed a bit absurd, albeit one is hesitant to admit such. If evolution is an ongoing process why would it be rationale to believe God created man in His/Her image? Wouldn't that make humans the end point of evolution? That is quite an assumption, and a most self serving one at that. If everything we do in life is geared to achieving a place in Heaven, wouldn't God be sure everyone had the same guidelines to follow? God certainly would if he was fair. There is something so inherently good about fairness that to believe in an unfair God seems just WRONG writ large. The history of religions seems seeped in sacrifice. Always some sort of sacrifice---other humans, animals of various sorts, personal ambitions, living standards, or some being killed to 'save' another or others. Really now, why would God save me only if I were willing to kill some sort of other living being or have his 'Son" be killed to 'save' me. Son? Is God having sex with someone? Does he reproduce like an amoeba? Does he really reproduce at all? Are there many Gods? I can't even visualize God as male or female. Somebody else dying so I can be saved seems a little weird to me.

I view the best parents as those who attempt to treat all their children with fairness. As humans, failure can be understood,, but God I cannot imagine as being unable to be fair. The humorous "Mom likes me better than you" seems not too humorous if some get the short end of the stick with God's treatment of them. At some point I told myself, just stop praying to score high on an exam, to win a race, to make more money, to achieve important titles, etc. The inescapable truth is that there are millions more people in greater need of help in various ways than I. "Help me get better or save me from this or that medical problem and to hell with those orphans in some far away refugee camp." You see pictures of these 'creatures' on TV and I just know God would help them before God would ever help me. As Terrell Owens would say, 'fair is fair". Logic seems to dictate that God is not ever interfering with his own created process, or at least rarely interferes in His/Her created evolutionary process.

The only way tragedy could exist in this world, to my way of thinking, is if God was not involved in individual protections or help, but has created a process---a good, fair, brilliant process---which enables forms of life to evolve over time and increase the diversity of life on this planet. We know about this process, we understand quite a bit about it, and this process is evolution. Progress is the goal, and whether we like it or not, this progress is driven by genetics, diversity, environment, chance, and luck. It just seems absurd to believe God directed a particular sperm to a particular egg in order for a particular person to be born. Look, if God could, or was doing that, there wouldn't be serial killers, an Adolf Hitler, etc. Come on, why would I believe that God at some point said "It is time for me to create an Adolf Hitler". Beliefs are beliefs, but there is no need to be silly about them or have them be clearly self serving. I love nature precisely because it is out in nature that I can come closest to grasping a little bit of connection to this God created process of evolution. I do not have to be the focal point, or major player, of this process to appreciate it.

The origin of major religions in this world is interesting. All the 'major' prophets occurred in the same region of the earth all at about the same time in human history. That seems odd in itself. All of these prophets, with the possible exception of Mohammed, seem exceptionally wise and truly ethical persons. Underlying all their preaching is some form of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". There is no basis, as far as I can detect, to have anything but respect for Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, Moses, and perhaps Mohammed (I know least about him). If people on this planet lived according to the precepts any of them taught, it would be a truly ethical human existence. We don't, and that is the problem. Why don't we? It seems Things, Titles, Money, Power, and Greed intervene and win out too often. I'll overlook our gullibility. No one claims the Golden Rule is unethical, we just honor it when convenient.

The wonderful teachings of the original prophets got PERVERTED by 'important' human figures in history as a means to control large populations of people. Christianity was 'pure' until the Emperor Constantine II decided to make Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire. Gone was the Golden Rule and replaced by the Crusades, massive slaughters of people, and demolishment of entire communities. Bad behaviors could be excused and salvation connected to building ornate cathedrals, rituals, choirs, and designating human representatives of God. Faith replaced reason as the basis for religious beliefs. Blind faith is almost always a bad thing when it comes to human behavior. No matter what the specific religion, enough of these so called representatives of God, called by various names---Popes, priests, rabbis, Ayatollahs, and other endless titles---have committed every crime known to mankind---and this itself debunks any notion that these people are really God's representatives here on earth. To the extent I understood this, I stopped going to any church. I felt uncomfortable, like I was trying to get to heaven on the cheap or something. Church events seemed seeped in shallow sincerity. Of course there are exceptions and some of the most ethical people are strong participants in major religions. Some priests, ministers and rabbis seem to remain ethical despite their participation in a corrupted religion.

I finally decided that to be ethical, as a human in this God created evolutionary process, others must count as much as myself. There is no such thing as irrelevant gene pools on the planet. Diversity of gene pools getting all intermixed in this process of evolution generates new combinations, and albeit most combinations lead nowhere----some do, and progress follows. In terms of making the evolutionary process work, all the gene pools are essential. The fewer the gene pools, the less likely any progress. If a gene pool gets too small, extinction occurs.

Ethics, like any other human attribute---like height, athletic ability, musical talent, etc. is a potential. We are born with a certain level of ethical potential. Whether we reach our potential is based on our environment and genes. Our genes are set (at least for now) and thus we depend on our environment for the development of our ethical potential. People really do build people, especially in matters of ethics. My dad led by example and a person I was very close to in my earlier years led by persuasion. I can still hear the latter say, "Reid, don't be that way", or "you need to be his/her friend, help them grow, not be so judgmental, intolerant, and stop viewing them as in need of punishment." He was full of 'live and let live', a friend of all sorts, all kinds----to me a real social wonder. Never had a penny to his name, to speak of, but had friends coming out of the woodwork. Interesting.

There is right and there is wrong---the Golden Rule condenses that neatly enough, but judgment of others on ethical matters is beyond any human pay grade. You can determine who is doing right just as you can determine who won a race. But we cannot know, with any degree of certainty who tried harder to win, who trained the hardest, who came closest to their potential. And, of course, there are those who never had the opportunity to be trained and be in any race. There is no use wasting time declaring a psychopath is an evil person---they are mentally incapable of understanding right and wrong. They have a brain malfunction much like someone else has a kidney malfunction.Ethics, as a product of the evolutionary process, is relatively new. The problem is, we treat it as a finished product---like we are good or we are bad, we are saved or we are not saved, we will be rewarded or sent to hell. More likely, based on how the evolutionary process works, ethics is not an all or none quality at all. Rather, it is an ongoing evolutionary development, subject to ongoing development. Whatever level of ethics attained has consequences. There is diversity here just like in other human attributes and I assume evolutionary progress in ethics will be sorted out via genetics, chance, luck, and environment. We need to do the right thing, not because we know it is a ticket to heaven, because we don't know that. But lack of knowing this is irrelevant. We need to do the right thing out of duty and the reward for exercising this duty is personal contentment.

If others count as much as myself, then every dollar I spend on my own life beyond the basics I must spend another dollar on others in greater need. Ethics is really about duty, and duty done is contentment attained. The amassment of anything else other than ethical duty done is but fleeting, effervescent happiness. One should never confuse happiness of the moment with contentment. What is any kind of addiction other than the endless attempt to attain fleeting, effervescent moments of happiness, which in order to be effective need be happier than before. Happiness might start out with a kiss to generate an orgasm and end up requiring far out sexual acts hanging from a chandelier to get a comparable orgasm. One who learns when enough is good as a feast, when enough is enough, and learns to appreciate enough is enough, is happier than those for whom enough is never enough. Life is not about piling up things, titles, power, etc. higher and higher---life is about achieving reasonable goals, never forgetting the ethical duty to others. Everyone counts. Because the playing field is never equal in the evolutionary process, the fortunate need aid the less fortunate. Humans have the strongest sense of ethics and so ethical 'duty' here is also the most imperative for human contentment.

I can spend $8000 on a trip to some exotic or far away place or I can spend $8000 dollars to save or improve the life of many unfortunate people. Of course in reality it is not either, or. If I take half as many trips I can do both. I can live in an expensive neighborhood and demand that all of my taxes go the schools where my kids attend, OR I can do my ethical duty and support those political efforts which will result in the same amount of money to educate all kids everywhere. If all the prophets don't think God values your kids more than other kids, why the hell should you?. This in no way detracts from the obligation parents have to their own kids. A parent would not think of going to a teacher and saying, "I want to be sure you understand that my kid comes first in your class." Then by what logic can a parent view the education of all children and claim "My kid comes first". Your kid does not come first, you don't come first, I don't come first, NO ONE comes first. Ethical duty mandates no one comes first. In fact, all are first. The system in this paragraph is self evident fairness. If one has nothing left over after the basics, there is no obligation to spend on others less fortunate. I suppose one can argue over what constitutes the basics, but most of the time it is quite evident what is basic and what is extra. Taken as a whole, the gray area is relatively small.

Same with beliefs. Beliefs, by definition, are not facts. Therefore YOUR beliefs do not take precedence over the beliefs of others. PERIOD. Your beliefs SHOULD NOT be made the law of the land. NEITHER SHOULD anyone else's beliefs take precedence over yours or be made the law of the land. Blind patriotism, blind allegiance to inherited religious dogmas, blind allegiance to most anything is nothing more than failure to ethical duty. It is precisely because you want the world, yours and everybody else's, to improve, that the search for truth and fairness proceeds in a democratic way. In the evolutionary process of human behavior and understanding, truth eventually prevails----and almost invariably IN SPITE OF close minded beliefs of this or that sort. 35,000 Americans died and 2 million Vietnamese died because of blind national patriotism on the part of most Americans, myself included. Whenever people believe they are God's chosen people, whether it be Jews, Americans, Muslims, Christians, whites, blacks, hispanics, Republicans, Democrats, gays, straights, Irish Catholics, Irish Protestants, Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims, etc. ----whenever this kind of blind patriotism occurs, bad things happen. People get discriminated against, people die, people have gotten enslaved, nations have been bombed into rubble, etc.

Why do humans invariably invent a God who can, if their behavior and inherited dogma is straight, be directly involved in their daily life? Perhaps religious dogma is some kind of human viagra and a needed guard against feeling alone in this world, a world in which no one seems to much care about us. If we don't have God on our side how can we possibly meet the hurdles in life? In this sense, believing in God and dogmas of inherited religions certainly cannot be bad. We can all use the comfort of feeling God is on our side. There are two problems here. First, some people take their religious dogma so serious that they do terrible things to non believers. History is full of just terrible, terrible atrocities committed in the name of religion. Second, believing something that is beyond reason and based on faith alone, cannot lead to contentment. There was a time in history when Islam was more tolerant than Christianity. We may today be seeing the reversal. When one observes any of the most rabid devotees of any religion outside Buddhism and Hinduism, one is struck with how discontented they are, as if they ever smiled they would fracture their face. They are always waving some religious tractate in one hand and spewing forth condemnation of others. All that really comes through is their anger and determination to rid the world of heathens. Is it reasonable to believe God would use these kind of people to bring peace and justice to the world? I don't think so.

The path, for me, has reached the summit---perhaps just a mole hill or the wrong summit---but nevertheless it brings satisfaction to have sorted all the pieces in my life in such a way to have formed a completed puzzle. I don't feel any need to reject Buddha, Jesus, Confucius, Moses, or any other moral leadership which reflects the Golden Rule. This, I guess makes me a humanist and affirms my support for the following humanist principles, none of which were created by me:

*I am committed to the application of reason and science to the understanding of the universe and to the solving of human problems.

*I deplore efforts to denigrate human intelligence, to seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, and to look outside nature for salvation.

*I believe scientific discovery and technology can contribute to the betterment of human life.

*I believe in an open and pluralistic society and that democracy is the best guarantee of protecting human rights from authoritarian elites and repressive majorities.

*I am committed to the principle of the separation of church and state

*I prefer the arts of negotiation and compromise as a means of resolving differences and achieving mutual understanding.

*I am concerned with securing justice and fairness in society and with eliminating discrimination and intolerances. Diversity is God's path to evolutionary progress.

*I believe in supporting the disadvantaged and the handicapped so that they will be able to have themselves a more level playing field. To those who struggle, the stronger need assist.

*I attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and strive to work together for the common good of humanity writ large---"so that we can all have freedom, we can all have happiness, we can all smell the flowers and look upon each other with appreciation" (Davis).

*I want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species. Humans are not here for dominion over anything, we are instead as much a part of the evolutionary process as any other species, no more---no less.

*I believe in enjoying life here and now, and in all people developing their creative talents to their fullest.

*I believe in the cultivation of moral excellence based on the universal ethical principle of the Golden Rule.

*I respect the right to privacy. Mature adults should be allowed to fulfill their aspirations, to express their sexual preferences in ways which support responsible reproduction, to have access to comprehensive and adequate health care, and to control their own dying process with a level of dignity of their own choosing.

*I believe in the common moral decencies: altruism, integrity, honesty, truthfulness, responsibility. Humanistic ethics is amenable to critical, rational guidance. There are normative standards that we discover together. Moral principles are tested by their consequences.

* I am deeply concerned with the moral education of children---which translates to the right of every child to have the same amount of money spent for his/her education as any other child and every child have access in their formative years to responsible adult tutelage.

*I am skeptical of untested claims to knowledge, and I am open to novel ideas and seek new ways of thinking about all matters in changing times.

*I reject theologies of despair and/or violence and seek contentment to moral duty in the service to others, especially the less fortunate.

*I believe in optimism rather than pessimism (not foolish mindless optimism), hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion for the less fortunate over selfishness, the beauty of diversity instead of the ugliness of self limited sameness, and reason rather than blind faith.

* I believe the fullest realization of the best and noblest I, or anyone else, are capable of, as human beings, best contributes to God's created evolutionary process.

Evolutionary progress goes on---but the cost and tragedies involved are massive. It does not make the evolutionary process a failure, but it does impose, especially for the human species, a tremendous pressure on ethical duty----FOR LET THERE BE NO DOUBT----we can ignore human overpopulation, we can ignore the plight of the less fortunate, we can detest diversity, we can blindly believe we and our ilk are God's chosen people, and in doing so we are setting the stage for massive human genocide of mammoth proportions. No species yet has been allowed to destroy the planet. In the end, FOR SURE, it is WE who GO, TIME STAYS.

We Don't Need Any Empire

2011-01-01T11:29:00.000-08:00

We Don't Need Any Empire

Empires have come and gone throughout history. Every empire that arose also fell. Most of the time empires fall for the same reasons: the expense of controlling distant lands, and at home the growing accumulation of wealth among a few off the backs of first the poor, and then the middle class. For most of history an empire was maintained by imposing rule by occupying armies. The occupying army either directly controlled the occupied country or set up a token figurehead native government.

Americans, for the most part, don't consider ourselves empire builders, but rather peace builders, freedom fighters, Christina soldiers, good neighbors, good samaritans, always the good guys. Many, if not most Americans root for America in the same fashion they root for their favorite sport team---almost blind allegiance. Other citizens of other countries do the same. Most of us inherit our religions and politics and most of us change hardly at all, especially in our religious beliefs.

The acquisition of foreign lands is a natural outgrowth of military and economic power. In the early days of America our empire expanded simply by going further west. Jefferson expressed the opinion that our country was so vast that it would be a rural country for thousands of years and our natural resources inexhaustible for thousands of years. He was off a tad. When the frontier closed Americans had to look elsewhere for acquisitions----not so much for settling there as to gain guaranteed markets for our products. We rapidly rose to become the largest exporter in the world, the largest creditor in the world, and the largest military force in the world. The actual acquisition of foreign lands didn't last all that long---Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Philippines, Guam, etc. We realized that people hated us when we literally occupied their country---of course for the purpose of helping them become as affluent as ourselves. What third world country have we turned around? With the advances in communication and transportation, what Americans realized was that the important thing to us was the ACQUISITION OF WEALTH, NOT THE ACQUISITION OF LAND per se. We were always more than willing to exploit natural resources across the globe for a hefty profit.

Over time we didn't fool too many countries into any belief we were controlling their economic situation for altruistic reasons. When our economic interests were threatened by political events in another weak country, we simply invaded until they got their politics right. We did this more than 50 times in the last 100 years. Unfortunately, time is now running out and increasingly everyone everywhere is beginning to end up in the same boat. As human overpopulation hits the earth with all it's consequences, everything is going topsy turvy. We are no longer the greatest exporter on earth; instead we are the greatest importers on earth, gobbling up goods made by slave wages across the globe. It is a rare American, or rare any nationality, who can turn down a bargain. Buy American is about as effective as Just Say No to drugs. We're almost all guilty.

In those times past when the poor could always live off the land, poor but with enough to eat, the acquisition of wealth by another country from your own natural or labor resources was noted, but not the kind of thing you revolted over. And it was not too long ago when communication was such that you hardly knew much about how foreigners lived. It is all changing so rapidly now that beleaguered has become pretty much a global mind set. Growth and the acquisition of THINGS became the real American religion, not Christianity. Christ himself was not much of a THING person. The most contented people I know personally are not much of THING persons either. It became a cultural tradition for Americians to be first and foremost a THINGSTERITE, myself included.

Such observations as above are considered in many circles to be an attitude of un-patriotism. But it is precisely because one loves his/her country that one has a duty to criticize when its' politics/behavior are wrong. Our country needs to go back to leading by example, not using military might to engage in endless wars.

We don't need an empire; we need to take care of our own less fortunate. We don't need to keep buying products made by slave labor; we need universal minimum wages in a global economy. We don't need to reproduce as mindlessly as rabbits; we need responsible reproduction. We don't need blind allegiance to an inherited religion or blind patriotism; we need allegiance to the universal ethical principle of the Golden Rule. We don't need unlimited and unregulated capitalism; we need competitive capitalism with limits and fair guidelines. We don't need to permit any sectarian religious beliefs to become the law of the land; we need the freedom for everyone to practice their own religious beliefs as long as they meet the guidelines of the Golden Rule. We don't need unrestrained greed which puts our natural resources at risk; we need instead to protect and respect our environment, another gift from God's created evolutionary process. We need a lot these days for all that we treasure in life not to implode.

So Who Is The Best?

2011-01-01T11:22:00.000-08:00

So who is the Best?

I finally have figured out what I don't like about pro football. Here is a sport in which teams remotely close in talent cannot be predicted with any degree of accuracy who will win. I can accept that as it is still exciting to watch even if the games are full of the unexpected and unpredictable. One can argue I guess what percent of the outcome is determined by unpredictable factors, but the percentage is high, and this is proven by the success record of the 'experts' predicting games. It hovers around 60%.

But what I can't tolerate very well is listening to all the bullshit before and after the games where intelligent people use all sorts of totally unmeasurable variables as to why each team won or will win a game. All of a sudden football becomes a game of team chemistry, desire, motivation, likability, and just all sorts of claims which are totally unmeasurable.

I hate this because football is a game of talent, game plans, injuries, and unpredictable bad breaks. If one wants to call each player performing his assigned tasks well team chemistry, so be it. There can be no intelligent discussion of football game outcomes if one team is going to be accused of not being motivated enough, have good enough teammates, etc. I think character assassination by those not personally involved with someone is nothing more than cheap shots taken by cheap shot artists. It just seems after every game certain individuals get run up the flag pole as the greatest ever and others who lost sometimes pummeled to death with character slander. The same individuals are bums one game and future Hall of Famers the next game. After a while the name calling gets nonsensical. When the unpredictable factors go one way, the player is the world's greatest; when they go the other way, the player is embalmed in personal faults. If one likes a player he gets to slide under any kind of bar. If one doesn't like the player every miscue is a major exposure of weakness.

During any season, on various games, a whole wide range of wide receivers have been called the best in the game today. Fortunately, every day is a different day so I guess maybe they could claim to be right. There are so many factors which determine which wide receiver is really the best, that no such accurate designation could be made by even the smartest of us. For any receiver the quarterbacks differ, the schedule differs, the importance of the passing game for teams differs, the quality of the other receivers on the team differs, the coaches differ, and the physical status of receivers throughout the season differs. And so it goes, with most other positions facing the same variables. Maybe this is what makes football so popular---just about anyone can find some reasons to defend or attack any player or any team. I seem to be the only logical one amongst this cadre of raucous contentiousness. Smile.

From Quietude To Enlightenment

2010-12-03T06:45:00.000-08:00

From Quietude to Enlightenment

"Why", I am sometimes asked, "do you write so much about so many things?". Writing, I think is more than a hobby to me. It is an outlet for those serious thoughts which consume my attention mostly in four environments----the dead of night, the stillness of nature, the noise/bustling of city streets, and the random thoughts generated by awakening in the morning. Not all the thoughts stay with me until I write, but some do and those that do I try to assemble in some order and fit them in with the pieces of my own life puzzle. Most of any serious insight into anything seems to come during these enlightening environments. And for these thoughts to arise I have to be alone----absolutely alone. This is when one takes the experiences of life and melds them together to reach conclusions. It takes the quietude.

Evolution intrigues me, not the nuts and bolts of it, but the general gist of it. Life is a continuum built around DNA molecules. In that strange sense we are a part of all that has gone on before and a part of all that will go on in the future. Each of our lives is like the hand in a card game, we play the cards dealt to us, and then when the hand (our life) is over the cards continue to get shuffled. The difference in evolution is that the card deck itself keeps changing. The rules of evolution don't change but the nature of the hands dealt does change.

I never feel less alone or more contented than in the quietude of enlightenment from these 4 environments. Everything else seems perfunctory, predictable, and robotic----almost mindless noise that drowns out mystic chords of time which march ever onward. There are feelings, of which we are capable, that do not lend themselves to verbal or written definition. I think, on some matters, it is possible to understand without the ability to assemble the right facts which would lead to the understanding. I hate to see so many people addicted to communication gadgets like cell phones, TV, movies, computers, etc. It is like they really need to go someplace quiet where their own mind could be allowed to generate some creative thoughts, some quality emotions about life itself and their own place in life.

Some people get high to feel right. Feeling right can sometimes simply mean freedom from physical or mental pain. But this kind of feeling 'better' is not the same as comprehension obtained while sober from the stillness and quietude of those environments which lead to such enlightenment. The kind of enlightenment obtained from these environments is not the kind that will make you more money, or gain you more power, or more friends, or better health----it will just make you more content about life. The quietude of enlightenment is not restricted to any particular class, socio-economic status, ethnicity, religious sect, political bent, age, etc. It is there for everyone. It gives meaning to life. It helps keep things in perspective. It fosters understanding for diversity. These are the moments which give a person the "serenity to accept the things I cannot change: courage to change those things I can and wisdom to know the difference."

These periods of quietude seem, in my case, to go back even to childhood. I can remember sitting in fields with my dog Buff and talking to him about all the confusing aspects of life. Pets are great listeners and one is free to think and say whatever to a pet. Your own babble becomes more refined, more logical, better thought out and the pet loves the sound of your voice talking to them even though they don't understand anything more than this attention signifies a strengthening of the bond between the both of you. When people dismiss this wanton destruction of species via human overpopulation as God's will, a natural and God endorsed dominion of man over all other creatures, I find this obnoxious and outrageously self serving. Just like we understand the value of a pet, I suspect God likewise understands the value of species diversity. If we ourselves like our pets to the extent we do, who is say God does not like other species to the same extent we like our pets? If so, try telling God, "Why do You give a shit about some dumb-ass insect in the Amazon Jungle?" I think some people may misjudge how God really thinks about the diverse species which have evolved from His own created evolutionary process. We are guests in God's created universe. Maybe we need be more respectful of our own environment. Much of what is going down today is not very respectful.

This musing is short. Short because there are no more words to define this quietude of enlightenment. Perhaps it is peculiar to my own life. Whatever.

A Single Day

2010-12-03T06:36:00.000-08:00

A Single Day

How does one grade a single day? How do you really count, at my age, how many ways a single day is memorable? If you have ever been in a grave yard and thought about those below eerie weed covered tombstones you realize even memory fades. After one, or at the most two generations, for most everyone---there are no memories on earth left about the deceased. I think with age days have added meaning, or maybe just a different kind of meaning. In earlier life stages there are goals, pressures to succeed at this or that, relationship entanglements of varied sorts, battles to win, keeping up with the Jones', varied degrees of intolerance, so many things you can't stand, and the tensions of indescribable moods.

With age, minus a lot of financial stress, and with good health, one has the time to simplify, to organize priorities, to go where the spirit of the moment takes you. The night before I read on the internet that a mini rally in honor of some sort of Sanity rally in Washington was scheduled at Grant park in Chicago, but the police refused to issue a permit. So the next morning, this morning, I decided to head down and see what would happen. I am not a crowd person, nor a hip-hip hooray rally person either. But I know certain kinds of rallies will attract the kind of people who I genuinely admire and with whom I feel most comfortable. Comfortable in the sense I feel this is the way humanity, at it's best, exists.

Morning is not my favorite time of day to go places. But I managed to barely catch the train and off I went. For whatever reason the police backed off and the rally was on, complete with stage, audio, and a huge jumbo tron screen on top of this semi. The jumbo tron was there to broadcast the big rally in Washington D.C. The police had removed all the chairs usually present, but no matter the crowd was willing to stand. The police were there, but that was a waste of money. People who go to rallies like this never cause any damage, or fights, etc. At a rally like this you find about every kind of person imaginable---every race, every age, every profession, every religion, every shape, every culture---in other words diversity writ large. In a crowd like this no one has any axe to grind about anyone except those people with axes to grind about others different from themselves. People always talk and sing songs about togetherness, tolerance, respect, and other such good things BUT, it is only in these kind of crowds such a real atmosphere exists. I think it would be impossible to feel uncomfortable about who you are in a crowd like this. No one is pretending they are something they are not. When people feel comfortable being who they are there is an energy and festiveness not found in other situations. I always feel the world would be such a more pleasant and happier place to live in if all people had the same outlook on others, and life, as these people possess. It is like a world with minimal greed, no outsized self egos, no paranoia about others, no envy, no distrust, no chips on anyone's shoulder.

There were speakers and musicians, none of whom were all that polished or slick or surrounded with any spectacular visual or sound effects. A singer would come out with a guitar and sound almost awful but the awful was good enough to keep everyone in a good mood. Actually, I swear the more awful they were the more we all cheered. I think if I had strolled onto the stage and attempted some sort of musical garbage they would have decided "what the hell, he is doing the best he can, let's all cheer." I always come away from these gatherings feeling good about people and even myself for supporting them. Nice to spend a little time amongst a group with so few pretensions, slickness, or disingenuousness.

The most intriguing question about tolerance to diversity is why some people thrive on diversity and others find diversity insufferable? If one ever reads the comments that follow an internet news story about some ethnic, religious, or cultural persons' success or tragedy the hatred is amazing. It seems in every society there are the seeds for atrocious acts of genocide given the right opportunity. What causes this---genetics, environment, or both? My brother and I grew up in the same family, the same neighborhood, went to the same schools, the same church, etc. yet he couldn't stand all sorts of groups, and blamed them for every personal, national, or global problem. He would go on endlessly from Jews, to blacks, to hispanics, to lawyers, to teachers, to corporate leaders, to preachers, and on and on ad nausea. It is all hard to figure out, and much of it remains a mystery to me BUT haters are never contented people. It seems you cannot yourself live a contented life filled with so much anger about diversity. Perhaps it is best to remember that we live in but a brief window of time in God's evolutionary process. Ethics is a relatively new advancement in the evolutionary process. Good changes in the evolutionary process have always prevailed, albeit it might take extinctions, upheavals, etc over thousands of years for the good changes to become settled. I sometimes ask a hater, "Don't you ever get tired of losing?" Sure the haters may win a particular battle over diversity but they ALWAYS lose the war. It is the same human haters clique which supported slavery, torturing, segregation, were against the right to vote for blks, against the right to vote for women, against child labor laws, against environmental protection laws, against rights for gays, and always supported every unwarranted and immoral war from endlessly invading South American countries, to invading Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. Diversity at any level for them is simply intolerable. Time is always on the side of evolutionary progress. That progress is not always smooth, often there is chaos and catastrophes along the way, but the world seems destined for improvement. Diversity plays a major role in God's evolutionary process. To oppose diversity is to go against the grain of evolutionary laws. Seems a futile effort with immediate negative returns in terms of contentment.

Twice I left behind this cane I use for a walking stick when I wander around for the day. But the nice thing about leaving a cane someplace---no one ever takes a cane. They just give you a quizzical look when you show up to retrieve it, like how can he forget a cane? The conductor on the train took the cake though. As the train was pulling to a stop the conductor told others waiting to de-board, "The rest of you hold your horses, I am going to help this gentleman with the cane off the train". I told him, "Don't worry about me, this is just a walking stick. You get in front of me and you'll get trampled". OK, guess I am the one who takes the cake.

It was a good day also in that I ate my favorite meal at one of my favorite restaurants and the best thing about the day was what I missed. I had, in a moment of stupidity, agreed to make 20 phone calls to get people to vote. If someone calls me about voting or any other unsolicited call I get rude and hang up. I hate those calls. I tried to make a few the other morning but hardly anyone was home at that time and so only a total of 2 got completed. They give you a script but I ignore the script. I simply say, "I am a volunteer for the Obama organization and please don't be like me and hang up on me---just want you to vote in this election. Can I get you to do this?....etc. " Anyway I kept pushing this off. Finally late this afternoon, after the rally, I finally forced my self to do it. BUT, I hit the jackpot----apparently there were no more phone numbers to call so I lucked out. This made me joyful, almost ecstatic---duty no longer necessary.

Then tonight I watched a netflix movie that reminded me of my younger days, which left me nostalgic and mellow. That is a good mindset to be in at the end of any day. Tomorrow is visit Riva the horse day and football day. Us retired people have it rough. With patience, my final rough days will come.

Sports as Entertainment

2010-11-30T07:37:00.000-08:00

Sports as Entertainment

There is enough written about the value of sports to participants, but what about the value to the fans. I reckon every sport is somewhat different even in this respect so I will focus on professional football. This is the most popular sport in America. Why?
Maybe because it is the least predictable, has the best game pace to it, is exceedingly complicated, has so many really varied positions and generates the fiercest emotions. BUT, realistically, does it make sense to be too strong a fan of any team? There are 16 teams and only one can win the Superbowl. Maybe half the teams or more have at least a chance before the season starts since football championships change hands constantly. Since the level of emotion is driven to high levels throughout the game and season, when your team loses the disappointment is equally of a high level. NOW, in what way does the life of a fan change whether his team wins or loses? PRECISELY, it doesn't. There was a time in my life when watching a game where I really, really wanted my team to win might even generate a headache. Not Good. Over time I began to realize how much unpredictable variables enter into a football game. Injuries, when the penalties occur, when passes are dropped, when tackles will be missed, when blown calls will surface, when someone slips, tipped balls, when fumbles occur, the condition of the field, the weather, etc. It is amazing that the best of experts can manage to correctly predict the winners of games a little over 60% of the time.

Foot ball can be entertaining, but it takes, I sense, a certain developed discipline for it to be entertainment rather than torture. Of course some people enjoy the torture just as some people like climbing cliffs or any other dangerous sport. Then there are the football arguments. Listening to pregame shows or ESPN sport news gives one an endless series of 'experts' with definitive and 'for sure' opinions on every player and everything associated with the game. When the game is over most of it turned out to be pure bullshit. Most topics argued about in football are unprovable. Fans aren't arguing about who scored the most touchdowns or anything else that has a factual basis. No, they argue about which players are better, which coaches are better, whether the team should have gone for it or punted, team chemistry, player attitudes, etc. From a distance what is the purpose of all these debates? How often does one side change their mind? It starts off friendly enough with each side manipulating certain observations or stats to fit their case, while others watching the debacle wish the arguers would just let it drop, but it rarely does and can go on for weeks, months, years. What is the prize at the end if one could win any of these arguments? I am trying to think of one case in my own history where one side ever capitulated. I can think of cases where friendships have been weakened, but none where the friendship was strengthened. Most of the times when these arguments are being made, apples and oranges are being compared. Plus, what may work with certain people in certain situations does not work for other people in different situations. How good any player is, for example, depends on the quality of the supporting cast and the quality of the opposition. The other players have to be individually good at their positions for one player to get his own best stats. Nice guys don't get you good stats, guys who play their position well do. Like all those involved state all the time: it is a business, pure and simple. First comes their own survival and if the team should happen to win that is nice too. But the first objective for every player is for them to put up the stats for them to not only survive as a team member but get a top salary.

To enjoy a sport like football one probably needs to see it as pure entertainment. There is a surprise on most every play, sometimes pleasant, sometimes unpleasant. You know all these kinds of unpredictable things are going to happen and one must learn not to react emotionally much to their occurrence. The lucky ones forget about all the heartache 5 minutes after the game is over. The smartest ones keep their emotions in check throughout the game. IT IS JUST A GAME. IT HAS NO REAL MEANING TO ANYONE'S LIFE EXCEPT THOSE OUT ON THE FIELD.

Most things in life come at a price----marriage, sport success, job success, friendships, good health, wealth, contentment, justice, etc. Winning and losing in sports as a fan requires no price and comes with no control over the outcome. Any idiot can be a fan, maybe most are. THEN AGAIN, all you have to do as a fan is show up and root. There is no required preparation. Being a fan for some people, actually a lot of people, can become compulsive behavior---like overeating, drugs, sex, whatever. I suppose, those addicted would say it gives them some genuine pleasure in their life. I am not sure pleasure is the right term. There are people who wash their hands 100 times a day; one need be careful calling this pleasure. It is compulsive behavior. Every addict to anything claims a real need for the diversion. Maybe most of us need to be addicted to something so there is something to occupy our spare time.

I stated before that sports is unpredictable. So is gambling at a Casino and look how many people are addicted to casino gambling. Gambling is not only time consuming but it does affect your bank account, marriage, and state of mind. In general, too much of anything can kill you including too much oxygen, food, and a lot of other things so necessary in moderation. I am 70 years old and read a lot. Why? Am I ever going to do anything with the increased knowledge? Of course not. I write a lot---for my own contentment. Yes, contentment is the only basis for a hobby. If one can be a sport fan in a way which brings contentment and doesn't destroy other aspects of your life, then I guess it is a good thing. I have abandoned most sports because following them is too time consuming and winning or losing as a fan, for me, has no lasting effect and contributes about zero to my state of contentment. My life will be as content whether Green Bay wins or loses. I still watch a lot of games because football is, as I say, unpredictable, and thus filled with the unexpected. Iit is good theatre. People enjoy plays for the same reason.

Almost all sports debates cannot be proven----contrary to the certainty with which sports commentators and fans pretend otherwise. Opinions cannot be proved and more often than not the messenger of an opinion becomes the one subjected to character assassination. In one form or another these arguments end by each accusing the other of ignorance, lack of some kind of experience to even know about such things, and all sorts of irrelevant character assassinations---the other guy once predicted team X to win the division, or has been known to lie too much, or what do people in his/her profession know anyway, or someone who would choose such a loser as a spouse can hardly be trusted to be a judge of anyone etc. In other words the debate shifts from the issue at hand to whether or not the other person is even capable of having a valid opinion. Be all this as it may, how is it that one person may claim to know the factual answer?

1. They are smarter (now who could possibly counter that?)

2. They once coached some kind of sport which gives them unique experience or or some such experience by which the truth came by osmosis. Sounds good enough EXCEPT, if it were true then all those with similar experience would all agree on the topic in question. They don't.

3. They once played the sport in question. It seems here they confuse athletic ability with understanding complex issues.

4. Certain other people say so (The Pope complex--a Pope elected by selected people knows the answers because God gives him the answer). Like who is to dare question God? A sport commentator or a group of sport commentators get elevated to Popes on the debate in question.

5. Logic based on reasonable evidence and hypotheses constructed based on that reasonable evidence. This may come closest to the answer BUT also cannot be proven. It still is opinion.

In the end, with sports, DOES IT MATTER? I suppose, somewhere beyond human wisdom, one great athlete is better than another great athlete. Or, again beyond human wisdom, some factor can be precisely determined as to how important it is for team success. Perhaps the only non damaging sport debates can occur when both sides accept the difference between believing one is right and knowing one is right. One cannot know something which is not a provable fact. Fortunately, sport beliefs are harmless, at least on paper, since non of it matters much in any real sense. It only matters when relationships are destroyed or damaged. Not good.

STILL, in the end, sports debates can be stimulating, amusing, entertaining, challenging and all such good stuff PROVIDING both sides keep in mind that no one is going to win these debates. If the debate itself is fun, FINE, if the debate ceases to be fun, then STOP.

Second Chances

2010-11-26T19:01:00.001-08:00

Second Chances

The heart rendering story of Chris Henry, the Cincinnati wide-receiver suspended from football for numerous arrests, mostly for violent acts, dismissed from the team, and then when no one else wanted him, was given a second chance by Cincinnati, seemed to have settled down and was doing things right----and then, falling out of the back of a pick-up truck during a domestic dispute with his bride to be, he died at age 26. Those who knew him best, his teammates, the coaches, the owners, all seem genuinely devastated by his death, all claiming he was nothing like the media portrayed him. That of course, is hard to fit with a college coach who once told Henry that he was a total disgrace to his team and school.

Of course those on the other end of his violent, angry, emotional outbursts for most of his life may see it differently. Perspective is everything. Depending on your job in life you may or may not meet and have any meaningful contact with the Chris Henrys of life. I certainly did and you never get over how much empathy they can extract from you in calm conversational situations. In some sense they are con artists. Part of why they do such anti-social acts is that they can invariably use their personal charm to weasel out of any lasting consequences. One always feels, if you know them in any counseling situation, that he/she is mostly misunderstood, a basically good person who foolishly does some bad things. Many parents understand what I mean here.

Henry, it seems had finally turned things around and was settling into a more 'mature' mode and the 'good' Henry was about to have a good and fulfilling life. Maybe so, maybe not----hard to really say. But let's be positive here and assume he was a once 'bad' character who had turned his life around. BUT, how many 'good' people who do bad things ever have a financial fortune as a carrot? I wonder what percentage of ghetto gang members who are basically 'good' persons might shape up if the reward for such personal discipline and altered priorities, was a huge financial fortune? Of course one feels bad that Henry had turned the corner behavior wise and seemed on track to live a productive life as a good citizen when he met his death. It is a legitimate feel good story.

STILL, there are millions more young people out there, equally 'good' people 'at heart', doing bad things, who will never have such a financial carrot out there to force a change in their behavior. If one feels sorry for Henry, then logic demands we feel equally sorry for these millions of other young people, with no such physical talent to be worth huge financial rewards for such a talent, who will never get endless second chances, have no access to support from those who have already succeeded, and----for the most part---are basically walled off or 'gated' from the more successful in life. It is really just a picture from life's other side. Henry's demise is a tragedy, but an even greater tragedy are millions more leading hopeless lives of quiet desperation. There is no sad sudden demise of their lives because they are never high enough in life's success plateau to fall. And if we really knew many of these people as a person we would no doubt say of many, 'they are basically good people, who given the right environment, could turn their lives around. For a zillion reasons, they are never going to get a good environment, they are not strong or smart enough to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps like a Terrell Owens, and even if we all really wanted to share our resources and help them, their numbers are staggeringly high, the task too difficult, and the natural resources are no longer there on the globe for them to live the lifestyle many of us do. If we feel sad for Chris Henry, logic dictates we weep and bawl loudly for this other vast mass of humanity across the globe who pay a ghastly price for human overpopulation on a stressed planet. Henry at least had the athletic talent to be allowed to smell the roses for a brief time. The effort it took on the part of so many to salvage Henry from this other vast mss of humanity who live lives of quiet desperation---this effort was long standing, widespread, and the carrot available huge.

I don't have any answers, I don't really understand most of the questions, maybe there are no answers. God's created evolutionary process is run by laws which use survival of the fittest for evolutionary progress. It works, millions of years attest to that, but this forward progress over millions of years leaves in it's wake tragic personal consequences for individual specie members. There is a cost to most everything worth achieving. The cost for God's evolutionary progress is especially steep for the weak and less fortunate who end up with the wrong cards from the wheel of chance which plays such an important role in the process. The results are overwhelmingly impressive, but the process can be brutal. I personally feel lucky, but not on the basis of any personal intervention by God for this luck. I don't feel singled out, I don't feel I earned all this good fortune, I don't feel God likes me better than others, I just am lucky. This is not to say individuals cannot, via their own good choice, parlay luck into a better life. But it starts with luck.

We Don't Need Any Empire

2010-11-26T06:25:00.000-08:00

We Don't Need Any Empire

Empires have come and gone throughout history. Every empire that arose also fell. Most of the time empires fall for the same reasons: the expense of controlling distant lands, and at home the growing accumulation of wealth among a few off the backs of first the poor, and then the middle class. For most of history an empire was maintained by imposing rule by occupying armies. The occupying army either directly controlled the occupied country or set up a token figurehead native government.

Americans, for the most part, don't consider ourselves empire builders, but rather peace builders, freedom fighters, Christina soldiers, good neighbors, good samaritans, always the good guys. Many, if not most Americans root for America in the same fashion they root for their favorite sport team---almost blind allegiance. Other citizens of other countries do the same. Most of us inherit our religions and politics and most of us change hardly at all, especially in our religious beliefs.

The acquisition of foreign lands is a natural outgrowth of military and economic power. In the early days of America our empire expanded simply by going further west. Jefferson expressed the opinion that our country was so vast that it would be a rural country for thousands of years and our natural resources inexhaustible for thousands of years. He was off a tad. When the frontier closed Americans had to look elsewhere for acquisitions----not so much for settling there as to gain guaranteed markets for our products. We rapidly rose to become the largest exporter in the world, the largest creditor in the world, and the largest military force in the world. The actual acquisition of foreign lands didn't last all that long---Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Philippines, Guam, etc. We realized that people hated us when we literally occupied their country---of course for the purpose of helping them become as affluent as ourselves. What third world country have we turned around? With the advances in communication and transportation, what Americans realized was that the important thing to us was the ACQUISITION OF WEALTH, NOT THE ACQUISITION OF LAND per se. We were always more than willing to exploit natural resources across the globe for a hefty profit.

Over time we didn't fool too many countries into any belief we were controlling their economic situation for altruistic reasons. When our economic interests were threatened by political events in another weak country, we simply invaded until they got their politics right. We did this more than 50 times in the last 100 years. Unfortunately, time is now running out and increasingly everyone everywhere is beginning to end up in the same boat. As human overpopulation hits the earth with all it's consequences, everything is going topsy turvy. We are no longer the greatest exporter on earth; instead we are the greatest importers on earth, gobbling up goods made by slave wages across the globe. It is a rare American, or rare any nationality, who can turn down a bargain. Buy American is about as effective as Just Say No to drugs. We're almost all guilty.

In those times past when the poor could always live off the land, poor but with enough to eat, the acquisition of wealth by another country from your own natural or labor resources was noted, but not the kind of thing you revolted over. And it was not too long ago when communication was such that you hardly knew much about how foreigners lived. It is all changing so rapidly now that beleaguered has become pretty much a global mind set. Growth and the acquisition of THINGS became the real American religion, not Christianity. Christ himself was not much of a THING person. The most contented people I know personally are not much of THING persons either. It became a cultural tradition for Americians to be first and foremost a THINGSTERITE, myself included.

Such observations as above are considered in many circles to be an attitude of un-patriotism. But it is precisely because one loves his/her country that one has a duty to criticize when its' politics/behavior are wrong. Our country needs to go back to leading by example, not using military might to engage in endless wars.

We don't need an empire; we need to take care of our own less fortunate. We don't need to keep buying products made by slave labor; we need universal minimum wages in any global economy. We don't need to reproduce as mindlessly as rabbits; we need responsible reproduction. We don't need blind allegiance to an inherited religion or blind patriotism; we need allegiance to the universal ethical principle of the Golden Rule. We don't need unlimited and unregulated capitalism; we need competitive capitalism with limits and fair guidelines. We don't need to permit any sectarian religious beliefs to become the law of the land; we need the freedom for everyone to practice their own religious beliefs as long as they meet the guidelines of the Golden Rule. We don't need unrestrained greed which puts our natural resources at risk; we need instead to protect and respect our environment, another gift from God's created evolutionary process. We need a lot these days for all that so much of us treasure in life not to implode.

Honor

2010-11-25T22:42:00.000-08:00

"THIS WAS BACK IN THE DAYS WHEN THERE WAS HONOR IN BEING A WARRIOR...THEY PROUDLY WORE UNIFORMS, AND THEY DIDN'T HIDE IN AMBUSH INSIDE A MOSQUE, OR BEHIND WOMEN AND CHILDREN, NOR DID THEY USE MENTALLY RETARDED WOMEN AS SUICIDE BOMBERS TO TARGET AND KILL INNOCENT CIVILIANS...HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED......"

Things are not as simple or one sided as the above statement pretends. Honor is something individuals have, not 'days' or cultures or one era vs another. And warrior is a useless term when not qualified. All combatants are warriors, drug gangs are warriors, etc. If there is honor in being a warrior it seemingly would be restricted to defending your family or country from being attacked. In modern times the word warrior is less and less meaningful. Is someone who pushes a button to send off a smart bomb to destroy suspected enemies and anyone else in the vicinity really a warrior? Is there honor in this? Maybe some sort of utilitarian necessity but honor? If one side has 'smart bombs', missiles, armored tanks, etc. and the other side has only homemade or crude roadside bombs this alone hardly identifies where any honor is. In both cases innocent people get killed. It was much simpler when wars involved uniformed armies, and citizens in both countries all had to sacrifice to sustain war. People who are willing to give up their lives for this or that cause can not be dismissed as mentally retarded. Wars today are less about territorial gain or politics but acts of desperation by mostly very angry and desperate groups. I am not aware of any desperate groups in history who did not have some legitimate basis for all their anger and desperate acts.

Forget using honor to describe the actions of one side and put down the actions of the other side. The Earth today suffers a massive population explosion which is putting enormous stresses on all the natural resources needed to sustain the kind of lifestyle to which many of us are accustomed. Muslim countries are not putting military bases in nonMuslim countries or putting military bases in nonMuslim countries to prop up desired governments. And of course they don't do this because they can't and we can. There is no honor involved here---just he who can does, he who cannot, doesn't. Perhaps honor should be involved for those who follow the Golden Rule---do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

THE DATING GAME

2010-11-25T22:26:00.001-08:00

The Dating Game

We support this or that person for various reasons, but truthfully the selection is too often not objective. Two people date and marry for reasons that are personal, not objective. Because each 'love' affair is personal, others cannot judge the union.
Some marriages are based mostly on respect, or 'love' (hard to define this), or money, or power, or sex, or prestige, or just companionship. I guess what works, works. Marriage is a legal fact, not any kind of singular description of reality.

There is no judicial system or religious system (outside of gay marriage) which passes any judgment on whether the basis for the marriage is valid. You book the church, you go to a judge---whatever---and the marriage is law. This is the dating game with the rules set by the participants. Fair enough, it is purely personal.

But the dating game extends far beyond marriage. Barack Obama, with the same policies and a different personality, would be a loser at the polls. We 'like' certain athletes because of the 'dating game' mentality. Fair enough except an awful lot of energy then is expended to translate 'like' into why the athlete is better than others, which of course, is needed to seal your case. Stats can often get in the way of our likes and dislikes based on the dating game mentality, so we invent adjectives which present our choice in more favorable terms. Bush, we are told by his supporters, was a good President despite the stats, because he was 'principled', 'tough', didn't yield to public opinion, was a born again Christian willing to push his 'revealed' religious beliefs to become the law of the land, and stood his ground once his foot came down, etc. It's the dating game, that's what it is. Sports is probably the worst area for the dating game. We like who we like because we know what we like and like to like what we like. Again fair enough, but this then gets translated illogically into performance judgments.

Clearly, at least to me, politics should be about policy. If George Bush still had all the personal qualities which I dislike and supported the right policies, his responsibility as a politician would be met. An athlete who trains properly, performs well on the field, and is a good citizen has met all the obligations necessary to be valuable on the team. Kobe Bryant might be the most obnoxious person in the world to some, but he is valuable to any team because he trains right, he performs well on the court and may or may not be a good citizen. Two out of three. The point here is that all of us have a right to like or not like someone, but we need recognize that like has little to do with worth on a team. The dating game is irrelevant in sports and politics. Well, not entirely. Politicians have to get elected so the dating game becomes a prerequisite---sometimes. Some of our greatest Presidents got to become Presidents despite inherent weaknesses in the dating game. Teddy Roosevelt, Lincoln, FDR, Truman, and others got into the White House without excelling at the dating game.

After a Presidential debate (if I can use the term debate loosely), watching those assembled 'undecideds' critique the debate is a sorry affair. It is the dating game, absent policy issues. "I thought so and so was more poised----etc." just as if they were choosing someone to date. I think in sports it is ok, after all these are games, and I too, often like someone in sports for reasons other than just their performance. But I try not to be suckered into the dating game nonsense by claiming they are better than their stats because of Illusionary ephemeral qualities that are claimed to help their teammates play better. These are professional players and know exactly what they need to do in the playing arena to make the team successful. That often is just about all they seem to know. After that they often seem to have the brain of a turtle. These dating game fans may create illusionary factors but the coaches and owners know better. If your stats are there, you stay and maybe get a raise. If the stats are not there you are gone. If the often bastard owners or general managers know anything, they know the bottom line. If team chemistry, with rare exceptions, was much of a factor, you wouldn't find massive migration of players from team to team. Terrell Owens is a good case in point. Those who hate Terrell Owens have for years been claiming he is a poison pill, disruptive to the point of incapacitating the performance of others on the team----popular sport commentators have insisted he be banned from the sport and on and on it goes. He is 36 years old, in 2nd place in general stats for wide receivers in the NFL record book, every team he has been on has had a winning record, every team he has left has done worse after he left, and he remains one of the top paid receivers in football. So from the record, on what basis is he a poison pill let alone be banned from the sport? Banned for what? Asking to be paid for his level of performance? Demanding the ball be thrown to him a lot? Not letting others interfere with his own conditioning and training program? Expressing his own opinion about a position he knows better than most anyone in football and has the stats to prove it? No, it all boils down to the dating game. His focus on himself, regardless of the results he gets from it, annoys the hell out of some people, angers them to the point of rage, and if his team doesn't win the Super Bowl the solution, to them, is to get rid of Terrell Owens. It is hard to remember the last season Owens has not gotten at least 1000 yards and been in the top five in number of touchdowns, regardless of the quarterback. Strange, but there are a lot of great football players who have never won a Superbowl ring---the Hall of Fame is cluttered with them. There are 32 teams in the league. One person, if not a quarterback, cannot, by themselves put any team in the Superbowl. Even Donovan couldn't do it without T.O. With T.O. he did.

Thus, the dating game, outside of romance, is bad way to select the best politicians, the best athletes, the best administrators, etc. Results matter. They really do. NEVERTHELESS, all of us are entitled to like who we like. I think I excel here and have no prejudices. I hate everyone. That levels the playing field and is the ultimate in fairness.

Misdirected Anger

2010-11-21T07:33:00.000-08:00

Misdirected Anger

The email forwarded here was sent to me. I have a different take on the meaning of it all. (Now I can't locate the email. It was a video of Muslims in Britain screaming death threats to non Muslims and demanding all sorts of things).

The last time I saw these kind of hate signs and rhetoric goes back to the 60's and the Black Panthers. I felt then, the way this email is supposed to make Americans or Canadians feel today----really angry.

I guess I start with the belief that human qualities of kindness, justice, cooperation, tolerance, etc. are qualities existent to about the same degree in all humans of all ethnic ilk. I also have learned to regret that religious extremists of all ilk tend to bring out the worst in human nature.

Back in the 60's my anger at the Black Panthers and black demonstrations in general was coupled with my first exposure to teaching in a University with a large component of blacks. In fact the first two years the University was located in the worst section of Chicago in buildings that duplicated the movie Blackboard Jungle. To say I was on edge was an understatement. To say the students were on edge was an understatement.

I suspect all the turmoil came to a head in the 60's because Television made it possible for all people everywhere in the country to become aware of how others lived. When I was growing up there was a sizable black population in my town but they may as well have lived on Mars. I knew they existed but that is about the sum of it. And it was probably vice-versa. Much of the angry conflict prevalent across the globe is probably of the same nature---as modern communication makes more and more people aware of how others live, more and more anger and conflict becomes generated.

At any rate the Black Panthers may have forced everyone's attention, but the average blacks I faced in the classroom were good persons---reasonable, fair, and honest---BUT, now they had a more hardened sense of hope and expectations. And I, well aware of the tension, had a heightened sense of pressure to evaluate everything I did in terms of fairness and opportunity. In other words, the extremism and hatred of the Black Panther demonstrations and speeches forced all sides to recognize a problem existed and forced the more reasonable people to address legitimate issues.

These Muslim extremists are the Black Panthers of the Muslim world. It is no more logical to claim all Muslims are extremists than to say all blacks are Black Panthers. It is as necessary to realize the Muslim extremists are not without legitimate issues as it was to realize the Black Panthers brought to the surface legitimate issues. These screaming hate filled Muslims are no more the solution than the Black Panthers were the solution. The solution, as always, is to be found among the less radical, less emotional, fair minded, more tolerant population on both sides---those with no braces on their brains.

As a general rule when sizable groups of people gather with such a level of anger and threats of death to others, beneath it all there are invariably legitimate grievances. Another general rule is that solutions can only be arrived at by attempting to view the issues at hand through the eyes of the protesters. Finally, one must distinguish between conflicts based on beliefs and conflicts based on injustice. People who are just trying to shove their beliefs down someone else's throat will be the most difficult population with which to deal. We already know that with issues like abortion, gay rights, prayers in schools, etc. To this day I can't really claim any simple way to instill in all citizens the importance of leaving religious beliefs out of politics. No one should be forced to follow the religious beliefs of another.

The basis for resolving the kind of conflict evidenced in such hostile and threatening demonstrations is always to get the root problems on the table and each side apply the golden rule. When each side is prepared to do unto others as they would have others do unto them, justice and peace can be achieved. The Golden Rule is why slavery was abolished, women got the right to vote, schools were desegregated, job opportunities were made a more level field, etc.

In the case of Muslim anger it probably starts with Non-Muslim interference in Muslim countries. After all it is only non Muslim countries invading Muslim countries. I am trying to think of any Muslim country which has invaded a Non Muslim country in this modern Age. I think there are cases in Africa where Muslim populations within a country have been genocidal toward non-Muslim populations as well as vice-versa. There is, of course, the Muslim attack on the World Trade Center Towers. But this gets a bit complicated in that Al Queda was formed originally to oppose American Military bases in Saudi Arabia. Almost all the hijackers were Arabians and most of the money to sustain Al Queda-like groups across the world has come from wealthy Arabians. Arabia has always played both sides of the turmoil. I suppose, if I were a Muslim, I would feel that non-Muslims are the ones interfering in Muslim countries and that Muslim countries have not invaded non-Muslim countries or established military bases in non-Muslim countries, etc.

After this the picture gets quite complicated. There is little individual freedom in Muslim countries and they spend an inordinate amount of energy killing each other, persecuting each other, while corrupt deadly religious gangs vie endlessly for control and power over others. As a result many Muslims move abroad for safety and economic reasons. The Iraq War, for example, has produced over a million Iraqi refugees who are homeless and have fled the country for their own safety. Who wants these refugees in their country? No one. When you are not welcomed any place---for legitimate or non legitimate reasons----you will have a hard time getting employment, getting a good education, and will end up living in ghettoes. And who do they blame for their misery? If the refugees are from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, etc, then the the blame most often is directed at the non-Muslim invading country. After all, they used to have a home, schools, a job, a community---now they have nothing. We, of course, prefer to talk about individual freedom, despotic rulers, democracy, and our own economic necessities.

It is hard to pinpoint exactly when this country decided to get so involved in the internal affairs of other countries. Certainly the founding fathers, almost to a man, warned us against getting involved in the affairs of other countries. Part of our misdirected mentality was the 'wild west', a long period in our history when guns and violence ruled local law enforcement. We have a long history of being 'gun nuts'. Then the youth of our democracy and our sparsely populated country rich in natural resources generated a notion of manifest destiny----the idea that we had all these riches and opportunities for success because God favored our nation over others. With such rapid success came, as always comes with such rapid success, a certain amount of arrogance, feelings of superiority, bullying, and exploitation. Human nature is human nature and were the roles reversed it would all go down the same way.

Of course if everybody followed the Golden Rule it really would make little difference what kind of religion or form of government reigned anywhere. Unfortunately, reality reigns and a lot of ifs serve merely as an exercise in pipe dreaming. The big picture in evolutionary history demonstrates endless upward progress in complexity of life and living, but evolutionary history has shown no mercy to any species unable to cope with the environment of it's time and place. Humans have always invented Gods of some sort, always a God who thinks like us and, with the proper worship, will intervene in our lives to make our own individual lives better. History and observation refutes this mentality. All advanced human civilizations have self destructed. It has always been some sort of combination of environmental abuse or catastrophe, an extended military empire too expensive to maintain, and an amassment of wealth in the hands of a few at the expense of the many.

The difference today is human overpopulation of the globe. Adding this to the mix and it really seems evident that this is our Achilles Heel. We may in some sense be brighter than rabbits, but like rabbits we produce in the same fashion, and this irresponsible reproduction is destroying our environment, creating terrorism all over the globe as people compete for dwindling resources including land, food, water, shelter, health care, etc. Our impact on other species is so devastating now that species extinction rates are at a level unseen in millions of years. These pictures of enraged Muslims can easily be interchanged with enraged groups of people of different ilks all over the globe. Our anger is pretty much always directed at victims these days. And these victims of human overpopulation are all over the place. Ours is a relatively new country and is not yet in the dire straits of overpopulation seen in other parts of the globe. Even with dwindling natural resources we have the power, for now, to simply take what we need by force. But the limits of our power to do this are becoming increasingly evident. With all our sophisticated and deadly weapons we can't conquer and control the weakest of countries anymore---like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia, Sudan, etc. We can conquer, but we can't make their lives better and in fact, our attempts to do so is so expensive that our own domestic needs are coming up short on cash to help the unfortunate in our own country.

Most people know, at some level, that we are overrunning the planet. But we simply cannot seriously talk about it. We have Presidential debates ad-nausea and no one---no one---talks about it. Up until recently our policies were such that we could not even give foreign aid to help any country with birth control measures. And controlled family planning is an automatic no-no.

At any rate, I don't look at hate-filled mobs screaming hate filled comments toward those who they blame for their fates, and feel hatred toward them. Rather, I feel saddened that we live in a world where so many are trapped in lives of desperation and injustice. I can't recall, off-hand, any time when an ethnic or religious group ever displayed such hate and anger when some sort of injustice was not taking place toward them. Fate has been kind to me and I live in the best available circumstances for these times. It is not a question of 'there but for the grace of God goes I". I am not one who sees God as One Who chooses who gets what fate or a God meddling in such a way as to make life better for selected deserving followers of some inherited religion. God created the evolutionary process---a process which gave me the chance, by luck, not divine intervention, to be a part of this process. The sanctity of life is defined by this evolutionary process, not individual fates in the process. Humans were not the first species nor is there any reason to conclude we will be the last species. There is not even any assurance we as a species will survive. LIfe is a continuum and changes over time spans beyond our real comprehension---millions of years. I would genuinely like to be more self important to the process, and not myself become extinct through death. Life after death seems a real stretch, but then so does evolutionary history. In the end, whatever will be, will be, and the result be controlled by the God created laws of evolution. I think when one sees the bigger picture it is hard to hate those whose lives are such, that were I to mingle with them in their environment, they would do me harm.

As always, as the real solution to conflict, lies the Golden Rule coupled with Live and Let Live. We have the tools, but not always the will power. The question is not "how dare them express such hate" but what injustices exist in their lives to bring them to such a state of anger?

Clear the Air

2010-11-21T07:12:00.000-08:00

Clear the Air

President Obama met with his Russian counterpart in Lisbon in a spontaneous attempt to clear up issues of contention. It was touted as quite successful. That's good. The meeting lasted 15-20 minutes. Well, world leaders are busy. That's probably 2 weeks in our own time. BUT---important issues can get cleared up in 15 minutes? Wow. When world leaders meet with the Pope those meetings are usually 15 minutes too. Given the speed at which aging Popes communicate, this seems more like a 5 minute meeting. But afterwards the press release always reports that they discussed world peace, world hunger, the economy, refugees, all the wars going on, terrorism, etc. Really now, isn't this a bit of a stretch? I am trying to think when any of these issues took a positive turn after any such a meeting. On NEw Year's Eve the Pope always prays for world peace. I kind of want someone else to pray for this next year, God doesn't seem to be listening too much to the Pope. I think maybe the Pope should switch his communication carrier.

In my life it often took hours for the simplest issues to be resolved at a meeting. Of course these weren't meetings between Heads of State, more a meeting of Air Heads. I think maybe we need one of these time express meetings between the leader of North Korea and the President of the U.S. Maybe add an extra minute, make it a 16 minute meeting. I would take the minutes: "You know, my good friend, if you stopped your program to have nuclear weapons, the world would be a more peaceful place and we could be best of friends." " I know, my friend, but Saddam didn't have nuclear weapons and look what happened to him. It seems he kind of needed them." "Well, the past is past, and you are so old and sickly that you get a pass. Let's make a deal, you stop trying to build weapons of mass destruction and we will stop invading sovereign foreign countries. We kind of need that money now for other things at home". "I see your point. Well if a huge statue of ME and MY SON soon to be President, can be erected in countries across the globe and the US build military bases in this country to ensure he cannot be overthrown, we have a deal." "Perfect my friend, we have that kind of deal with Saudi Arabia, the issue is done with. Our time is up, let's get the photo opp. and press release over with."

Ladies and Gentlemean: The leaders of North Korea and the U.S. met today to resolve important issues between the two countries. The issue of nuclear weapons programs in North Korea has been resolved. The meeting commenced at 1:00 PM and finished at 1:16 P.M.

Kill the Messenger

2010-11-21T06:34:00.000-08:00

Kill the Messenger

Why do some of the best amongst us get assassinated or persecuted? There must be a profound answer. Profound might be an illusionary word. What can the word possibly mean? Can anything be profound if the intelligence for it is absent? Where did God come from? Don't even think about being profound on this one. Why does God allow so much tragedy and cruelty to exist? Preachers try hard to be profound on this one but sound mostly silly and air-headed with their explanations. Try to be profound about sexual behavior and make a fool out of yourself. And so it goes on and on.

Beliefs I reckon are necessary for human hope and mental strength. If we can't have beliefs we lose the will to struggle for improving ourselves. The more emotional attachment to a belief the harder to let go. The religious right of any religion always dig in out of fear----fear that if all their beliefs are not true, who is to then say any of their beliefs are true? Civil rights and justice of most any kind has to overcome human beliefs which see no injustice. It is the leaders of such crusades for human rights and justice who run the risk of being assassinated or persecuted. We know full well why Lincoln was shot, why Martin Luther King was shot, why Harvey Milk was shot, etc. Others less famous were just ostracized, fined, defrocked, or jailed. In most cases of ethical advancement in search of 'justice for all' some individuals pay for their part in such advancement with their lives. There is no profound answer. That's why this musing is so short.

MORAL CONSEQUENCES

2010-11-20T17:25:00.000-08:00

Moral Consequences:

Morality has been a subject much on my mind most of my life. Of course right and wrong are front and center, but what always follows are the consequences of immoral behavior. Like most people I inherited a religion and believed in it when young much as a child believes in Santa Claus. For me, the more I got exposed to a wider world, a world so much more diverse and expansive than my own tunnel visioned existence, organized inherited religions began to fit in less and less. The questions which arose were rather basic. Why would God pass on his directions for moral living through inheritance? Why are some people born with so many more advantages than others? If God is personally involved in our lives why can such awful tragedies happen to some who are so good and moral? If one steps back and looks at the whole world as we can perceive it, one realizes human understanding is hopelessly limited. Why are we always trying to create a God that is on our level of comprehension, Who thinks like us, Who is constantly judging and either punishing or rewarding us? Why do we create so many silly ass rituals to prove our devotion to the Creator? Why do we feel a need to be so rigid about our religious beliefs? And the questions go on and on. For me, when the questions piled up past a certain critical level, it became time to rethink what morality and ethics really is, and what the consequences of doing wrong really are.

Whatever ethics really is, for it to be universal it can't be complicated, it can't require some sort of college degree, and it has to be universally applicable everywhere humans exist. Does God exist? If someone gives you a gift anonymously, the existence of the gift proves the existence of giver. So God exists or at least did exist. I suppose one could postulate he has since died. We know enough about the evolution of life on our planet to understand a good deal about the laws of evolution, how life is a continuum and has evolved over eons of time into more and more complicated organisms. Who created this evolutionary process? It certainly is no human creation and this non human creator I call God. It certainly is an awe inspiring process. There is no evidence God is ever tinkering with the process by negating the very laws which drive the process. On this basis I find it a bit irrational to think I can, through any kind of altered behavior on my part, get God to exempt me here and there from the laws of evolution. If I have terminal cancer I am going to die and God is not going to interfere. If I am plain looking, I am plain looking and God is not going to physically alter my appearance no matter how many rituals I go through or how often I praise God, etc. And it seems a bit egotistic to feel God guided a particular sperm to a particular egg so I could exist. The evolutionary process enabled me to exist, not by divine intervention, but by the laws of God's created evolutionary process. My whole life is governed by these laws, not by Divine intervention for me to pass a school test, score a touchdown on a team, fall in love with the right person, etc. I don't appreciate God less because he doesn't tinker with the laws he created to drive the evolutionary process.

Assuming the above is true, where does this leave ethics and morality in God's evolutionary process? Does this leave hedonism and selfishness as a behavior as good as any other? Is there really and right and wrong, or just immutable evolutionary laws which are always the deciding forces? Why should others count at all, we are all dead in the long run. The fault in this thinking lies in viewing evolution as a purely physical process. As this process evolved mental capacities also evolved. Of course an amoeba or frog doesn't have any concept of right and wrong. That does not mean humans do not have such a concept. And of course we do because we talk about right and wrong and lot. Right and wrong is a mental function which logically continues to evolve with the evolutionary process. Why would we postulate this particular mental function not be an evolving function? Right and wrong today may not be at the same level as right and wrong in earlier times. Slavery may have been considered right in the past, but today it is more universally considered wrong. There are myriad examples of things that were considered right in the past which are generally considered wrong today---child labor abuses, women's rights, ethnic rights, sexual rights, etc. Because of the nature of evolution, right and wrong is not an absolute, but an evolving concept.

Next we have to understand the nature of this mental process which determines right from wrong. It seems humans have an innate sense of right and wrong which is depicted in the Golden Rule---do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Perhaps it started off rather simply, a kind of "if you are kind to me I won't kill you". And then over time, it just keeps expanding. At some point you get: "Okay I am male and you are female but you can vote too."Or. "You are black and I am white but you can sit next to me on the bus". Today it may be reflected in "Okay, I can marry any adult of my choice so you can too". Right and wrong is evolving just like other aspects of evolution keep evolving.

But wait, what is the reward for doing right instead of doing wrong? Many religions have invented a Heaven, a reward after death. I say invented because this is not something for which we have any proof or even a logical basis. Neither can we dismiss it. After all, we can't conceive how life exists so how can be deny the possibility of some sort of life after death. But, one might say, "If there is no Heaven why should anyone make any effort to do right rather than wrong? " I suppose one could do right instead of wrong just to cover one's ass in case there is a Heaven. But it is also possible that doing right instead of wrong has it's own immediate reward in terms of personal contentment.

Personal contentment is the goal of any individual's life. I find (which does not make it a fact) that real personal contentment is achieved via living the Golden Rule. It seems to me that those who follow the Golden Rule end up contented----up to a point. If you are homeless, without food, without a safe environment, etc. then of course you cannot be contented. HOWEVER, the responsibility for this condition resides with others. In the evolutionary process there is no level playing field. For humans, bestowed genetically with mental acumen and a sense of ethics, it is ethical duty which is needed to level the playing field. OF COURSE we cannot level the playing field, but we can make it more level. There is no real reason why anyone on earth should go without food, have no home, and not live in a safe environment. It is the actions of some who make this impossible. These are the people who believe (they really do) that they have 'earned' their blessings and those without can do so the old fashioned way---"earn it". It makes little logical sense for the fastest runner in a race to tell those finishing way back in the pack, that they too could win races if they would just train like he/she does. Clearly being able to win races is a non essential part of life, but having food to eat, a home to live in, and a secure environment is another story.

I don't think one can really be content until others count as much as we ourselves do. Jesus and most other prophets from diverse religious sects all put sharing on the front burner. Those who have more need share with those who have less. Unfortunately, many people reduce this to simply those who have more need give a small portion of their excess to others. Sometimes the other is the Church itself which is notoriously an inefficient way to get any real help to those in need. The overhead for any particular church is very high. NO, the Golden Rule does not mean give a little of your excess. Arbitrarily, in my own mind, it means that you give until you are giving as much to others as you give to yourself. Every penny that you spend on yourself that is not a basic need ought to be matched by a penny given to others in need---in the most direct way possible. Since I have started doing this my level of contentment has risen in my life. Duty done is the genesis of contentment. Of course, the question arises----what about in your younger years when you are trying so hard to make a career work and need any excess to invest in building for your future? This seems a valid question. I think an early concept to master is that enough is as good as a feast. For example, one can spend $20,000 to get a decent car to get you from place to place, or one may really want a $40,000 car because well, because you just want the $40,000 car for one reason or another. And that extra $20,000 is all the extra money you really have to spend. Fine, so you buy a $30,000/yr car this time around and give $10,000 to charity. As your career progresses you may be able to afford the $40,000 car and give $20,000 to charity. It really boils down to contentment versus the 'rat race'. Have you ever known anyone competing in the 'rat race' to really be happy? I haven't.

I think the above principle is valid, but the specific application will vary from individual to individual. The next problem is what to do about building a nest egg in case you need it in the future? That is perfectly fine providing one accepts literally what the purpose of a nest egg is. It is okay to say one is not going to give every excess to the poor and not put some in a nest egg for health emergencies etc. in the future. BUT, the intent can't switch down the road. That is, when one dies that entire nest egg goes to charity, not to your kids or relatives etc. NOWHERE, in any religion of which I am aware, is it written that your obligation is not to those in need but to pass on wealth to your kids. The same principle applies: others mean as much as your own kids. If one thinks God finds their family a special favorite of God, this to me, is simply irrational and self serving. I cannot imagine on what basis God would single out ME and designate me special for any reason. This would really be a stretch and some sort or crazy perception on my part, or anyone else's part who would think that way about themselves.

We all know what invariably happens with these nest eggs. As the parent gets older the siblings all start considering how much of that nest egg they might get. I thought the American way for for individuals was to earn their own way in life, if they have the ability to do so. Of course if one of your children is handicapped, retarded or a cripple of some sort, they then become one of those 'others' in need. Most kids are not handicapped. Somehow, we have created a culture in which siblings think they have a right to any nest egg at the end. I have a nest egg, and I generate contentment from it knowing that it will go to those in need at the end. Modern day 'family values' is nothing more than self serving notions about genetic relationships, an excuse to let those in real need be left to suffer. More families end up not speaking to each other over inheritance matters than probably any other aspect of family life. GREED, writ large, shows---writ large---it's ugly head in these cases. The world is full of people who inherit large sums of money and then act like they 'earned it'. The wealth that one is fortunate enough, for whatever reason, to accumulate during one's life must, via the Golden Rule, be put back into the society from which it came.

At any rate, there are moral consequences here on earth, and they relate to our degree of contentment. One can be expansive in their outlook towards others or one can circle the wagons, and live their lives as one long 'us vs them', the us being some sort of genetic cabal. And many actually believe God, whatever they envision Him to be, is going to reward them for such behavior. That seems a stretch to me. To paraphrase Lincoln, "Let us have faith that doing right generates contentment, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."

Patriotism

2010-11-19T06:54:00.000-08:00

Patriotism

I have never considered criticism to be lack of patriotism. Neither do right wing religious groups---for they criticize the loudest with the usual threats of hell, jail, or denial of human rights for their opposition. Then they charge anyone who refuses to cheer on their beliefs as being unpatriotic. Interesting. James Baldwin had it right: "I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."

If "my country, right or wrong" is a requirement for patriotism than I am not much of a patriot. If believing my country has a special connection with God, then I am not much of a patriot. If believing God is on our side is a requirement for patriotism then I am not much of a patriot. If believing God gave America some sort of "manifest destiny' is a requirement for patriotism than I am not much of a patriot. I did not choose this country. Rather, I was lucky enough to be born and raised here. It is nothing I earned. I don't really view world politics as a contest to do God's will. I doubt God needs us to accomplish His will. Why we flatter ourselves with these notions escapes my credibility. My own belief is that God created the evolutionary process, a process which proceeds according to evolutionary laws and these laws run the show. All the praying in the world doesn't seem to ever alter any of these laws or the consequences of these laws.

I have an allegiance to my country much as I develop an allegiance to my parents or friends or any other entity of which I am voluntarily a part. The most admirable allegiance is to moral principles, in particular the Golden Rule. This ancient rule has permeated every moral system everywhere simply because it is an inherent quality of human thought. One has no need to argue the morality of the Golden Rule because it is logically self evident. It is indeed safe to judge most every hap-pence on the Golden Rule. It is not hard to admire and support those people and those countries which adhere closest to the Golden Rule. I would like my own country to be a leader in this regard. I would like my own behavior to be driven by the Golden Rule as the measure of right vs wrong.

This country has risen to be a powerful and successful country not so much because "we earned it", but because all the ingredients needed to be successful were right before us. Many of those who first populated our country did so because they were seeking more freedom and more justice, and they incorporated these desires into a Constitution. Not a perfect constitution but a good start, one which pointed us in the right direction. Early on white landowners had more rights than others---with time other groups began to get 'equal' rights and even today there are groups still seeking 'equal' rights.

I think patriotism is best applied to the Golden Rule. Duty towards one's country implies supporting those policies which enable your own country to adhere to the Golden Rule.

NEVER

2010-11-19T06:47:00.000-08:00

NEVER:

Never side with the greedy over those who would share

Never side with those who never know when enough is as good as a feast

Never side with Deceit over the Truth

Never side with the Cruel Over the Kind

Never side with injustice over justice

Never side with religious intolerance

Never side with any religion, any race, any country, any culture, any form of government, any ritual, any dogma over the Golden Rule

Never side with those who would make war for national pride, economic gain, religious intolerance, territorial gain, or political theory----in the end it is really about greed and intolerance.

Never side with the rich over the poor

Never support any policy which allows the wealthy to sequester wealth along genetic lines via tax loop holes, tax breaks, inheritance, tax shelters, and any other such legal thievery. In any just society each person is expected to earn their own way, and in the end to return such wealth extracted from society back into the society from which it came.

Never support any policy which enables the affluent to abuse workers via unlivable wages, poor schools, poor health care, poor pensions, poor vacation days, poor working conditions.

Never support the right of anyone anywhere to purchase goods made by slave labor.

Never support any law or any practice which pollutes or degrades the environment upon which all species depend for existence.

Never treat opinion as fact, either your own or someone else's.

Never accept inherited religion as the basis for your ethical behavior. Never create a God in your own image, never assume you or humans in general are the end point of God's created evolutionary process

Never chase wealth as the basis of contentment or you will be disappointed. Modest wealth is enough. It is as good as a feast.

Never view romantic love or friendship as a permanent state of mind. Times change, people change, circumstances change---interactions between people will always be in a state of flux with time. What tends to last, does; what does not is not binding on any of the parties. Live and let live is the duty which we all have toward relationships.

Never take for granted health, friendship, or Mother Nature. Each requires protection, foresight, and an active ongoing analysis.

Never leave no time for contemplation. A mind cluttered with daily 'noise' is a mind preoccupied with inconsequential and useless matters that breed unhappiness and discontent.

Never disrespect other species. They are our past, our forbearers, the link between the present and the past, while the basis for the future.

Never sweat the small stuff, in the end it is all small stuff.

THE AGONY OF WEALTH

2010-10-26T06:41:00.000-07:00

The Agony of Wealth

If anyone perceives happiness to be gained via pursing wealth as the highest priority in life, well----they ought to read the book titled 740 Park. This is a condominium building in New York City considered the world's richest apartment building. If you live there you have attained the perfect statement as to your wealth status. It been the richest apartment building for 75 years and the author traces the lives of those who have lived there since it's conception.

Wealth and happiness have always been tied together as if the latter follows from the former. The most recent studies indicate this is true, at least in America, up until around $75,000 per year income. After that the relationship is lost. What is gained is once again a reminder that, as with most things, enough is as good as a feast. Where God's evolutionary process is taking life on this planet is beyond human comprehension. It is necessary, for proper perspective, to understand human limitations. The human species not likely, it is best to remind ourselves, the end point of this evolutionary process. There is no reason, based on any logic, that we are made in God's image, that we are even a favorite or 'special' species, and any life after death seems useless speculation. After all, we can't even comprehend the existence of life on this planet let alone any life after life on the planet. Whether it be God or whatever came first, something had to have come from nothing. So clearly even our concept of nothing is flawed. And so it goes, with so much beyond human mental capabilities at this point in time. It would be presumptuous for us to even postulate that the human species is the end point in evolution. We need to accept that WE GO, TIME STAYS.

Of course in the meantime we are left to muddle through, as best we can, how to make our lives as contented as possible. Just amassing wealth is clearly an illusion as a path to happiness. Does that mean no wealthy people are happy? Not any more than there are no poor people who are happy. First of all, the zippidy doo dah stuff is relative. Humans are diverse enough via genetics and environment that any mixture of variables to generate happiness is going to vary. It might, I suppose, be true, that if I could be an accomplished and famous athlete, this would make me happy. BUT, there are many accomplished and famous athletes who are not happy. And so we can go down an endless list of things which might produce some happiness but it is always some sort of MIGHT. And furthermore, I might best remember that no amount of effort or training is going to make ME an accomplished and famous athlete. Accepting what cannot be changed is part of happiness.

For this musing, wealth is the variable under scrutiny. The people who lived, or now live, in 740 Park are wealthy. The end point has been reached. Some simply inherited a lot of wealth, and some started from scratch. No matter, if one likes stress, divorce, family discord, anger, distrust, materialism, jealousy, envy, surface glitter, isolation, and compulsive disorders, then wealth, as the priority in life, is perfect. You will invariably have it up to your neck and then painfully, but too late, die an emotionally painful and lonely death just like most people do. Outside of sudden death, most people die alone---dying is very much an internal personal sort of journey.

It clearly is hard to have genuine positive meaningful relationships when money is at stake. Image over substance, materialism over contentedness, and compulsive disdain for others along the way is almost unavoidable. What is nice about the pursuit of wealth, I guess, is that your progress is quantitatively measurable, just like growing bigger as a child.

Of course, one usually needs a certain amount of wealth to be contented or happy. We probably have more people today on our planet than ever before who have literally no wealth to speak of. They own no land, they have no job, they have no health care, they have no physical security, they have little food, clean water, etc. This of course is matched by those who have every imaginable kind of wealth. It is the best of all possible worlds, it is the worst of all possible worlds. And most people are somewhere in between. Unfortunately, the reality is that no longer are there enough natural resources on our planet to enable everyone to live the kind of affluent life many of us live. That is human overpopulation. To deny this observation is simply delusion writ large.

Life is full of delusions. That wealth can bring contentedness is one of them. 740 Park demonstrates this. Fairness is another delusion. Genetics and environment create a playing field that is not level. Neither of these two factors did anyone EARN. "I earned it" is always to some degree delusional. We are mostly fortunate. Evolution is less about earning anything and more about chance, diversity, and survival of the fittest. IF God wished a perfect planet he would have created a perfect planet. Perhaps for God to achieve a perfect planet the evolutionary process of chance, diversity, and survival of the fittest is needed. For evolution to be GOOD writ large does not mean necessarily that any of us as individuals are any end point by any measure of fairness, ability, or happiness. For God to be individually involved in any of our lives would be contrary to His own laws of evolution. Does he ever get involved? Well, there is certainly no evidence that he does very often or with any degree of consistency. That God helps those who inherit particular religious dogma is quite a stretch. Whatever God is, I just can't reduce Him to this level of irrationality. There is far too much of "there but for the grace of God goes I". When a particular sperm meets a particular egg, this is not likely a planned event by God, but exactly the kind of chance that drives God's evolutionary process. Self serving ego is what drives humans to create sectarian religious dogma, and the more self centered one is, the more fundamentalist of some sort one becomes. Anything then done in the name of God becomes, by default, a trip to Heaven of some sort. And mercy be to those whose sectarian religious dogma does not match a majority. Get out the body bags. Onward religious soldiers.

But all that be as it may, back to wealth as the road to contentment. We have almost a childlike conception of wealth---- that wealth means we lounge around in luxury, with every want at our command, waddling in materialistic comforts, traveling to exotic places, hob nobbing with important people. It is nothing like that. I was a live-in chauffeur many years ago, and later professionally had the good or bad luck to often be in the company of people with wealth. To get or stay wealthy money has to be a priority in your life---there are precious few exceptions to this. This priority requires extraordinary effort and stress. The stakes are always high, the risks nerve wracking, and time ever precious. But of course one has servants or hired help if you prefer that word. Sure, but they need training, supervision, and too often will be caught dipping their hand to help themselves for some sort of your treasures, minor or major. All friendships become suspect---almost everyone would like to be close to someone of real wealth. Your wealth gives your access to beauty and sex with the sexy, access to charming people, and romantic environments. But when the charm wears off, there is always something new on the horizon. And alas, your spouse is well aware if they tire of you, a good portion of your wealth goes out the door with them. Leisure time is precious, scheduled as can best be fitted in with all your other responsibilities. Economic empires require a lot of maintenance and protection. Wealthy people spend a lot of time trying to prevent others from taking advantage of them. With anything desired available on demand most any moment, compulsive behavior of some sort inevitably sets in. It could be sex, drugs, more money, power, publicity, eating, drinking----whatever, compulsive behavior of some sort will almost surely come. Many wealthy people end up walling themselves off from most others, seek seclusion of some sort, spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with issues regarding children from a different marriage, some get convictions for improper business dealings, lawsuits involving business or personal affairs are common, and after a while, a wealthy person invariably feels cheated---real contentment with life is evasive. There are exceptions but I don't think that many.

What I noticed most about most wealthy people is just how boring they really are. Conversations are stilted, cautious, strained with attempted witticisms, and time in their presence seems to go so slowly. There is little relaxing in any gathering with the economically or socially elite. It is almost all show, each person absorbed with their own performance---real interaction is virtually nonexistent. To me, it was always a total waste of my time, an inconvenience, like a role in a play---acting, image projecting, hah hah witticisms, and most of the time 'something' is at stake for the gathering---- and whatever that something is, there will be winners and losers. Much of it has to do with reputation, this misdirected belief that others view you as something other than an object of some sort in a chess game. If 'get a life' has it's intended meaning than the wealthy need get one. Reality and genuineness is mostly missing.

If life is a soap opera, then the lives of the wealthy are full of life----tormented actors chasing anything that glitters. If wealth were really some kind of heaven on earth then why, among the wealthy, are the percentages of suicides, divorces, law suits, criminal convictions, drug use, family battles, loneliness, gambling problems, sex compulsions, mental disorders, etc. so high compared to the non wealthy? When most of us think of wealth we rarely think of all these companions to wealth.

I would like to tour 740 Park. I enjoyed reading about the tormented lives of so many who have lived there. Frankly, I think one of my biggest blessings is my father making clear after 18 yrs of age I was on my own. Period. My living standard progressed from a dorm room, a rented room in people's homes, a room in a mansion as a live in chauffeur, a rented apartment, a rented home, a owned home, and then a owned condo. To further my 'life education' I lived in rural areas, urban areas, and suburban areas. As a former high school and university teacher I have come in contact with about every sort of personality and every kind of ethnic background/culture. Learning to appreciate diversity, developing a sense of compassion for the less fortunate, and the chance to experience every economic status from being relatively poor to relatively affluent has been, in my own mind, a healthy rewarding progression. Having seen and lived life from so many sides has given me a more philosophical and more accepting perception of life. Such a perception contributes more to my own personal contentment than any other aspect of my life. Life is not purposeless at all, God's evolutionary process and the laws that drive it, go on quite nicely. I suppose it would be even better if the purpose of life revolved more around me personally, or at least those of similar ilk, but it does not. God's evolutionary process is filled with endless personal and national tragedies AND, even more so, with endless personal and national triumphs. The notion that God is toying with us on a personal basis, judging us by our inherited religious dogma and rituals seems rather farfetched to me. The dice have rolled my way often enough, so I feel a real sense of gratitude for the good luck and have learned to accept the Golden Rule as the inherent basis of all ethics. Contentment, the kind that is not fleeting, comes from accepting that the less fortunate count as much as the more fortunate. Thus, for every penny spent on one's own needs past the basics, another penny must be contributed to the less fortunate. The inherent nature of human ethics (the Golden Rule) is such that real contentment follows from duty done. Contentment is, after all is said and done, the reward right here and now for performed ethical duty. Ethics is relatively new in species characteristics and can be expected to become more entrenched and polished over evolutionary time. Even in the short evolutionary period of human life, progress in ethical standards and behavior have improved. Not in any straight steady graph, but in fits and spurts. Gone (in varying degrees) are the religious Inquisitions, witchcraft, slavery (now being reintroduced in a new form), child labor, and progress with women's rights, ethnic rights, legal rights, and we witness now progress with gay rights, protection of natural resources, etc. The biggest failure right now is total inability to engage in responsible reproduction. This failure could lead to one of evolution's cataclysmic upheavals . But no matter, with every evolutionary corrective upheaval eventually comes progress. So one way or the other, planetary progress will come---eventually. For now, as individuals, we all have been dealt our cards, we play them the best we can and if we respect diversity, count others as important as ourselves, then contentment will follow, like day follows night. Of course ME FIRST, others should follow.

HAPPINESS INSIGHTS

2010-10-21T05:54:00.000-07:00

Happiness Insights

Happiness is a difficult concept wrapped in semantics. I prefer the word contentment as the goal in life. A rabid sports fan has frequent moments of happiness whenever his/her team wins, BUT may be relatively discontented with his/her life. I reckon happiness generated purely by events outside one's own sphere of influence cannot possibly generate contentment in one's life. That is probably why inherited wealth has so little impact on a person's happiness.

I recently read an interesting book by Eric Weiner who spent a decade as a foreign correspondent for NPR. The title of the book is The Geography of Bliss. The author has made the study of happiness as kind of a hobby and is familiar with the many studies on what makes people happy. How to accurately measure happiness is no clear measure; but no matter the method used, the people in some countries appear happier than others. On most of these studies the U.S. comes in somewhere between 20 and 30 on the list. I mean wow. Not all that good. This is a difficult and strange period in American history. We are used to being #1 in most all important matters and an example for others to follow. Somehow, about the only thing we are number one is in the production of weapons of mass destruction, military bases all over the globe, invasions of other sovereign countries, the biggest debtor nation, and more deaths to people from war. We no longer lead in education, in protecting the environment, in mass transportation, in health care for it's citizens, etc. To top all this off, for decades now no industrialized nation has steered more of its wealth into the hands of so few as in this country. This is, of course, worrisome.

Regarding happiness, two aspects of this topic interest me: what factors contribute to a person's happiness and what factors contribute to people in an entire country being happier on average than citizens in other countries. The author visited some of these countries where people are purported to be the happiest and one of the countries purported to be one of the unhappiest. He combined his observations with the various studies on happiness and I think did an excellent job. None of the numbered factors which follows are a product of my own research or observations on the topic. The list below might be helpful on two counts. First to understand why some countries have a happier population than others, and second, to see what factors each of us might need to focus on to improve our own personal happiness. As I said before I prefer the word contentment, but will stick here with the word the author used. All the statements below mean on the average. Obviously all people in any country are not at the same happiness level.

1. Extroverts are happier then introverts.

2. Optimists are happier than pessimists

3. Married people are happier than single people. This stat may be misleading. For example unhealthy people, unattractive people, people with mental disorders etc are less likely to marry and be unhappy single for reasons having nothing to do with being single.

4. Couples with children and couples without children score about the same

5. Republicans are happier than Democrats, maybe because liberals tend to feel the pain of others more than conservatives. Conservatives would deny this vigorously.

6. People with college degrees are happier than those without. I suspect people with college degrees are better able to improve their lives and feel more needed on their job.

7. People who attend religious services are happier on average than those who do not.

8. Homogenous countries are happier than diverse societies. Less friction I guess.

9. The gap between the rich and the poor does not always reflect the average happiness of the citizens.

10. Many of the happiest countries have the highest suicide rate. Maybe when so many are happy and you are not it hurts more.

11. Extreme poverty produces unhappiness. On the other hand, a recent study in the United States showed that after $75,000 the happiness level is not related to income.

12. Democracy doesn't promote happiness but the happiest countries are more likely to be democratic.

13. Most of the world is happy.

14. Socialistic countries tend to be the happiest. Perhaps the less stress associated with health insurance, jobs, enough vacation days, education, transportation, etc. contribute to the lower stress levels and more happiness.

15. Tolerance of others generates happiness. For example, in many of the happiest countries soft recreational drugs are legal and so is prostitution. Live and let live affects happiness levels in a country

16. Cleanliness generates happiness. Cleanliness refers to public places including mass transportation, etc.

17. Good public transportation promotes happiness

18. Absence of envy promotes happiness. The whole advertising industry is built around creating envy. In a country like Switzerland people try to hide their wealth, in American the wealthy tend to flaunt it.

19. People who don't swing between great emotional highs and lows are happier.

20. Firm just rules which make a society functional promotes happiness

21. Love of nature promotes happiness

22. "brophilia", the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms promotes happiness

23. Natural settings promote happiness. People with window views of nature are happier than those without such views.

24. Countries where people can control their own dying process, including suicide, are happier. Probably a lot of people fear loss of control over their own dying process more than death.

25.Meaningful work promotes happiness

26. Friendly family ties promotes happiness

27. Trust promotes happiness

28. Happiness is related to the number of people you know within a 15 minute walk of your house.

29. A certain amount of boredom appears related to happiness

30. Affluence breeds impatience and impatience undermines happiness

31. Feeling you would rather live somewhere else undermines happiness.

32. Attentive people are happier people.

33. Low crime rate increase the level of happiness in a country

34. More monks than soldiers creates a happier country

35. Realistic expectations promotes happiness

36. Compassion contributes to being happy

37. A good imagination contributes to happiness

38. Coming to Terms with mortality contributes to happiness

39. Economic advantage not predominating over doing the right thing contributes to happiness

40. talking a lot about happiness reduces happiness level

41. wealth does not bring happiness. Americans are 3X wealthier than 50 years ago and are no more happy.

42. Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross national Product.

43. Knowing when enough is enough promotes happiness. Rich societies fail here.

44. Not feeling every activity must be productive contributes to happiness

45. Extensive traveling does not promote happiness

46. The ability to compromise promotes happiness

47. As evidence that wealth alone does not promote happiness 90% of Bhutanese who study abroad return to Bhutan to live---a country where citizens earn about 100 times less than Americans.

48. People who value protecting nature are happier.

49. Good health promotes happiness

50. Connecting with people and issues larger than ourselves promotes happiness

51. Seeing nature as an evolutionary process in which our parentage is infinite promotes happiness

52. a rich cultural history promotes happiness

53. Positive relationships with others promotes happiness

54. A certain amount of creative turbulence promotes happiness

55. The happiest countries are not worked up about sectarian religious dogma---instead they believe in 6 week vacations, human rights, democracy, lazy afternoon's, casual dress, etc.

56. Lottery winners return to their same level of happiness as before.

57. Good luck promotes happiness via place of birth, physical attributes, quality of schools attending etc.

58. Craving for something is not the same as getting pleasure from it once attained. There are little neural connections between parts of the brain that control wanting and parts of the brain that control liking.

59. People who are busy are happier than those who are not busy.

60. The opportunity for social mobility promotes happiness

61. Colder climates tend to increases level of happiness

62. Being cooperative increases happiness

63. moderate and responsible use of recreational drugs increases happiness

64. Unemployment reduces happiness more than high inflation.

65. Creativity increases happiness

66. Mastering language increases happiness

67. Lack of envy increases happiness

68. Some self delusion promotes happiness

69. Believing in something promotes happiness

70. Countries which accentuate communal harmony are happier than individualistic countries.

71. Countries filled with learned helplessness are among the unhappiest

72. Countries with little pride are the unhappiest

73. Countries with the attitude of "not my problem" are among the unhappiest

74. Countries where a lot of people get pleasure from other's misfortune are among the unhappiest countries

75. Countries saturated with passivity for survival are among the unhappiest.

76. A feeling of being useful promotes happiness

77. cell phone addiction promotes unhappiness

78. For happiness it is better to be a small fish in a clean pond than a big fish in a polluted lake.

79. Cultures that reward meanspiritedness and deceit promote unhappiness

80. Cultures which promote carnal pleasures the most are not among the happiest countries

81. Cultures which don't take things too seriously promote happiness

82. Cultures which believe in reincarnation promote happiness via a belief that life will be better in the next life.

83. Realizing what things you cannot change makes life less heavy and promotes happiness

84. Accepting that one is born in a world of suffering, so suffer and hold your peace---this may relieve some of the pain but does not promote happiness

85. Countries where wealth is heavily taxed are happier

86. Pet owners are happier than non pet owners

87. Stopping a tooth ache is not a path to happiness, that is, the absence of pain is not happiness

88. People who volunteer are happier than those who don't

89. For some, unpredictability promotes happiness

90. People who leave room for imperfection are happier than those who don't.

91. People are happiest in youth and old age.

92. Calcutta's destitute are happier than the destitute in California. Perhaps this is because in India being poor is fate, maybe bad karma from a previous life, whereas in California it is personal failure.

93. People filled with gratitude for their blessings are happier than those not so inclined.

94. Livable wages promote happiness.

I was able to pull out almost 100 factors which are purported to affect happiness levels on a personal or national basis. All of this is fine and interesting but what meaningfulness is to be gained from knowing all this? I suppose, if one is unhappy with their life they could make some selected changes.

What does the author have to say about the happiness position of the U.S.? On happiness studies in varied countries, the U.S. always falls somewhere between 20-30. For the richest country in the world this seems odd. After all, we are 3 times richer per person than in 1950. I guess we should be off the scale with happiness. Some things are troubling. Since 1960 the divorce rate has doubled, teen suicide tripled, violent crime rate has quadrupled. Compared with the happier countries, the U.S. workers work longer hours and commute farther than in any other country. Since 1960 Americans spend less time with family and friends and belong to fewer community groups. Loneliness is solved by the internet. 8/10 Americans think about happiness at least once a week----some sort of feeling what is missing in their lives/ To meet these widespread feelings America has the largest self help industry in the world. Compared to the past, Americans move a lot, are almost gypsy like. In the past people grew where they were planted.

TO ME it seems a lot of our current mindset reflects our past. Our country's past is filled with unlimited opportunities, violence, individualism, and there was always the frontier for those dissatisfied----you could just pick up and start over. That is gone now and yet we still feel the individualism, the use of violence and war to solve conflict, a commitment to unregulated capitalism, and have rejected high income and inheritance taxes on the wealthy. With 1-5% of our population now holding 90% of our wealth we are feeling the consequences, but with all that concentrated wealth comes the power to indoctrinate and manipulate voters via effective and professional propaganda to control all three branches of our government. History has shown that most 'empires' collapsed for two reasons: a foreign 'empire' of some sort that was too expensive to manage or control (military bases and wars) and an implosion from within as far too much of the wealth became concentrated in the hands of too few. Perhaps our fate is no different.

Of course God's created evolutionary process is not focused on happiness but progression from simple to more complex. It is hard to view evolutionary history and not feel we are at the precipice of a major tumultuous event. In my own mind there are 4 factors which are bringing such an tumultuous event upon us. Human overpopulation (defined as more people existing than there are natural resources for the kind of life many of us live); a rapidly increasing disproportionate accumulation of wealth into the hands of a few: a transformation to a global economy with no global minimum wages; and a rapid depletion of natural resources including arable land, water, species extinction---matched by air, land, and water pollution. I suppose one could add to this the rise of terrorism and decline of battles involving national armies. IF the aforementioned are in fact the reality, then economic recovery is not possible. Implementation of responsible reproduction seems beyond even mild debate, evvironmental protection impossible without it, and not something which people are remotely willing to face.Terrorism is something which is currently feared from people in other countries, the rebels outside the control of our own 'empire' who insanely, logically, or otherwise want American military or American corporate control of their economy out of their country. But the terrorism most to be feared will be that from within as more and more citizens are left with less and less. As we should have learned from Vietnam, Iraq, Somalia, now Afghanistan, and all of history, the have-nots always win in crunch time and especially so when the have-nots comprise a large share of a domestic population. Sharing wealth and responsible reproduction may be something which goes against the grain of human nature, and perhaps beyond human capability at this point in God's evolutionary process, but if so----it tis' a shame since a society's survival depends on such restriction on greed. There have been more changes, many for the good, in my lifetime than any other lifetime in human history. In the end perhaps greed, the inability to understand when enough is as good as a feast, reproductive responsibility, and the necessity of following the Golden Rule for progress to continue----perhaps therein lies some sort of human Waterloo at this point in evolutionary history. Whatever, what is for certain is that WE ALL, AS INDIVIDUALS---GO, TIME STAYS.

SAY GOODBY

2010-09-14T22:47:00.000-07:00

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.

Sentiments at 70

2010-09-12T07:40:00.000-07:00

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.

To Make The Planet Better

2010-09-05T07:54:00.000-07:00

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).

Ten Most Disgraceful American Actions

2010-07-26T07:02:00.000-07:00

The !0 Most Disgraceful American Actions

I am not one to be much of a purist when it comes to religion or politics. These are human endeavors and as such depend on culture, location, history, leadership, and luck. I tend to look with disdain on religious fervor and blind patriotism. If you 'love' your country you openly and steadfastly criticize bad policies. It is precisely because you are biased toward your own country that you defend her when right and criticize her when wrong. You don't support bad politics at home or soldiers in a bad war abroad. If a war is bad the only proper support for your troops is to demand they be brought home out of harm's way. If you believe deeply in God then reasoned ethics always trumps inherited sectarian dogma. The United States is a little over 200 years old, a mere blip in the history of human civilization. I think America has contributed more to the most rapid change in human lifestyles, behaviors, and mechanized living than any country in human history. Just in my lifetime changes in living standards, human behavior, human rights, and healthy living has been absolutely amazing. It is truly and, ironically true, that these are the best of times and the worst of times. What a grand party for me the times I have lived in have been!!!!!!! Yet, from all directions the ominous signs are everywhere that this may well be one of those "turn out the lights, the party's over" points in evolution. Human overpopulation and all the subsequent consequences are descending on us from all sides. For us to truly accept this is simply horrific to ingest. If one is my age you shrug, "whatever will be will be". Evolution goes on, in what form, under what conditions, and with what species is beyond human prediction. IF God created the evolutionary process and all the laws which control the process THEN God Himself, short personal intervention, doesn't know the future either. After all, the evolutionary process is controlled by chance, environment, and survival of the fittest. Of course God is personally involved with the welfare of you and I in this process. Well, maybe not you. This is our favorite delusion.

At any rate, the accomplishments of America the last 200 years are many and noteworthy. But it takes blind arrogance and patriotism to defend all American actions. I have witnessed and experienced some really good acts by America in my lifetime AND I have also witnessed some pretty sad and shameful acts. Here I am listing the top 10 most disgraceful actions by my country in my lifetime. There is no order to the list.

1. The Vietnam War----I am not sure for what reason any country is justified in killing 2 million citizens of another country or sacrifice 40,000 young people of it's own to accomplish such a slaughter. But this is exactly what we did for no other reason than we didn't like Communism. But the shame doesn't stop with government. Neither do I understand how any American, including myself, could ever have endorsed that war. I was a graduate student at the time, certainly 'educated' enough to see the immorality of that war. But Barry Goldwater didn't and I didn't and neither did a vast majority of Americans. It was bombs away while we proudly pulverized the poor little country with bombs and chemicals. Both Barry and I, and most Americans eventually, in varying degrees, came to see that war as wrong, but the mystery is, how did we ever see it as right? It was patriotism, pure damn mindless patriotism. Support the troops, send more, cheer them on, kill all the ignorant backward natives. I now find it mind boggling that I was an accomplice to such an affair, maybe much the same as Germans felt when they were accomplices to killing 2 million Jews.

It was heartening to recently read that 35 years after the end of the war, which the Vietnamese won, that the Vietnamese people are optimistic about their future. In fact, their optimism exceeds by far the optimism of Americans. They have a single party Communist government. I could never be a Communist but I also feel every nation is free to adopt it's own form of government. Success or failure of any political system is probably as related to the kind of leaders in the system as to the system itself. Before retirement I always appreciated bosses who let me achieve goals my way, not somebody else's way. The best boss was someone who would tell others with notions of how I should run something, "Let him do it his way. I don't understand half of the ways he utilizes, but he gets results. Let him be." And I feel the same way about other countries and other people. Live and let live. Back to Vietnam: In a recent poll of it's citizens 85% said their economy was stronger than 5 years ago. 81% said the country was moving in the right direction. You don't get those kind of results polling Americans. Maybe we should bomb them again for living their way instead of our way, and punish them for their optimism. Vietnam and Terrell Owens used the same tactic to achieve success----one from centuries of being ruled by foreigners and one from the oppression of ghetto life. I am highly pleased both succeeded against such odds.

2. The Domestic and International War on Drugs.---This misguided and cruel approach to misuse of recreational drugs is beyond the pale. The federal government spends $17 billion per year directly from it's budget. If you add state expenditures, the costs per year of keeping 22%-33% of our prisoners in jail for drug convictions, the welfare costs of disrupted families, the social service costs of dysfunctional families living in the midst of this Drug War, the foreign aid to countries for the express purpose of fighting drug production, and the cost of the police and correctional officers to find, prosecute, and keep jailed drug abusers----well, you are well over 100 billion per year. And exactly what have been the benefits? Is this country, compared for example, to European countries, free from abuse of recreational drugs? The answer continues to be no. We have a slightly less percentage of people using marijuana and a substantial higher percentage of alcoholics. The other drugs are about the same. Every serious commission to have ever studied the problem have all recommended decriminalization of recreational drug use and treatment for those with a problem. In our country, to our shame, if you are affluent the problem is treated as a medical problem; if you are poor you are treated as a criminal and jailed. There are few exceptions to this. People abuse recreational drugs because they have mental, emotional, social, or stress problems of some sort. In all cases the person is trying to change the way they feel. That hardly makes them criminals in the common use of the term---it makes them in need of help with their lives. Let's be honest. We don't have the money to spend the same amount of money to educate all children, we don't have money for all people to have good health care, we don't have money to finance modern transportation systems, etc. BECAUSE we spend our money on Wars abroad and the War on Drugs at home. It is just shameful. And why does this police War on Drugs still exist? It is the favorite scare tactic of politicians. The longer a politician vows to lock up drug users and pushers, the more votes they get. Even worse, we spend so much money on this Drug War and Foreign Wars, including hundreds of military bases across the globe (the only country that feels a need to do this), that if we stopped this on a dime, our entire economy would collapse. We are not all that competitive anymore in producing very many things except military hardware and police/soldiers. When politicians say we can't afford to protect the environment or clean up pollution they are right if we insist on giving the priority to military and drug war adventures.

3. The accumulation of 90% of the wealth in this country into the hands of 3-5% of our population----This is less a criticism of democracy as it is lack of democracy. Lobbyist's have taken control over all three branches of government. Obama is probably a rare success story of the people---and this might not last long. The lobbyists, especially the corporate lobbyists, where the big money really is, will sponsor their own people's 'party' with Sarah Palin and other such Bush-like puppets to pose as people's candidates. The weakness in democracy today is that the issues are very complex, past the pay grade of most of us on most issues, and the techniques of propaganda so refined and so effective that the worst of anything can be made to look like the best. In many elections less than half the people eligible to vote actually vote. Obama got through to the people once and got enough to vote, but this may have been a one shot phenomenon. No society in history has ever survived our current one sided distribution of wealth. Between lopsided distribution of wealth and expensive foreign 'empires' of one sort or another, many strong empires have collapsed. What is happening to the 'little people' in our country is cruel, and happening all in the name of monetary greed on the part of those of us more affluent.

4. The unequal expenditure of money to educate all children. The kind of environment and schools many of our urban, rural, and suburban kids attend are an absolute disgrace. Some of it has been produced by the notorious War on Drugs, but there are other reasons too. More and more countries are now out performing our own kids on standardized tests, but we, as usual, don't budge. To give all kids an equal and quality education is considered a form of socialism. All we have to do is holler communism, socialism, private enterprise, family values, and other such tripe, and it often kills the best of policies. Where I grew up all kids went to the same schools and all the schools were staffed with good teachers. Even then it was difficult for kids from poor neighborhoods to compete. Now it is simply hopeless with precious few exceptions. Most of the affluent today would never consider being anywheres near an urban or rural ghetto let alone send their kids to one of their schools. There can only be one ethical stance on education: every child has the right to have the same amount of public money spent on his/her education. When I grew up the poorest of the poor lived a few blocks from downtown where we all shopped. All the poorest children were right in the same schools as the rest of us. It never entered our minds that we might go to school and be shot. You could leave your house with your friends and your mother merely reminded you to be home by supper time. We even hitch-hiked sometimes to get from here to there. We learned to organize our own games, we were often so bored that we were forced to be creative. We had no computers to amuse us, we had to spend our youth figuring out how to tolerate and get along with others. There was no exaggerated 'family values' mentality to force us to circle the wagon around out own families and wall ourselves off from others. A lot of us laugh at Hilliary and her 'it takes a village to raise a child' but back then it really did. Today it probably still does, but the 'Village' often no longer exists.

5. Reproductive Irresponsibility

This is not unique to the United States. Overpopulation has always been a potential problem for certain species in God's created evolutionary process. It sometimes happens, it is dealt with, the correction imposed by the laws of evolution are harsh, and depending on the intelligence of the affected species, cruel. Humans have the abstract intelligence to practice, or at least enforce, responsible reproduction. Some use their innate intelligence to practice it, but the vast majority do not. Often via encouragement from religious dogma, many insist they they have the right to procreate as often as they want whenever they want. It is not the kind of sexual acts engaged in by consenting adults which needs ethical attention, but the procreative lifestyle. It is not life in any form or fashion which need be the ethical focus, but the quality of life.

Overpopulation needs to be defined in terms of whether there are enough natural resources available for all humans to live an affluent life. Affluent meaning food, shelter, arable land, health care, clean water, absence of pollution, good schools, modern transportation, etc. There are valid reasons not to get pregnant, to limit the number of children via birth control, to have an abortion, to not turn one's back on any young offspring. The need for population control may vary from one region to another but the reasons dictating such a need are the same everywhere. The goal is self evident---for every child to have the opportunity for a quality life. Any idiot with functioning sexual organs and sex drive can generate children. To function in this manner is not any imagined right, but an ethical shortcoming. Family planning is not really a choice but an obligation.

God's evolutionary process has given us the potential for a wonderful, unique, natural and good life. But it has to be properly cherished and protected. To practice responsible reproduction, by choice or law, is necessary for all to have their freedom, for all to have happiness, for all to 'feel the sun and smell the flowers and look upon each other with appreciation'.

If anything is logically clear today it is that there are no longer enough natural resources for all humans on our globe to live the kind of affluent life many of us live. In terms of raw numbers, never in the history of human existence, have there been so many humans living lives of abject misery and poverty. It is an absolute disgrace to human potential. Mother nature is about to deal with this. We have spread over the globe like locusts, devouring everything in sight. The correction will not be pretty, mild, or the future consequences predictable. If history is any guide, the evolutionary process will go on, and progress achieved in the long haul. I pity all those caught in the turmoil about to descend upon the human species. Many other species have already been driven to extinction by human activity. I doubt humans will become extinct but it is way past my pay grade to imagine what evolves from humans. There has never been a species yet which has been the end point of evolution. We of course, as is our nature, think we really are the end point and each of us a precious protected favorite of an invented religious deity molded along the lines with which we perceive God.

6. Public Transportation

It seems so disappointing that the country which invented the airplane, the car, the steam engine, all kinds of ships is now second class to many industrialized countries when it comes to public transportation. There is virtually no high speed rail, Amtrak is all but nonexistent, our urban commuter rail system old, dirty, and grungy looking, with the fares high and service poor. I get embarrassed when l see pictures of modern subway stations, modern bus systems, etc. of other countries. When it comes to transportation we are a nation least concerned with quality, with efficiency, with appearance, with providing low cost mass transit for the poor, and with low pollution vehicles. It is not that we lack the technology but our priorities have shifted. Now the splendor is all pretty much in military contraptions of varied sorts. We have smart bombs, smart missiles, all kinds of weapons of mass destruction, massive military ships, planes, tanks, and the more sophisticated and destructive we make all these contraptions, the least good they are to us in modern day conflicts. The U.S. could, if we wanted, have the best, most efficient, most affordable public transportation in the world. But sadly, we just aren't interested.

7. Massive military industrial complex.

For most of our history we avoided conflicts outside North and South America. Our goal was not to get involved in other countries' conflicts, internal or external. But humanitarian reasons goaded us into World War I and World War II. It is always said war is hell but humans have never let that reduce their interest in using war to achieve political, religious, or economic agendas. No reasonable person argues a country should not be capable of defending themselves from external invasions. But we have gone so far overboard with this rationale as to be absolutely absurd. There is no country on the globe whicj remotely thinks they could invade the U.S. and conquer us. We have gone way past considering defense of our country from invading forces and moved to invasive technologies used to invade other sovereign nations. We are the only country which builds military bases all over the globe, and have the dubious distinction of spending more on military matters than all the other major powers combined. What is one to make of this madness and what is driving it? Exactly who appointed us policemen of the world? Who declared us to be the 'decider' of what kind of government or religion other nations have? What ever happened to live and let live? What gives the United States the right, let alone the obligation, to invade other countries in order to side with this or that side of a domestic political or religious internal conflict? We have killed more citizens of more sovereign countries than any other major power on the globe (excluding World War I and World War II and the Balkan War). Add to this the millions of refugees, widows, and orphans and it is no wonder all global polls show America is considered the greatest threat to world peace. With a massive military industrial complex and a voluntary army eager to to do their thing, military conflicts are instigated, if necessary. Violence, as the answer to conflict isn't restricted to foreign battles but permeates domestic conflicts as well. Our answer to domestic security is gun ownership. If we just all buy guns and carry them around in public we will be safe. Better yet build an energy efficient Sherman tank to get us each around in public. We can stonewall this fact, but the truth remains: violence begets violence. We have as much chance turning off violence in Afghanistan or Iraq as we have in our own urban ghettoes. Violence, pushed by overpopulation, has become a mind set, an accepted lifestyle mixed often with religious fervor to sustain it. Obama's mentality of tolerance, sacrifice, and and a very plural "we" is both absolutely right and yet mostly irrelevant to a national mind set firmly entrenched by decades of misguided selfish ways of addressing problems. There is little "WE" in most of the hot button issues.

8. Immigration

Control over a nation's borders and citizenship requirements are every nation's obligation. For decades we have not met these obligations. We have not patrolled or controlled our borders, in part because we are always busy patrolling and trying to control other countries. We have not had much money for basic obligations to our own citizens in quite some time. We also have made no serious attempt to monitor citizenship because we liked the cheap labor and we don't like the government to require citizenship cards or whatever it takes to know who is who. Decades passed and suddenly, like half brained dimwits, we realize illegal citizens are everywhere. Of course it is all THEIR fault for trying to seek a better life for themselves, even if it means working at less than minimum wage. It is like setting out a cookie jar with the lid off in plain view of your kids and then later, in a rage, beating the crap out of them for eating all the cookies when you had said not to eat the cookies unless permission was granted.

Immigration control, at this point in time, requires the borders to be sealed, employment only on proof of citizenship, and citizenship pathways for those already here illegally. It is the only fair way. To punish others by destroying their lives because of our own stupidity and greed is hardly ethical.

9.Government by lobbyists.

Democracy is a tricky word and means different things to different people at different times. Democracy can be a blessing or a useless excuse for mob rule---class wise or religious wise or ethnic wise. 'Majority rules' has that nice sound to it UNLESS you are one of those in some kind of disliked minority. Haiti could have the cleanest elections and elections is which every single person voted and every problem making them poor would still exist. Democracy doesn't correct over population and not enough natural resources to maintain a decent living for all citizens. In this country often less than half the people vote. That makes it a non democracy by definition. George Bush got elected by less than 25% of citizens eligible to vote. Obama got elected by getting more people to vote. Obama will likely get defeated next time because he could not find a quick fix for decades of economic exploitation. Sarahpalinites might get elected, reinstall even worse economic policies than Bush and not only fail to right a tilting cart but overturn the cart completely. I personally doubt the cart can be righted. It is bound to overturn---the question is only how soon, and how much chaos will result.

I am not sure how anyone governs a population which supports military invasions but doesn't want to pay for them, supports conflicts but not if they might be subject to being drafted, insists on tax cuts, wants their own religious values to be the law of the land, is really hesitant about regulating private industries of any sort, wants the latest and most expensive health care known but doesn't want to pay a lot for health care, could care less about education, health care, transportation, wage levels, and housing for the poor as long as they can have a life of material luxury themselves. But the game is up. The rich demand to be even richer but there is little left to extract from the poor, more and more of the middle class are slipping into the ranks of the poor, and this recession therefore is not going to end. Lobbyists for the rich and/or powerful, have control over all three branches of government---indirectly behind the scenes and have the money to literally prey upon the various prejudices of citizens to keep them in line. As long as lobbyists can pit one group against another on hot button issues that are emotional more than rational, their power can be maintained. Guns, abortion, prayers on schools, unregulated free enterprise, drug use penalties, national security, war on terrorism etc are all used as buzz words to demonize anyone attempting to limit the accumulation of wealth in the hands of so few. Money talks and lobbyists have the money.

10. Professional Sports

I am one inclined to believe National Major Professional Sports belong to the people. I think all economic classes of people should be able to afford, and have an opportunity, to attend some games. I think cities, directly or indirectly, should own or control those professional teams who play within their jurisdiction. I think these cities should receive some of the lucrative profits from major sports to help those living in urban areas to have better transportation and education. I also think these corporate monopolies, whoever owns them, should have some of the strictest regulatory mechanisms in place. Having wealthy individuals own the teams in major sports with little or no regulation ensures the people and the cities in which they play get financially fleeced at every stage.

In earlier times the owners were singular in their power. They did as they pleased. Both players, cities, and fans were at their mercy. They could even keep certain ethnic groups from being players. The players eventually wised up, became a collective force and formed a players union. Now the owners and players do as they damn please and the cities and fans are still abused, financially and otherwise. Logic would seem to dictate the fans and cities would become a collective force and form a fans union. But it just never happens.

People complain ad nausea about player salaries, about cities being blackmailed into building teams a new stadium off the tax payers backs, about players moving around so much that each season there is often almost a totally new roster. To pay for out-of-sight salaries ticket prices have gone through the ceiling, corporations buy up a good portion of the tickets, some games can only be watched on cable TV, and all games broadcast are filled with endless commercials in order to help pay the exorbitant salaries at all levels. The media holds up these daffy, sometimes senile, sometimes rich only through inheritance owners, as kind, lovable, wise and honest benevolent caretakers of our national sport teams. Of course the media do, try doing otherwise and see what kind of contracts your employer gets from the league to broadcast games etc.

Like the War on Drugs the public remains intractable on change. Fuss, fuss, fuss, and yet insist nothing change. This is the way it has been, and by golly, this means it is the way it ought to be forever. The players and owners remind us professional sports is a business and the financial bottom line is the King. Both players and owners are powerful enough that they can force the other to meet their demands and the public ends up paying.

Congress has the power to regulate any monopoly, instead they make major sports exempt. What a crock of bullshit. If anything needs strict regulation it is national sports. When any issue gets bargained, the fans, the cities, the players, and the owners should all be at the table and all need agree for any issue to be resolved. Most fans cling to the notion that teams are seeped in teamwork, team spirit, role models for kids. Hardly the case at all. Everything is scripted by the league to project a particular image while the reality is firmly rooted in the financial bottom line for owners and players. These are highly talented athletes and most of them do their very best because their financial status depends on it, PERIOD. The financial gain is so great that talent recognized back in junior high school is often pampered and spoiled from that age on. Any player who refuses or is emotionally incapable of following the prescribed script is crucified by the media and league. Criminal behavior of most sorts is tolerated, forgiven, and fostered by the whole atmosphere of protect winning at all costs while at the same time protecting the league created image of sports. Individuality is rejected, every player is expected to stick to a script, protect the image, mouth the same cliches about teamwork, look humble, etc. Those best at it become icons, if they the have the talent to match, and their income from salary and endorsements can become higher than the rest of the team put together. This orchestrated image is so tightly controlled and manipulated by the league that most players communicate in public like parrots. Interestingly, players as a group have become powerful enough that they are beginning to control sports themselves. Coaches are becoming babysitters. Good players have security guards, publicists, their own trainers, agents, money managers, and often a gang like posse which operate as some sort of mafia--refined or thuggish---to protect the interests of their 'boy'.

I personally have given up on rooting for teams. These are simply hired guns for the year, in some sports the contract can be torn up at any time, and individual stats will determine the financial status of every player. Players are not retained because they are good teammates, they are retained because they generate good stats. Now I simply try to find some player or coach whose personality, background, ability, or demeanor is unique and interesting and root for them. But this is getting harder.

IF major sport professional teams are national sport endeavors considered responsible to the nation a a whole, then all parties should be involved in collective decision making. That includes owners (I prefer the cities own the teams, but whomever), the players, the fans, the cities, all be included at any bargaining table and all be forced to agree on major decisions. This is the only way integrity of these sports can be achieved and speak to the need of all involved.

Footnote: There are more good things the United States has done than bad, by a long shot, especially relative to most other countries. It is the nature of the times which dictates a focus like this on our worst actions. If we are too stubborn or powerless to change, if the limits of human nature at this point in God's created evolutionary process are too great, then Mother Nature will usher in some sort of 'corrective' age, like it always has, even if the correction takes hundreds of thousands of years, and---as I always am reminded----We Go, Time stays.

The Basis For Understanding

2010-07-11T07:54:00.000-07:00

The Basis For Understanding

I am convinced that in one's terminational years contentment is a product of a contemplative mode of life. The following represent some of the most basic underpinnings for intelligent contemplation.

1. There is more to reality than what we receive from our senses. Yet everything begins in our senses. In takes years of wisdom and experiences to properly interpret this sensory input. Developed knowledge goes beyond observation.

2. Understanding is limited when religious authority is regarded as all powerful. Where religion dominates progress is difficult.

3. Passion clouds reality

4. Character is destiny.

5. Understanding involves knowing what something is for.

6. Precision of understanding is limited by our power of reasoning.

7. The tastes of the mob are generally grounded in considerations of pleasure and utility.

8. When desire overcomes reasoning this leads to suffering and unhappiness.

9. For God to hold anyone accountable He cannot know everything that is going to happen.

10. If our natures are different than so must be our duties.

11. Human inherent morality is grounded on the reasoned dictum called the Golden Rule.

12. Every age has it's witches---those whose conduct or perspective is so unorthodox as to be a threat to the wisdom of current culture.

13. Nature bats last

14. The engine of evolution is change.

15. Ultimately everything is reduced to molecular activity

16. Understanding the science of light does not give us beauty. Therein lies the disconnect between science and human perceptions.

17. Regarding intelligence, per se, there is little about human intelligence which differs significantly from sufficiently powerful computational devices.

18. Resignation, when properly assigned to inevitability and reason, is an essential component of contentment.

19. To achieve contentment, the seeking of pleasure should never reach the degree where it's deprivation produces pain, and the avoidance of potential pain should never reach the degree where the potential for pleasure is thwarted.

20. Contentment, in the absence of enlarging the possibilities in the lives of those living lives of quiet desperation, cannot be achieved. If all that matters is yourself and immediate family, friends---then contentment will be elusive.

21. Reality is not stationary as change is the operative mode of evolution.

22. Moral precepts can be shown to be valid and binding through a process of rational analysis.

23. Social and economic inequalities should be addressed in such a manner as to benefit
the least advantaged before they improve the conditions of the more advantaged.

24. Nature is a gift from God to all living forms on our earth. While we may not know the Gift Giver personally, the existence of a gift proves the existence of the Gift Giver.

25. "You can't go back home to your family---
to a young man's dream of fame and glory
to the country cottage away from strife and conflict
to the Father you have lost
to the old forms and systems of things which seemed
everlasting but are changing all the time." Thomas Wolfe

26. "I have learned to look at Nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity" William Wordsworth

27. To want no more than we need is to be moral in the purest sense; for it leaves something for others. The less we want more than we need the more contented we become, like a heaven on earth.

28. If we learn not to fear death, then we have no reason to fear enemies; the worst they can do is kill you. No need to fear friends, the worst they can do is betray you; beware the indifferent, those whose indifference allows wars, injustice, poverty, etc. to exist on a wide scale level. They really don't care, creating a culture of permissiveness for massive human misery.

WHEN WE ARE DEAD

2010-07-11T07:39:00.001-07:00

We Know We Will Die; We Will Never Know We Are Dead

I don't really know what constitutes success. I do know that, no matter the measure, my own life is not at the top by any means of measure. And yet, many a late night, looking out over a quiet, vast horizon from my high rise, I always realize that the odds of my surviving and living the life I now do, were not great. If I had been born in another age, before modern medicine, I would have died in childhood. And so it goes, without a series of unearned advantages and fortuitous opportunities in life, none of my 'success' would have ever been. I always feel more lucky than proud. Those who see in their own good luck more self induced success than luck, are arrogant dumb ass fools. They have no real concept or sense of relationship to God's evolutionary process. Each person inherits unearned genes and unearned environments. The process plays out, God's created laws of evolution do their thing, progress ensues, God's will is done. IF someone is helped to a better life it will be through the kindnesses of others, not God counteracting His laws of evolution to protect us or enhance our personal status in the scheme of things. What humans have, to a degree more so than other species, is the ability to make things better for others----human, animal or plant.

If life has gotten better for any of us, it has been primarily through the help of others, whether it be through individual help or collective help via politics/religion of some sort. Slavery ended because humans put an end to it. Women got the right to vote because humans collectively gave them this right. What humans have, at this point in evolution, is the ability to help themselves and other species. Of course the whole process of evolution is a God created gift. BUT, how individual humans fare, anywhere on the globe, is dependent on the Golden Rule. That is true religion, not any self serving faith that God personally intervenes on behalf of any 'chosen' flock via human created dogmas.

It is what it is, we do the best with the hand we have to play, we do what we can to better our own lives, and for contentment to ever be achieved we need to practice the Golden Rule and let others count as much as ourselves, to try and level the playing field for others less fortunate---and in so doing all of this we will find such virtue it's own reward----PERSONAL CONTENTMENT.