Judging the Illogical:
A good legal system is based on sound reasoning, fairness, and a level playing field for all defendants. I know this kind of perfection, given the imperfections of human nature, is not attainable. Compared to my youth I guess the legal system in this country has improved, albeit the truth is more likely to be improvement in some areas and deterioration in other areas. It is hard to even be objective since with the internet and TV, immediate access to every malfunction of the legal system is in our face. When I was young so much of the unfairness of the legal system to so many was simply not on my radar screen. When women and blacks and others started raising hell I kind of resented it. You know, the usual "if they don't like it here why don't they leave"? It always seems that when things are going smoothly and you are getting a handle on your own life, somebody or some group wants to rock the boat. Depending on one's life experiences or situation one could easily go through life oblivious to the injustices heaped on others outside one's own life bubble. That is just the nature of the beast we call life.
I think some areas are almost impossible to judge accurately or with sound reasoning. Sexual behavior is beyond rationality. Most of it really is. I forget who authored the comment "God surely has a sense of humor or He wouldn't have created sex". All of us really know sexual behaviors are illogical or there would not be so many jokes based on sex. The easiest ha-ha's can always be generated from jokes about sex. It is hard to know whether a lot of it is just funny or we should be getting upset and angry. Logic dictates that any kind of sexual activity which is nonconsensual or involves adults with kids is not acceptable. After that it all becomes an impossible maze of human diversity.
What turns one person on turns another person off. Some people simply laugh off anything they find absurd or disgusting to them, others become angry and want to put a stop to certain sexual behaviors. The motivation, as best I can determine it, is to prevent their own kids from being being enticed into certain sexual behaviors. The real problem is that we still haven't the vaguest clues as to why some people are attracted to particular sexual acts. Let's take people with foot fetishes. There is no logical basis for why that would be a sexual turn-on. If we list all the known sexual turn-ons, every one would be indefensible based on logic. Clearly sexual intercourse is needed to reproduce. Well, not anymore considering modern science, so if the only morally acceptable reason for sexual behavior is to reproduce, then I guess, in theory we could just do away with sex. That would sure tidy things up. Maybe those with the least interest in sex (lowest sex drives) are the luckiest ones. Those with high sex drives, especially in least common directions, often take outrageous irrational risks which can leave the rest of their lives in shambles.
If all of the above is not confusing enough, bring in the legal system and we have an emotional three ring circus in which contrasting emotional feelings are the operative forces. From all these emotional feelings justice is beyond reach. A majority with the same emotional feelings can then use these feelings to rule the day, not based on any sound reasoning but on feelings about sexual behaviors. I recently saw on the internet this case of a 17 yr old kid who was sent to jail for 10 years for having consensual oral sex with a 15 yr old girl. He was released after two years by some higher court which said the punishment was cruel and excessive for the crime.
Naturally I had to think about all of this, mull it over, try to make sense of what would constitute justice here. Just a week ago I read where 20% of teenage girls in this country have had sexual intercourse by age 13-14. Girls menstruate at an earlier age now than ever before. Access to all sorts of sex is available on the internet or TV to any kids who want to find it. What does all this mean? Young couples routinely live together before marriage. Young people are marrying at later and later ages and more and more never marry. And if they marry, half the time the marriage ends in divorce. The number of people living alone as opposed to living in a partnered relationship of some sort is approaching parity in this country. I also read last week where some junior high schools make condoms available to their students. Oddly, teenage births have finally started to head down. These are the facts about the current sexual climate for young people in this country. It is within this climate that the above case went to court.
My first question is, "who brings something like this into court"? Counseling to the boy or the girl, like counseling to all young people about sex should be available. That makes sense. Or does it? What kind of counseling? Which people with which feelings about sex do the counseling? We are already trapped, hopelessly mired in wide ranging feelings about sex.
I assume there must be a law on the book in Georgia that makes oral sex illegal or maybe there is some sort of age limit law. Both were minors and if the sex was consensual why was the girl not charged with anything? If young teens having sex ought to be jailed, and if 20% of 13-14 yr. olds have had sex, then what percentage of kids under 18 have had sex? It must certainly be well over 50%. If this kind of behavior deserves jail time then justice demands that the kid jailed be joined in jail by the majority of other kids his age. And what about the 50% who don't have sex? I assume a good percentage of them are unattractive or have personality turnoffs. Kind of hard to hand out any gold star to them for non sexual activities. Then there are those with low sex drives, for what ever reason. No gold star there either. When it comes to sexual behavior the whole picture is too obtuse for objectively handing out gold stars.
I am not dealing here at all with whether it is appropriate or ethical or healthy for young kids to be having consensual sex. The most I could have is an opinion, and opinions don't help much in a court of law. I could feel he should be punished or I could feel he should not be punished, but feelings are not the things upon which legal justice is founded. What is being analyzed here is the logic involved. It is logical to state if teenagers don't have sex they won't risk AIDS or any of the other sexual diseases, and therefore shouldn't have sex. If more than 50% already are having sex it is logical, based on the emotionality of human nature, to suggest ready access to contraceptives is sound health policy. But then, if contraceptives are made available as policy it becomes illogical to arrest and sentence a teenager to 10 years in jail for having sex. Almost all other viewpoints regarding these matters are beliefs. Beliefs, for the most part, cannot be resolved by law unless the beliefs generate victims. In this case where is the victim? I suppose one might argue that jailing the kid would set an example and send a message to other kids not to have oral sex, or depending on the law on the books, any kind of sex. Besides the fact that a justice system does not exist to set examples, but to prosecute all who break the law, it would seem rather irrational to believe the frequency of sex among teens dropped perceptively at all because this kid was jailed for 10 years. In the last analysis this conviction had to have been based solely on the desire for those concerned about sexual promiscuity among the young to take their frustrations and anger out on this hapless kid. You can bet if their own kid was involved, their feelings would take a 180 degree turn. Then, I guess, a good "heart to heart" talk would suffice, maybe not let their kid drive the family car for a month, whatever.
From what I could gather, this kid was a good student, popular, pleasant natured, and no criminal record. What kind of Judge or prosecutor would engineer such treatment to a kid of that age? And at the expense of $30,000/yr for a total of $300,000 to the public. I would like to pass on being taxed for that. Both the Judge and prosecutor should be gotten out of the justice system. I suppose they would lamely just claim they were enforcing the law. Like hell, they took a law which well over 50% of young teens are breaking, and they prosecute 1 student with a sentence of 10 years to boot. But, very well, let's accept their argument. If either of them have kids who were ever teenagers, let's seek out and find any gals or guys they had sex with as teenagers and let's put THEIR KIDS in jail for 10 years. If enforcing the law is a good idea let's make it a good idea for all, especially the sons and daughters of the Judge and Prosecutors, you know---set an example. Maybe I just want to choose the examples.
At any rate, the main point of all this is that sex is an enigma wrapped in emotions, spinning us all around till we don't know which end is up on the topic. Stop the World, I want to get off, try another planet. Ah, never mind, I am already living in my own created world.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
A MEANINGLESS MARCH
A Meaningless March:
On Saturday I took my daily walk to the streets of Chicago. I guess I walked about 3 miles. This time my walk had a title. It was billed as a protest march against the War in Iraq. It is said 10,000 people marched. That's a nice number. Before the U.S. invaded Iraq I had marched in a similar march against the impending War. Back then 80% favored the War and now I guess about 80% oppose the War. The two marches could not have been more different. In the first march it was unplanned----a march suddenly broke out from a late weekday afternoon rally in downtown Chicago. The rally itself, to me, was just a lot of noise---speakers ranting against the impending War to a crowd already against going into Iraq. The only aspect of it interesting to me was the diverse composition of the crowd---every ethnicity, every religion, every economic status, every age group and all pretty much gentle minded, fair minded, genuine live and let live kind of citizens, not the kind of citizens interested in any kind of American empire building or with any particular interest in traveling to all sorts of distant points across the globe to blow up people by the hundreds of thousands for varied sorts of concocted or exploitive reasons involving politics, economics or religion.
Bored with the speeches and annoyed by the blaring noise I had decided to leave the rally, but it was not easy since police on horseback had ringed the square. Myself and a few others were asking the police to let us out and they grudgingly made a small break between all the horses for us to leave. The police were quite hostile to the whole thing since, like I said, back then 80% of Americans favored the War and those of us opposed were considered unpatriotic, wimps, or just too dumb to understand the immediate danger our country faced. Anyway, when the gap opened for a few of us to leave, all of a sudden some people with a banner and some drums surged through the gap and the restless crowd surged out into the street like stampeded cattle. The march had begun and idiot me was like in the second row. I'm kind of old to get conked over the head, aside from any innate cowardice, so I quickly faded further back. It was now late afternoon rush hour and the police were scrambling, uncertain what to do. A lot of the people on the crowded rush hour sidewalks started cheering and joining in, most of the trapped cars were giving us all thumbs up---but some of them maybe for fear their car would be attacked otherwise. The police were hesitant. They wanted to attack, after all their job is to be in control, but it was downtown rush hour and and the rush hour bystanders were hardly hostile and the original marchers and the public were hopelessly intermingled and heading down two different streets. The word came down to the police to just contain them on the street, don't attack unless any of the marchers start damaging anything---buildings, cars, whatever. But that never happened at all, these were essentially nonviolent people marching to stop violence against others. Some how the chant began among the marchers to go to Michigan Ave. After we got to Michigan Avenue I could hear the police radios blaring out for the police to keep the marchers on Michigan Ave. Most of the police were getting real angry, probably about the same percentage split as in the country as a whole, 80/20. The 20% smiled and cautioned "stay orderly". The 80% glared, anxious to get the call to make some arrests. The marchers from the two different streets had converged on to Michigan Ave and then the chant arose to go to Lake Shore Drive. By now the number of marchers had probably tripled because so many of the rush hour public were joining in. It was a genuine people's protest absent any violence.
When the marchers neared my train station I decided to drop out since I had no idea where the whole thing was headed. When my train got me back to the suburbs, a couple of hours later, the radio said the march was still going on and the marchers now were up on Chicago Ave. What happened next is certainly no surprise. It was 10PM and the marchers were all still charged up because a lot of new people kept joining the march. I don't know that it would ever have ended with the perpetual addition of new marchers. The police had to end it and it was late enough that bystanders were now minimal. Thus the newest marchers suddenly found themselves the target of police anger when the order came in to make arrests. The police finally got the order to put a stop to the march. Most of the original 'troublemakers', like myself, had gone home. Of course it could have been handled differently but human nature is such that you are really pitting feelings against feelings and the better angels of human nature never surface in these situations. "I said you aren't going anywhere" and conk, just like that you don't, and like a sack of grain get tossed in the paddy wagon. The march was over. Of course when the arrested get to court the Judge throws out most of the arrests because he realizes these are not the criminal type people he usually sees before him. Their only crime was marching, they didn't damage anything or attack anyone, etc. The police feel nothing but frustration---told to end the march, they did and now some Judge leaves the impression they are the bad guys. Probably most police don't feel very appreciated by the public. Always two sides to most genuine problems.
But this latest Saturday march was a total farce. Totally meaningless, regardless of the numbers. 10,000 people assemble at some park and march down this big street for three miles to Daley Plaza for speeches. It is Saturday afternoon, hardly anyone on the sidewalks at such a time. The police lead the march, they line both sides of the street the entire three miles, and behind the marchers are police cars loaded with police. The marchers are yelling slogans like "Get out of Iraq, Get out Now" etc. Who are they yelling to? Themselves? I didn't bother saying a word. At least I was getting my walk in. When they get to the Plaza the speeches begin. How stupid. A lot of yelling to encourage people who already want the U.S. out of Iraq to be against America in Iraq. Also, this march seemed just an act of going through the motions. It wasted the time of the marchers, the police, and cost the city a lot of money. But of course, when it comes to war, money these days is no limit.
War is different now than in the past. It used to be one country's army against another. Some country would be trying to invade another or some such variation. If the United States went to the aid of an invaded country it was because Congress declared war and then everyone sacrificed in the effort. Young people got drafted, those at home were hit with footing the bill and doing without this or that. If the war was illegitimate, like the Vietnam War, the public genuinely protested and not with meaningless marches. But those days are gone. The government now assembles a volunteer army. These are paid professional career soldiers and their career choice, despite the risks, is military action. Military engagement is their job, just like making cars is General Motor's job. Protest marches are now useless. No one is forcing our sons and daughters to participate in a war. The draft doesn't exist. Only if the career military personnel rebel will the government give pause. We are now in the position of expecting some industry to police itself. It won't happen. The military/industrial complex is now our biggest industry. It is no longer a war time industry comprised mostly of draftees. It is a permanent, ever growing, insatiable economic engine which keeps employment levels up, and supports our biggest manufacturing sector---weaponry. The greatest amount of our national budget is all about weapons, and foreign bases, and paid mercenary soldiers all over the globe. We now consider the words of the founding fathers of this country nonsense----"avoid foreign entanglements". Every prosperous civilization has fallen into the same trap---empire building, policing the world, economic exploitation of other countries and foreign workers, while at home the disparity of wealth between the rich and poor grows greater and greater. The empire then collapses for overreaching in it's attempt to control other countries, while allowing the rich of it's own citizens to monopolize more and more of the nation's wealth. We are now totally over stretched with our foreign entanglements and the top 2% of our citizens now own more wealth than the bottom 90% combined and it is still growing. Most all prosperous civilizations collapse from within. I get the feeling we have met the enemy and it is us. Worse, the energy to reverse what Eisenhower warned us against, is pretty much spent---these distant slaughters have become ongoing with, for now, little impact on our daily lives-----and while 80% may oppose the principle of such empire building, an activity which is rapidly making the US the #1 world enemy/tyrant------in a metropolitan area of millions, only 10,000 are agitated enough to march a few miles on a nice autumn weekend day. And next time even fewer will march, including myself. The common universal feeling rampant across an ever increasingly crowded planet is one of powerlessness. But what the hell, old curmudgeons like me always mumble about how things are going sour. I am good at that-----mumble, mumble, mumble. Maybe that is why I like Terrell---the perceived injustices he acts on may not be exactly globally important, but he knows fairness, draws a line in the sand, and comes out standing after all the powerful forces aligned against him have taken their best shot. I can understand why so many teammates urge him not to let anybody change him.
On Saturday I took my daily walk to the streets of Chicago. I guess I walked about 3 miles. This time my walk had a title. It was billed as a protest march against the War in Iraq. It is said 10,000 people marched. That's a nice number. Before the U.S. invaded Iraq I had marched in a similar march against the impending War. Back then 80% favored the War and now I guess about 80% oppose the War. The two marches could not have been more different. In the first march it was unplanned----a march suddenly broke out from a late weekday afternoon rally in downtown Chicago. The rally itself, to me, was just a lot of noise---speakers ranting against the impending War to a crowd already against going into Iraq. The only aspect of it interesting to me was the diverse composition of the crowd---every ethnicity, every religion, every economic status, every age group and all pretty much gentle minded, fair minded, genuine live and let live kind of citizens, not the kind of citizens interested in any kind of American empire building or with any particular interest in traveling to all sorts of distant points across the globe to blow up people by the hundreds of thousands for varied sorts of concocted or exploitive reasons involving politics, economics or religion.
Bored with the speeches and annoyed by the blaring noise I had decided to leave the rally, but it was not easy since police on horseback had ringed the square. Myself and a few others were asking the police to let us out and they grudgingly made a small break between all the horses for us to leave. The police were quite hostile to the whole thing since, like I said, back then 80% of Americans favored the War and those of us opposed were considered unpatriotic, wimps, or just too dumb to understand the immediate danger our country faced. Anyway, when the gap opened for a few of us to leave, all of a sudden some people with a banner and some drums surged through the gap and the restless crowd surged out into the street like stampeded cattle. The march had begun and idiot me was like in the second row. I'm kind of old to get conked over the head, aside from any innate cowardice, so I quickly faded further back. It was now late afternoon rush hour and the police were scrambling, uncertain what to do. A lot of the people on the crowded rush hour sidewalks started cheering and joining in, most of the trapped cars were giving us all thumbs up---but some of them maybe for fear their car would be attacked otherwise. The police were hesitant. They wanted to attack, after all their job is to be in control, but it was downtown rush hour and and the rush hour bystanders were hardly hostile and the original marchers and the public were hopelessly intermingled and heading down two different streets. The word came down to the police to just contain them on the street, don't attack unless any of the marchers start damaging anything---buildings, cars, whatever. But that never happened at all, these were essentially nonviolent people marching to stop violence against others. Some how the chant began among the marchers to go to Michigan Ave. After we got to Michigan Avenue I could hear the police radios blaring out for the police to keep the marchers on Michigan Ave. Most of the police were getting real angry, probably about the same percentage split as in the country as a whole, 80/20. The 20% smiled and cautioned "stay orderly". The 80% glared, anxious to get the call to make some arrests. The marchers from the two different streets had converged on to Michigan Ave and then the chant arose to go to Lake Shore Drive. By now the number of marchers had probably tripled because so many of the rush hour public were joining in. It was a genuine people's protest absent any violence.
When the marchers neared my train station I decided to drop out since I had no idea where the whole thing was headed. When my train got me back to the suburbs, a couple of hours later, the radio said the march was still going on and the marchers now were up on Chicago Ave. What happened next is certainly no surprise. It was 10PM and the marchers were all still charged up because a lot of new people kept joining the march. I don't know that it would ever have ended with the perpetual addition of new marchers. The police had to end it and it was late enough that bystanders were now minimal. Thus the newest marchers suddenly found themselves the target of police anger when the order came in to make arrests. The police finally got the order to put a stop to the march. Most of the original 'troublemakers', like myself, had gone home. Of course it could have been handled differently but human nature is such that you are really pitting feelings against feelings and the better angels of human nature never surface in these situations. "I said you aren't going anywhere" and conk, just like that you don't, and like a sack of grain get tossed in the paddy wagon. The march was over. Of course when the arrested get to court the Judge throws out most of the arrests because he realizes these are not the criminal type people he usually sees before him. Their only crime was marching, they didn't damage anything or attack anyone, etc. The police feel nothing but frustration---told to end the march, they did and now some Judge leaves the impression they are the bad guys. Probably most police don't feel very appreciated by the public. Always two sides to most genuine problems.
But this latest Saturday march was a total farce. Totally meaningless, regardless of the numbers. 10,000 people assemble at some park and march down this big street for three miles to Daley Plaza for speeches. It is Saturday afternoon, hardly anyone on the sidewalks at such a time. The police lead the march, they line both sides of the street the entire three miles, and behind the marchers are police cars loaded with police. The marchers are yelling slogans like "Get out of Iraq, Get out Now" etc. Who are they yelling to? Themselves? I didn't bother saying a word. At least I was getting my walk in. When they get to the Plaza the speeches begin. How stupid. A lot of yelling to encourage people who already want the U.S. out of Iraq to be against America in Iraq. Also, this march seemed just an act of going through the motions. It wasted the time of the marchers, the police, and cost the city a lot of money. But of course, when it comes to war, money these days is no limit.
War is different now than in the past. It used to be one country's army against another. Some country would be trying to invade another or some such variation. If the United States went to the aid of an invaded country it was because Congress declared war and then everyone sacrificed in the effort. Young people got drafted, those at home were hit with footing the bill and doing without this or that. If the war was illegitimate, like the Vietnam War, the public genuinely protested and not with meaningless marches. But those days are gone. The government now assembles a volunteer army. These are paid professional career soldiers and their career choice, despite the risks, is military action. Military engagement is their job, just like making cars is General Motor's job. Protest marches are now useless. No one is forcing our sons and daughters to participate in a war. The draft doesn't exist. Only if the career military personnel rebel will the government give pause. We are now in the position of expecting some industry to police itself. It won't happen. The military/industrial complex is now our biggest industry. It is no longer a war time industry comprised mostly of draftees. It is a permanent, ever growing, insatiable economic engine which keeps employment levels up, and supports our biggest manufacturing sector---weaponry. The greatest amount of our national budget is all about weapons, and foreign bases, and paid mercenary soldiers all over the globe. We now consider the words of the founding fathers of this country nonsense----"avoid foreign entanglements". Every prosperous civilization has fallen into the same trap---empire building, policing the world, economic exploitation of other countries and foreign workers, while at home the disparity of wealth between the rich and poor grows greater and greater. The empire then collapses for overreaching in it's attempt to control other countries, while allowing the rich of it's own citizens to monopolize more and more of the nation's wealth. We are now totally over stretched with our foreign entanglements and the top 2% of our citizens now own more wealth than the bottom 90% combined and it is still growing. Most all prosperous civilizations collapse from within. I get the feeling we have met the enemy and it is us. Worse, the energy to reverse what Eisenhower warned us against, is pretty much spent---these distant slaughters have become ongoing with, for now, little impact on our daily lives-----and while 80% may oppose the principle of such empire building, an activity which is rapidly making the US the #1 world enemy/tyrant------in a metropolitan area of millions, only 10,000 are agitated enough to march a few miles on a nice autumn weekend day. And next time even fewer will march, including myself. The common universal feeling rampant across an ever increasingly crowded planet is one of powerlessness. But what the hell, old curmudgeons like me always mumble about how things are going sour. I am good at that-----mumble, mumble, mumble. Maybe that is why I like Terrell---the perceived injustices he acts on may not be exactly globally important, but he knows fairness, draws a line in the sand, and comes out standing after all the powerful forces aligned against him have taken their best shot. I can understand why so many teammates urge him not to let anybody change him.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
THE ESOTERIC REALITY OF CHARACTER
The Esoteric Reality of Character:
One of my favorite mantras is short: "Character is Destiny". The trouble arises because 'character' is not a clearly defined term. Nevertheless, this doesn't mean we can't narrow it down a bit. So I gave some limited thought to the characteristics which characterize good character. I suppose most of us believe we have 'good character'. Maybe we just really mean 'good to a point'. Certainly we are 'gooder' than others probably discern. Much 'gooder'. And to some degree the 'goodest' in our midst are persons we have never met. They are easier to idolize in some fashion. I have listed below some aspects of good character which come to my mind, such as it is, and then listed examples of that particular trait. It will come as no surprise that I often thought of Lincoln in so many of the categories. But maybe that is why there are more books written about Lincoln than any other person in history and he remains the most beloved American across the world---even though he has been dead over 150 years.
Wisdom: Abraham Lincoln, Victoria Woodhull
Social Skills: Bill Clinton
Adherence to Ethical Principles: Terrell Owens, Abraham Lincoln, Pete Singer, John Shelby Spong.
Sense of Humor---Abraham Lincoln, Bullet Bob
Leadership---Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Mendella, FDR, Churchill
Compassion (Universal across the board)--- Abraham Lincoln
Honesty---Terrell Owens, Abraham Lincoln, Barry Goldwater, Harry Truman.
Charitableness---Andrew Carnegie, Warren Buffet, a small army of the poor who still manage to assist the needy, raise abandoned kids, befriend the friendless. Most of us 'have's' would never even consider that kind of sacrifice.
Courage---Abraham Lincoln (knew the price he was going to pay), Teddy Roosevelt (even though misplaced at times), Churchill, Terrell Owens (not over great issues but matters of personal fairness).
Ability to Forgive: Abraham Lincoln, Bill Clinton, Terrell Owens (will help you up after he has run you over if you were were unfair and disrespected him, not referring to on the field play here).
Ability to Admit When Wrong: Terrell Owens, Barry Goldwater. Am amazed how hard it is to think of many in this category. I know for myself, I was wrong once----one time I thought I was wrong and I was wrong---I wasn't wrong.
Willingness to Change: Barry Goldwater, John Shelby Spong, numerous Supreme Court Justices---and always to the left.
Others can add to or differ with the above list. Character is an interpretive sort of exercise. But the singular noteworthy notation here is what began this musing: "Character is Destiny".
One of my favorite mantras is short: "Character is Destiny". The trouble arises because 'character' is not a clearly defined term. Nevertheless, this doesn't mean we can't narrow it down a bit. So I gave some limited thought to the characteristics which characterize good character. I suppose most of us believe we have 'good character'. Maybe we just really mean 'good to a point'. Certainly we are 'gooder' than others probably discern. Much 'gooder'. And to some degree the 'goodest' in our midst are persons we have never met. They are easier to idolize in some fashion. I have listed below some aspects of good character which come to my mind, such as it is, and then listed examples of that particular trait. It will come as no surprise that I often thought of Lincoln in so many of the categories. But maybe that is why there are more books written about Lincoln than any other person in history and he remains the most beloved American across the world---even though he has been dead over 150 years.
Wisdom: Abraham Lincoln, Victoria Woodhull
Social Skills: Bill Clinton
Adherence to Ethical Principles: Terrell Owens, Abraham Lincoln, Pete Singer, John Shelby Spong.
Sense of Humor---Abraham Lincoln, Bullet Bob
Leadership---Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Mendella, FDR, Churchill
Compassion (Universal across the board)--- Abraham Lincoln
Honesty---Terrell Owens, Abraham Lincoln, Barry Goldwater, Harry Truman.
Charitableness---Andrew Carnegie, Warren Buffet, a small army of the poor who still manage to assist the needy, raise abandoned kids, befriend the friendless. Most of us 'have's' would never even consider that kind of sacrifice.
Courage---Abraham Lincoln (knew the price he was going to pay), Teddy Roosevelt (even though misplaced at times), Churchill, Terrell Owens (not over great issues but matters of personal fairness).
Ability to Forgive: Abraham Lincoln, Bill Clinton, Terrell Owens (will help you up after he has run you over if you were were unfair and disrespected him, not referring to on the field play here).
Ability to Admit When Wrong: Terrell Owens, Barry Goldwater. Am amazed how hard it is to think of many in this category. I know for myself, I was wrong once----one time I thought I was wrong and I was wrong---I wasn't wrong.
Willingness to Change: Barry Goldwater, John Shelby Spong, numerous Supreme Court Justices---and always to the left.
Others can add to or differ with the above list. Character is an interpretive sort of exercise. But the singular noteworthy notation here is what began this musing: "Character is Destiny".
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
EVERY AGE HAS ITS WITCHES
Every Age Has Its Witches
The prosecution of witches is stated to have occurred mostly from 1400 to 1700. The term, if not any actual witches, remains with us, at least according to some who claim one as a wife. Inclined to wonder about all sorts of things, I wondered why witches seemed mostly to be female, and how such an absurdity could last as a prosecutable crime, supported by laws and religion, for 3 centuries. Once again, I am at loss to fully understand how religion can be the basis of so much hate. I cannot think of one founding prophet, in any religion, who could ever be envisioned burning anyone alive tied to a stake. Isn't the image absurd of Christ, for example, turning to his disciples and saying, "C'mon keepers-of-the-faith, let's grab this bitch, tie her to a stake, and burn her alive, the evil witch". But burning witches happened, over and over, for 3 centuries, often by those with the greatest religious convictions.
These were no spur of the moment, road rage type events. Witch burning seems to have been based on deeply thought out considerations about the nature of human nature, the nature of law, and the nature of crime and punishment. Witch hunting was carried out not just by rogue low class gangs, but by some of the best minds and highest titled members of society. Whatever the specifics, the motivation seems to be that SOMEONE'S CONDUCT OR PERSPECTIVE IS SO UNORTHODOX AS TO CONSTITUTE A THREAT TO THE PERCEIVED WISDOM AND CORE VALUES NEEDED TO KEEP A COMMUNITY TOGETHER. It makes no difference if the thoughts or actions are harmless or hurtful to others---an affront to established core values of the 'community' has occurred. The number of executions cited in literature varies from hundreds of thousands to a million and upwards. The defense by the Church was that it was far more important to save the soul than to preserve the body. The due process followed to convict a witch was written by two Dominican monks, and approved by the Pope. The authors of the document, titled the Malleus Maleficarum, are of no particular significance since leaders of most religions, at a given place and time, have shown the same capabilities for blind hatred. Pat Robertson and Jerry Faulwell, just to give another example, had their own form of witch hunts. The particulars of a witch trial are interesting but too lengthy to include here. Let's just mention here that the accuser did not have to face the accused or anyone even have to know who the accuser was, torture was permitted, but confessions made in the torture chamber were not admitted. The accused had to step outside the torture chamber to make a valid confession. Sounds a bit too familiar doesn't it?
I guess the more times change the more many things stay the same. Not really. In terms of torture, for the most part, things are better today. Even George Bush would probably have limits not exercised in more ancient times.
Let's state one more time what generates 'witch hunting', consider the same forces today and who the witches are. 'Whatever the specifics, the motivation seems to be that SOMEONE'S CONDUCT OR PERSPECTIVE IS SO UNORTHODOX AS TO CONSTITUTE A THREAT TO THE PERCEIVED WISDOM AND CORE VALUES NEEDED TO KEEP A COMMUNITY TOGETHER. It makes no difference if the thoughts or actions are harmless or hurtful to others---an affront to established core values of the 'community' has occurred.
To some extent modern political campaigns are a form of witch hunting. The goal of the debates seem a not too subtle game of "will the real witches here please step forward". The art of preying on the prejudices of citizens has become so sophisticated as to leave few untouched. Hilliary Clinton is a good example of a witch to a sizable portion of our population. She isn't confronted with issues but adjectives. My guess is that a good number of people might agree on the same issues as Hilliary but they would still hate her.
A better, more applicable example would be gays. This is probably the epitome of a modern witch hunt. These are people whose conduct or perspective is so unorthodox as to constitute a threat to the perceived wisdom and core values needed to keep a community together. Of course gays exist (except in Iran) and there is no way to make this population unexist short of exterminating them on discovery---you know, a case where it is far more important to save the soul than to save the body. Of course it is irrational to state who somebody else loves or how they make love destroys your own marital life, and if parents can live with allowing their own kids to select their own mate and never question what the hell they do in bed, it would seem the whole gay issue is kind of irrelevant to their own lives. Witches, though, are never irrelevant to witch hunters.
Dress codes are often a modern form of witch hunt. Witches always generate a moral affront to the majority. Sometimes, with great effort and anguish, parents or others are forced to make an exception and tolerate a witch amongst their midst---like having a gay son or daughter or a teenager who dresses too 'hip' or listens to the wrong kind of music etc. Exceptions are sometimes forced, that is the nature of life. Like who really wants their own kids, who they know so well, to be 'burned at the stake'. Well, maybe Alan Keyes. If anybody can pick out a witch with the proper focused anger and hatred, Alan Keyes can. If anyone ever hears Alan Keyes speak they can feel the warmth of the flames. Everyone is going to hell except Alan Keyes and his clones.
The illegal immigrants who WE allowed to gain entrance to the U.S. when we could have prevented it for the most part, and who WE allowed employers to employ them, are the newest objects of a witch hunt. Of course it is our responsibility to close our borders and of course it is our responsibility to prevent employers from employing anyone in the country illegally, but even now we refuse to do it. Instead the anger is directed at those who went someplace where they could find work and have a better life. That is a witch hunt and yet another example, of which there seem to be an ever increasing number, where Americans refuse to accept responsibility for our own inactions and blame the consequences on others. Even worse, some want to take these 'witches' and create some sort of slave population called 'guest workers'---workers who will be paid less than minimum wage and do work no legitimate citizen will do. No matter, moral issues never apply to witch hunts. It is, I guess, better than burning them at the stake.
Women who abort or even use birth control are modern witches to some. Women in a live together without marriage relationship can be witches to some. Prostitutes are still witches. People who use the wrong recreational drugs are witches in the eyes of many. Over zealous believers in certain religions are considered witches by over zealous believers in a different religion. The list could go on here but the point, if worth making at all, has been made. A modern witch, to me, is any person who is not harming or hurting others, but whom, if the opportunity arises for certain members of society, would be persecuted for CONDUCT OR PERSPECTIVE PERCEIVED SO UNORTHODOX AS TO CONSTITUTE A THREAT TO THE PERCEIVED WISDOM AND CORE VALUES NEEDED TO KEEP A COMMUNITY TOGETHER. It makes no difference if the thoughts or actions are harmless or hurtful to others---an affront to established core values of the in-charge 'community' has occurred.
I suspect there will always be witches. Who the witches are changes over time, and from one culture to another. We all tend to say, on matters of this sort, that "God will be the Judge" but we rarely mean it. In the name of 'God' we just feel a need to do what needs to be done right now. And when we persecute our witches God will bless us. I am a bit hesitant, it all seems a bit presumptuous to me. Or maybe I just don't trust not being designated a witch of some sort. We probably all feel at times like a fox being harangued and hunted, but hey---a witch---that is kind of scary. It's near halloween---BOO!
The prosecution of witches is stated to have occurred mostly from 1400 to 1700. The term, if not any actual witches, remains with us, at least according to some who claim one as a wife. Inclined to wonder about all sorts of things, I wondered why witches seemed mostly to be female, and how such an absurdity could last as a prosecutable crime, supported by laws and religion, for 3 centuries. Once again, I am at loss to fully understand how religion can be the basis of so much hate. I cannot think of one founding prophet, in any religion, who could ever be envisioned burning anyone alive tied to a stake. Isn't the image absurd of Christ, for example, turning to his disciples and saying, "C'mon keepers-of-the-faith, let's grab this bitch, tie her to a stake, and burn her alive, the evil witch". But burning witches happened, over and over, for 3 centuries, often by those with the greatest religious convictions.
These were no spur of the moment, road rage type events. Witch burning seems to have been based on deeply thought out considerations about the nature of human nature, the nature of law, and the nature of crime and punishment. Witch hunting was carried out not just by rogue low class gangs, but by some of the best minds and highest titled members of society. Whatever the specifics, the motivation seems to be that SOMEONE'S CONDUCT OR PERSPECTIVE IS SO UNORTHODOX AS TO CONSTITUTE A THREAT TO THE PERCEIVED WISDOM AND CORE VALUES NEEDED TO KEEP A COMMUNITY TOGETHER. It makes no difference if the thoughts or actions are harmless or hurtful to others---an affront to established core values of the 'community' has occurred. The number of executions cited in literature varies from hundreds of thousands to a million and upwards. The defense by the Church was that it was far more important to save the soul than to preserve the body. The due process followed to convict a witch was written by two Dominican monks, and approved by the Pope. The authors of the document, titled the Malleus Maleficarum, are of no particular significance since leaders of most religions, at a given place and time, have shown the same capabilities for blind hatred. Pat Robertson and Jerry Faulwell, just to give another example, had their own form of witch hunts. The particulars of a witch trial are interesting but too lengthy to include here. Let's just mention here that the accuser did not have to face the accused or anyone even have to know who the accuser was, torture was permitted, but confessions made in the torture chamber were not admitted. The accused had to step outside the torture chamber to make a valid confession. Sounds a bit too familiar doesn't it?
I guess the more times change the more many things stay the same. Not really. In terms of torture, for the most part, things are better today. Even George Bush would probably have limits not exercised in more ancient times.
Let's state one more time what generates 'witch hunting', consider the same forces today and who the witches are. 'Whatever the specifics, the motivation seems to be that SOMEONE'S CONDUCT OR PERSPECTIVE IS SO UNORTHODOX AS TO CONSTITUTE A THREAT TO THE PERCEIVED WISDOM AND CORE VALUES NEEDED TO KEEP A COMMUNITY TOGETHER. It makes no difference if the thoughts or actions are harmless or hurtful to others---an affront to established core values of the 'community' has occurred.
To some extent modern political campaigns are a form of witch hunting. The goal of the debates seem a not too subtle game of "will the real witches here please step forward". The art of preying on the prejudices of citizens has become so sophisticated as to leave few untouched. Hilliary Clinton is a good example of a witch to a sizable portion of our population. She isn't confronted with issues but adjectives. My guess is that a good number of people might agree on the same issues as Hilliary but they would still hate her.
A better, more applicable example would be gays. This is probably the epitome of a modern witch hunt. These are people whose conduct or perspective is so unorthodox as to constitute a threat to the perceived wisdom and core values needed to keep a community together. Of course gays exist (except in Iran) and there is no way to make this population unexist short of exterminating them on discovery---you know, a case where it is far more important to save the soul than to save the body. Of course it is irrational to state who somebody else loves or how they make love destroys your own marital life, and if parents can live with allowing their own kids to select their own mate and never question what the hell they do in bed, it would seem the whole gay issue is kind of irrelevant to their own lives. Witches, though, are never irrelevant to witch hunters.
Dress codes are often a modern form of witch hunt. Witches always generate a moral affront to the majority. Sometimes, with great effort and anguish, parents or others are forced to make an exception and tolerate a witch amongst their midst---like having a gay son or daughter or a teenager who dresses too 'hip' or listens to the wrong kind of music etc. Exceptions are sometimes forced, that is the nature of life. Like who really wants their own kids, who they know so well, to be 'burned at the stake'. Well, maybe Alan Keyes. If anybody can pick out a witch with the proper focused anger and hatred, Alan Keyes can. If anyone ever hears Alan Keyes speak they can feel the warmth of the flames. Everyone is going to hell except Alan Keyes and his clones.
The illegal immigrants who WE allowed to gain entrance to the U.S. when we could have prevented it for the most part, and who WE allowed employers to employ them, are the newest objects of a witch hunt. Of course it is our responsibility to close our borders and of course it is our responsibility to prevent employers from employing anyone in the country illegally, but even now we refuse to do it. Instead the anger is directed at those who went someplace where they could find work and have a better life. That is a witch hunt and yet another example, of which there seem to be an ever increasing number, where Americans refuse to accept responsibility for our own inactions and blame the consequences on others. Even worse, some want to take these 'witches' and create some sort of slave population called 'guest workers'---workers who will be paid less than minimum wage and do work no legitimate citizen will do. No matter, moral issues never apply to witch hunts. It is, I guess, better than burning them at the stake.
Women who abort or even use birth control are modern witches to some. Women in a live together without marriage relationship can be witches to some. Prostitutes are still witches. People who use the wrong recreational drugs are witches in the eyes of many. Over zealous believers in certain religions are considered witches by over zealous believers in a different religion. The list could go on here but the point, if worth making at all, has been made. A modern witch, to me, is any person who is not harming or hurting others, but whom, if the opportunity arises for certain members of society, would be persecuted for CONDUCT OR PERSPECTIVE PERCEIVED SO UNORTHODOX AS TO CONSTITUTE A THREAT TO THE PERCEIVED WISDOM AND CORE VALUES NEEDED TO KEEP A COMMUNITY TOGETHER. It makes no difference if the thoughts or actions are harmless or hurtful to others---an affront to established core values of the in-charge 'community' has occurred.
I suspect there will always be witches. Who the witches are changes over time, and from one culture to another. We all tend to say, on matters of this sort, that "God will be the Judge" but we rarely mean it. In the name of 'God' we just feel a need to do what needs to be done right now. And when we persecute our witches God will bless us. I am a bit hesitant, it all seems a bit presumptuous to me. Or maybe I just don't trust not being designated a witch of some sort. We probably all feel at times like a fox being harangued and hunted, but hey---a witch---that is kind of scary. It's near halloween---BOO!
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
'Bums' In The Park
If Our Natures Differ, Do Our Duties, Responsibilities, Obligations Differ?
This rather odd question arose when a security guard, who works two jobs to make modest ends meet, expressed some anger at some 'bums' who spend every day hanging in this park near him, probably on welfare. It all starts with the obvious: people are all different. To the extent anyone differs from another it has to be genetic or environmental. There might be genetic reasons why a particular person cannot gain employment or hold on to a job. These days most of the mentally ill are not institutionalized, they are left to fend for themselves on the street. Many of them are the homeless, but not all of the homeless are mentally ill.
Without quibbling over numbers, some of those just 'hanging' around all day, existing outside the category of useful members of society, are products of their environment. What else can possibly be the reason why some members of society are productive and others are useless? Even if we use the term 'evil' and 'good', or 'saved' and 'not saved', or 'bum' and 'person of character' etc, we still end up with genetics or environment---unless one dumps the whole distinction on 'God'. If God is the One designating who will be a bum, then this whole discussion is beyond reason. Clearly what God wills, IS.
The only ALTERABLE factor involved here is the environment. If genetics is behind anyone's mental or emotional limitations, then the best we can do is medicate and provide them a safe environment within which to exist. Certainly the richest country on the earth could do this. But we don't. We are busy bombing other countries back into the stone age and then purportedly we will rebuild their country. Yeah, sure. We don't even rebuild New Orleans.
So we are left with the environment as the only controllable factor. There may be a case to be made for refusing some adults health coverage but there can be no logical reason why any child, living in the richest country in the world, should be denied proper health care. An unhealthy child--physically or mentally--cannot be expected to become a productive, responsible member of society in many cases. Every child, in the richest country in the world, should be entitled to have the same amount of money spent on his/her education as any other child in a public school system. We don't. Every society, in areas of overpopulation, has an obligation, for the welfare of all, to enforce responsible reproduction practices. Almost all countries don't. Every child has a right to have access to quality mentors. They don't. In an age of scientific and social enlightenment, raising kids remains a genetic crap shoot---born into the wrong family, you lose. Sometimes, born into the right family you still lose.
Now back to the 'bums' in the park. Maybe a few are genetically handicapped. That leaves the rest---who by the process of elimination are environmentally challenged victims. I suspect, if most of us were accepted to be members of their hang-out group, after a few hours we would become extremely bored with it all. What pleasure can ever be derived from being a 'nothingburger' in any society? Probably little, if any, pleasure. Thus, many of these hang-out 'bums' seek some sort of mental relief via drugs. If things cannot be good, drugs can at least make one feel good or give one relief from mental pain. The reason anyone takes a recreational drug, legal or illegal, is to feel high or get relief from stress. Drug abuse is a symptom, not a criminal act. When things aren't right in your life and you become a drug abuser to get relief, you need treatment, not jail. Drug abuse is a medical/social problem and always will be. Treating it as a criminal problem and throwing hundreds of thousands in jail for using or selling the drugs, at a cost of $30,000 per year to house them in a jail, is a pitiful and useless waste of money, not to mention human sacrifice. Drug abuse is about as prevalent in societies with strict drug laws as those with less strict drug laws. The forty years of our War on Drugs, of treating the whole business as a criminal activity instead of a medical problem, has not reduced the use of drugs in any appreciable way. If the vast amount of money spent to treat drug use as a criminal activity was used to treat people who abuse drugs, we would live in a much better society, with a hell of lot fewer 'bums' hanging in parks all day. It is the same situation with abortion. The number of abortions in countries with strict laws against abortion are about the same as in those countries where abortions are legal. The level of rationality on these issues is minimal at best. If we make marijuana illegal few people will use it. Nonsense. After 40 years nothing has changed. If we make abortion illegal people fewer people will have abortions. Nonsense, and the facts are there to support these conclusions.
The richest country in the world CAN afford to give almost every child the proper environment to prosper---medically, educationally, and socially. It is a matter of priorities and justice. In the absence of this, when I see 'bums' hanging out uselessly all day in a park, I feel blessed---sensing that 'there but for the grace of God goes I". But I also feel angry---angry that so many kids are left destined to the same fate. Of course I can feel my sadness in a distant abstract way, but to be amongst that crowd of adult 'misfits' would be a scary and repulsive experience. For the most part, the dye has been cast and they are what they are. The chance to have changed their destiny has mostly escaped. It doesn't do much good, in any practical way, to at this point say, "make them get a job". Sure. Like who the hell would hire them. Would you? I wouldn't. Let them hang in the park. I don't want them in my face.
Perhaps one who has received much may well have greater obligations, duties, and responsibilities than one who has received less. Can a child who has received few kindnesses be expected to feel much kindness toward others? He who receives little may be expected to give little. So much in life is really relative. Bill Gates may give a million dollar gift, which represents a minute fraction of his expendable assets. A poor person may give $10 which may represent 50% of their expendable assets at the moment. So who really has shown the greatest responsibility, duty, or obligation to others?
The 'bum' in the park, by doing nothing, is certainly not costing $30,000/year as are those who do things which land them in jail. We live in a world of compensations. To those kids for whom society invests little, society usually receives little in return. If we are lucky these kids, grown to adults, will just sit in the park all day. In the last analysis people build people. Maybe most of these 'bums' in the park are just unbuilt people.
This rather odd question arose when a security guard, who works two jobs to make modest ends meet, expressed some anger at some 'bums' who spend every day hanging in this park near him, probably on welfare. It all starts with the obvious: people are all different. To the extent anyone differs from another it has to be genetic or environmental. There might be genetic reasons why a particular person cannot gain employment or hold on to a job. These days most of the mentally ill are not institutionalized, they are left to fend for themselves on the street. Many of them are the homeless, but not all of the homeless are mentally ill.
Without quibbling over numbers, some of those just 'hanging' around all day, existing outside the category of useful members of society, are products of their environment. What else can possibly be the reason why some members of society are productive and others are useless? Even if we use the term 'evil' and 'good', or 'saved' and 'not saved', or 'bum' and 'person of character' etc, we still end up with genetics or environment---unless one dumps the whole distinction on 'God'. If God is the One designating who will be a bum, then this whole discussion is beyond reason. Clearly what God wills, IS.
The only ALTERABLE factor involved here is the environment. If genetics is behind anyone's mental or emotional limitations, then the best we can do is medicate and provide them a safe environment within which to exist. Certainly the richest country on the earth could do this. But we don't. We are busy bombing other countries back into the stone age and then purportedly we will rebuild their country. Yeah, sure. We don't even rebuild New Orleans.
So we are left with the environment as the only controllable factor. There may be a case to be made for refusing some adults health coverage but there can be no logical reason why any child, living in the richest country in the world, should be denied proper health care. An unhealthy child--physically or mentally--cannot be expected to become a productive, responsible member of society in many cases. Every child, in the richest country in the world, should be entitled to have the same amount of money spent on his/her education as any other child in a public school system. We don't. Every society, in areas of overpopulation, has an obligation, for the welfare of all, to enforce responsible reproduction practices. Almost all countries don't. Every child has a right to have access to quality mentors. They don't. In an age of scientific and social enlightenment, raising kids remains a genetic crap shoot---born into the wrong family, you lose. Sometimes, born into the right family you still lose.
Now back to the 'bums' in the park. Maybe a few are genetically handicapped. That leaves the rest---who by the process of elimination are environmentally challenged victims. I suspect, if most of us were accepted to be members of their hang-out group, after a few hours we would become extremely bored with it all. What pleasure can ever be derived from being a 'nothingburger' in any society? Probably little, if any, pleasure. Thus, many of these hang-out 'bums' seek some sort of mental relief via drugs. If things cannot be good, drugs can at least make one feel good or give one relief from mental pain. The reason anyone takes a recreational drug, legal or illegal, is to feel high or get relief from stress. Drug abuse is a symptom, not a criminal act. When things aren't right in your life and you become a drug abuser to get relief, you need treatment, not jail. Drug abuse is a medical/social problem and always will be. Treating it as a criminal problem and throwing hundreds of thousands in jail for using or selling the drugs, at a cost of $30,000 per year to house them in a jail, is a pitiful and useless waste of money, not to mention human sacrifice. Drug abuse is about as prevalent in societies with strict drug laws as those with less strict drug laws. The forty years of our War on Drugs, of treating the whole business as a criminal activity instead of a medical problem, has not reduced the use of drugs in any appreciable way. If the vast amount of money spent to treat drug use as a criminal activity was used to treat people who abuse drugs, we would live in a much better society, with a hell of lot fewer 'bums' hanging in parks all day. It is the same situation with abortion. The number of abortions in countries with strict laws against abortion are about the same as in those countries where abortions are legal. The level of rationality on these issues is minimal at best. If we make marijuana illegal few people will use it. Nonsense. After 40 years nothing has changed. If we make abortion illegal people fewer people will have abortions. Nonsense, and the facts are there to support these conclusions.
The richest country in the world CAN afford to give almost every child the proper environment to prosper---medically, educationally, and socially. It is a matter of priorities and justice. In the absence of this, when I see 'bums' hanging out uselessly all day in a park, I feel blessed---sensing that 'there but for the grace of God goes I". But I also feel angry---angry that so many kids are left destined to the same fate. Of course I can feel my sadness in a distant abstract way, but to be amongst that crowd of adult 'misfits' would be a scary and repulsive experience. For the most part, the dye has been cast and they are what they are. The chance to have changed their destiny has mostly escaped. It doesn't do much good, in any practical way, to at this point say, "make them get a job". Sure. Like who the hell would hire them. Would you? I wouldn't. Let them hang in the park. I don't want them in my face.
Perhaps one who has received much may well have greater obligations, duties, and responsibilities than one who has received less. Can a child who has received few kindnesses be expected to feel much kindness toward others? He who receives little may be expected to give little. So much in life is really relative. Bill Gates may give a million dollar gift, which represents a minute fraction of his expendable assets. A poor person may give $10 which may represent 50% of their expendable assets at the moment. So who really has shown the greatest responsibility, duty, or obligation to others?
The 'bum' in the park, by doing nothing, is certainly not costing $30,000/year as are those who do things which land them in jail. We live in a world of compensations. To those kids for whom society invests little, society usually receives little in return. If we are lucky these kids, grown to adults, will just sit in the park all day. In the last analysis people build people. Maybe most of these 'bums' in the park are just unbuilt people.
Friday, October 19, 2007
The Pitiful, The Astounding The Asinine:
The Pitiful, the Astounding, and the Asinine:
I have seen some pitiful sights in my life but watching Bush at the podium lecturing Turkey that it would be irresponsible for Turkey to invade Iraq to solve a dispute between Turkey and the Kurds in Iraq---that there are more peaceful ways to solve conflicts---now that is a pitiful sight coming from the 'John Wayne' of American foreign policy. I guess it is a picture of one 'Turkey' addressing another Turkey. I have a great idea. In order to get Bush, Cheney, et al to speak a modicum of truth let's waterboard 'em.
I know, out with the old and in with the new, but I read this week 18-20% of 13-14 yr old American girls have already had sexual intercourse. Watch out for little Martha at the door wanting to sell girl scout cookies to your 8th grade son Honschnival. Astounding.
And some things are truly asinine. They have developed a test which will predict Alzheimer's disease with 90% accuracy some 6 years before any symptoms appear. I already have my hat and coat on so I can find out today if I will have an incurable disease 6 years from now. That little peek into the future ought to keep those testing positive on a happy high for the next 6 years. Zippidy do Dah, Zippidy A's---Me can't wait for the final days.
I have seen some pitiful sights in my life but watching Bush at the podium lecturing Turkey that it would be irresponsible for Turkey to invade Iraq to solve a dispute between Turkey and the Kurds in Iraq---that there are more peaceful ways to solve conflicts---now that is a pitiful sight coming from the 'John Wayne' of American foreign policy. I guess it is a picture of one 'Turkey' addressing another Turkey. I have a great idea. In order to get Bush, Cheney, et al to speak a modicum of truth let's waterboard 'em.
I know, out with the old and in with the new, but I read this week 18-20% of 13-14 yr old American girls have already had sexual intercourse. Watch out for little Martha at the door wanting to sell girl scout cookies to your 8th grade son Honschnival. Astounding.
And some things are truly asinine. They have developed a test which will predict Alzheimer's disease with 90% accuracy some 6 years before any symptoms appear. I already have my hat and coat on so I can find out today if I will have an incurable disease 6 years from now. That little peek into the future ought to keep those testing positive on a happy high for the next 6 years. Zippidy do Dah, Zippidy A's---Me can't wait for the final days.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
THE ROAD TO RELIGION
The Road to Religion
I have oft expressed puzzled astonishment for the basis upon which most of us become members of this or that religious sect. I don't have any specific figures at hand here but it seems well over 90% of people select their religious affiliation via inheritance or marriage. Religion, like philosophy, focuses on our relationship to others in this world, our purpose in this world, a value system appropriate for seraphic living, what virtuous living is, the priorities essential for making ourselves a 'better' person, and our own proper relationship with the Creator of the Universe. None of these matters can logically be dismissed lightly as unimportant---certainly not something which we would accept via inheritance or part of a marriage pact---nor should we accept something so important that way. Humans have long since rebelled about someone else selecting a mate for their marriage, being assigned by birth a career/position in life, what kind of music we like, or art, or hobbies, etc.
To the extent the above is true, so be it. What is, is. Clearly, to the extent any of us dislike those of a different religious bent, there but for the grace of birth or marriage, goes I, or you, or us. Few, it can be said with any seriousness, are making reasoned deliberated choices regarding religion----we all pretty much just are born into, or marry into, our religion. That certainly keeps it all simple and orderly----and inane. For something which we accept being assigned to us, it is little wonder that these assigned guidelines for living end up being followed, in varying degrees, according to our life situation at any given moment. We are 'good', so to speak, when it is convenient to be 'good'---when 'good' doesn't conflict too much with our peculiar situation at the moment.
This then raises a broader question. What determined which religions became dominant in various regions of the earth? The answer, it seems, is even more unnerving than the immediate question of why each of us belongs to the religious sect we do. The dominant religion in various areas of the globe became dominant at GUN POINT. For example, Europe wasn't always Christian, or England always protestant, or the middle East always Muslim. Europe became Christian when the Roman Emperor Charlamagne sent armies across Europe and simply slaughtered those who resisted adopting Christianity as their religion. England became Protestant only after a series of Wars which alternately deposed Catholic and Protestant Kings. The middle East became Muslim only after guns and killing did the selecting. Killing to achieve such an objective is not entirely illogical. Beliefs, reasoned out or otherwise, are not facts. Nor do beliefs necessarily have to be acted out in public rituals, or consummated in grandiose cathedrals. To really get such thoughts out of society you really have to kill those who hold such thoughts in any serious vein. Only then are the beliefs gone and unable to be passed on to offspring or marriage partners. It seems those religions least amendable to violence end up minor sects viewed mostly as quaint abnormalities, amusing curiosities----like Buddhism, or Quakers, or Mennonites, etc. They are never a threat because they never really bother anyone. And because they never bother anyone they can never be a dominant religion. Quakers, Buddhists or Mennonites don't ride into town with guns and demand, "Be a Quaker/Mennonite/Buddhist or die".
In some societies there has been progress in terms of tolerance for varied religious beliefs---up to a point. In the U.S. it is ok to be Baptist instead of Episcopalian, it may be a bit less ok to be Catholic instead of Protestant or vice versa, and even less ok to be Muslim instead of Christian, etc. Underneath all this is probably the fear to what extent a different religion might try to force their way on matters. For the most part the tolerance is of a sort where "just don't try to get in my face about any of this crap". I mean it has to be crap, because if it is not, then what are our own religious notions? But tolerance comes with a price. The issues upon which religious beliefs are needed become less and less openly discussed in order to keep the peace. Thus comes the feeling that society would be more ethical if our own religious beliefs became the law of the land. I cannot claim to be free from all this myself. If I find myself having to deal on a daily basis with someone wearing a turban and wrapped in a robe, it immediately is an annoyance. It is not cool to my sensitivities, it is outside my own preferences of how to dress appropriately, and try as I might, I am suspicious of what goes on inside their mind. Certainly if someone looks different they must think different. Then we do the completely irrational. We issue a dress code. No one, from now on can wear a turban or whatever else it is that is sending us a signal that their thought processes might not be lined up in proper order. But frankly, most of us are pretty smart. Can't fool us. "You may dress like us, but you are not, so watch your step." And these 'they', of course, become more and more embittered. A few in society escape all this and manage to get along well with all sorts of religious or cultural deviates, but such an achievement is achieved only by bucking majority pressures. To make matters more complicated, we usually make exceptions. Circumstances force us to sometimes get past the images, and we can become genuine friends with this or that 'person of difference'. We might even treat them with more deference than most anyone else. The matter has thus been solved----proving we have no prejudice and the proof is there for all to see. Frankly, all that is displayed is a tangled web of inconsistent hazy interrelationships.
The operative mode, in one form or fashion, is mostly this: it is not sufficient one have faith in their own beliefs, it becomes an obsession that others must have their religious tenets in the right order or else. The or else comes in various forms including ostracization, making certain beliefs illegal, and death via military conquests. George Bush did not exactly invent pre-emptive slaughter of those who live or think differently. Strangely, the religious freedom embodied in a non religious government is one of the strongest deterrents against domestic unrest and violence. People who are free to follow their own religious beliefs have a sense of hope, mainly in the form that God will make life better for them if they follow their religious beliefs. The burdens of life are often then seen as some sort of test of their religious faith. Maybe so, but it never occurs to me to harass Keisha the cat to see if she will break the bonds of trust in me. I will always have embedded in my memory this picture of a minister paralyzed by a stroke in the hospital bed next to me and parishioners tearfully admonishing him to hang on, that "God is not through with you yet". My concept of God is a bit different.
While there are those who genuinely believe if their religious beliefs were made the law of the land there would be peace and a community of moral behavior, reality seems to dictate that a moral society is more related to an equitable distribution of wealth than to any particular set of religious dogmas. Any religious beliefs which do not lead to an equitable and fair distribution of wealth among the general population will never lead to any long term peace or moral community atmosphere.
The alternative to entrenched unchanging rigid religious beliefs passed down via birth, via religious scripture written by humans in past ages, or via marriage, is to acquire religious beliefs based on reason---and the reasoning based on the current state of knowledge at the time of the reasoning. The greatest gift given to humans, by the Creator through His created evolutionary process, is the ability to reason. Reasoning accumulated over time, based on a changing knowledge base, improves human life in all aspects, and there is no obvious reason why this should not include religion. Religious beliefs cannot improve if they do not change. Philosophy, which is really a form of religion, works best when human religious authorities are not regarded as all powerful. The nature of God is a central focus of both religion and philosophy.
Religious wars are ludicrous right up front. After all, beliefs of any sort are not facts. To die for a belief is not exactly heroic. I may believe a certain person would make a good President but that hardly justifies my killing someone who believes otherwise. And if I could pass a law requiring others to vote for my candidate, that adds nothing to the reality of whether or not my candidate would be a good President. Whether or not my candidate for President would really be a good President is based on the quality of reasoning as to why he/she would be a good President. Changing one's religious beliefs based on using reasoning applied to an advanced knowledge base of the times, is a healthy sign of religious progress, not an act of heresy. Only blinded fools brag that everything in life can change with the increased knowledge acquired over time except their religious beliefs which, with some sort of Bible in hand, are to remain etched in stone---to be changed only over their dead body.
In part the world is so warlike throughout history because those religions with the greatest intolerance and acceptance of war to resolve conflict, are the religions which become dominant over most regions on earth. Strangely, militaristic behavior is not supported by the tenets of their religion. The core religious values in all major religions are the same---some variant of do unto others as they do unto you, fair is fair, what goes around comes around, we are our brother's keeper, etc. But then there seems a split within each religion into two basic camps---the religious right fundamentalists and the religious left. The right tend to be rigid, intolerant, dead serious about their beliefs, angry, seek to punish perceived heretics, and act seeped in revenge. The left tend to be tolerant, forgiving, sympathetic, sharing, less dogmatic, open to change, more live and let live regarding religious beliefs. Thus it is never easy to provide any valid description of a Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc. Whatever one uses as a description applies only to a portion of the religious flock in question.
Missionary work is rarely wrapped in any real uplifting blessings for the targeted natives. Just ask the targeted American Indians or the tribes in Africa, South America, or anywhere else missionaries venture. What primitive people have ever been raised up by missionary zeal? Even in Europe, what were the Dark Ages but total dominance of religious authorities? In the end it will be freedom from religious persecution and access to economic opportunity which will raise and uplift primitive groups, not religious missionaries---this not withstanding any good intentions of the missionaries. Sadly, the good intentions of religious missionaries serve mostly to lull natives into accepting the economic and political entrepreneurs who follow---as night follows day---with their economic exploitation at gun point.
Most everyone looks for messages from God which will guide us how to live. A few, like Pat Robertson, get personal messages from God. Or so these few insist. Most of us simply inherit or marry into a religion and then accept the scriptures of that religion as true messages from God. When one examines history, and focuses on the forest, not the trees, this latter method clearly misses the mark. It manages to turn serious moral issues into mobs of religious soldiers acting in ways totally abhorrent to the basic precepts of their own religious scripture. Were it not for the slaughter and persecution it might be a humorous Laurel and Hardy show. Let us suppose, for a moment, that one rejects inheritance and marriage as the path to religious values. What then, is left. One could wait for messages from God to come booming out of the sky or to personally communicate with each and every one of us----OR, we can accept a God created universe operating via a God created evolutionary process---a process, over time, which we know more and more about, and then use our ever evolving powers of reason as the basis for religious beliefs. It is this God created evolutionary process which gave all of us a chance for individual existence, a process which frees us from blaming God for all the bad things that happen or praising him for every good thing that happens, while at the same time allowing us to praise the created self driven evolutionary process which, ever so slowly, evolves upwardly and onwardly to new forms and levels of life. Reason itself can lead to valid religious values which lead to a world that would truly be more peaceful, sharing, and just for all the life forms of an amazing God created evolutionary process. Reason does not deny the important contributions of any prophet written scriptures from the past anymore than modern science makes fools of earlier pioneering scientists. These past scientists are still heroes and so are past prophets in various religions.
I have oft expressed puzzled astonishment for the basis upon which most of us become members of this or that religious sect. I don't have any specific figures at hand here but it seems well over 90% of people select their religious affiliation via inheritance or marriage. Religion, like philosophy, focuses on our relationship to others in this world, our purpose in this world, a value system appropriate for seraphic living, what virtuous living is, the priorities essential for making ourselves a 'better' person, and our own proper relationship with the Creator of the Universe. None of these matters can logically be dismissed lightly as unimportant---certainly not something which we would accept via inheritance or part of a marriage pact---nor should we accept something so important that way. Humans have long since rebelled about someone else selecting a mate for their marriage, being assigned by birth a career/position in life, what kind of music we like, or art, or hobbies, etc.
To the extent the above is true, so be it. What is, is. Clearly, to the extent any of us dislike those of a different religious bent, there but for the grace of birth or marriage, goes I, or you, or us. Few, it can be said with any seriousness, are making reasoned deliberated choices regarding religion----we all pretty much just are born into, or marry into, our religion. That certainly keeps it all simple and orderly----and inane. For something which we accept being assigned to us, it is little wonder that these assigned guidelines for living end up being followed, in varying degrees, according to our life situation at any given moment. We are 'good', so to speak, when it is convenient to be 'good'---when 'good' doesn't conflict too much with our peculiar situation at the moment.
This then raises a broader question. What determined which religions became dominant in various regions of the earth? The answer, it seems, is even more unnerving than the immediate question of why each of us belongs to the religious sect we do. The dominant religion in various areas of the globe became dominant at GUN POINT. For example, Europe wasn't always Christian, or England always protestant, or the middle East always Muslim. Europe became Christian when the Roman Emperor Charlamagne sent armies across Europe and simply slaughtered those who resisted adopting Christianity as their religion. England became Protestant only after a series of Wars which alternately deposed Catholic and Protestant Kings. The middle East became Muslim only after guns and killing did the selecting. Killing to achieve such an objective is not entirely illogical. Beliefs, reasoned out or otherwise, are not facts. Nor do beliefs necessarily have to be acted out in public rituals, or consummated in grandiose cathedrals. To really get such thoughts out of society you really have to kill those who hold such thoughts in any serious vein. Only then are the beliefs gone and unable to be passed on to offspring or marriage partners. It seems those religions least amendable to violence end up minor sects viewed mostly as quaint abnormalities, amusing curiosities----like Buddhism, or Quakers, or Mennonites, etc. They are never a threat because they never really bother anyone. And because they never bother anyone they can never be a dominant religion. Quakers, Buddhists or Mennonites don't ride into town with guns and demand, "Be a Quaker/Mennonite/Buddhist or die".
In some societies there has been progress in terms of tolerance for varied religious beliefs---up to a point. In the U.S. it is ok to be Baptist instead of Episcopalian, it may be a bit less ok to be Catholic instead of Protestant or vice versa, and even less ok to be Muslim instead of Christian, etc. Underneath all this is probably the fear to what extent a different religion might try to force their way on matters. For the most part the tolerance is of a sort where "just don't try to get in my face about any of this crap". I mean it has to be crap, because if it is not, then what are our own religious notions? But tolerance comes with a price. The issues upon which religious beliefs are needed become less and less openly discussed in order to keep the peace. Thus comes the feeling that society would be more ethical if our own religious beliefs became the law of the land. I cannot claim to be free from all this myself. If I find myself having to deal on a daily basis with someone wearing a turban and wrapped in a robe, it immediately is an annoyance. It is not cool to my sensitivities, it is outside my own preferences of how to dress appropriately, and try as I might, I am suspicious of what goes on inside their mind. Certainly if someone looks different they must think different. Then we do the completely irrational. We issue a dress code. No one, from now on can wear a turban or whatever else it is that is sending us a signal that their thought processes might not be lined up in proper order. But frankly, most of us are pretty smart. Can't fool us. "You may dress like us, but you are not, so watch your step." And these 'they', of course, become more and more embittered. A few in society escape all this and manage to get along well with all sorts of religious or cultural deviates, but such an achievement is achieved only by bucking majority pressures. To make matters more complicated, we usually make exceptions. Circumstances force us to sometimes get past the images, and we can become genuine friends with this or that 'person of difference'. We might even treat them with more deference than most anyone else. The matter has thus been solved----proving we have no prejudice and the proof is there for all to see. Frankly, all that is displayed is a tangled web of inconsistent hazy interrelationships.
The operative mode, in one form or fashion, is mostly this: it is not sufficient one have faith in their own beliefs, it becomes an obsession that others must have their religious tenets in the right order or else. The or else comes in various forms including ostracization, making certain beliefs illegal, and death via military conquests. George Bush did not exactly invent pre-emptive slaughter of those who live or think differently. Strangely, the religious freedom embodied in a non religious government is one of the strongest deterrents against domestic unrest and violence. People who are free to follow their own religious beliefs have a sense of hope, mainly in the form that God will make life better for them if they follow their religious beliefs. The burdens of life are often then seen as some sort of test of their religious faith. Maybe so, but it never occurs to me to harass Keisha the cat to see if she will break the bonds of trust in me. I will always have embedded in my memory this picture of a minister paralyzed by a stroke in the hospital bed next to me and parishioners tearfully admonishing him to hang on, that "God is not through with you yet". My concept of God is a bit different.
While there are those who genuinely believe if their religious beliefs were made the law of the land there would be peace and a community of moral behavior, reality seems to dictate that a moral society is more related to an equitable distribution of wealth than to any particular set of religious dogmas. Any religious beliefs which do not lead to an equitable and fair distribution of wealth among the general population will never lead to any long term peace or moral community atmosphere.
The alternative to entrenched unchanging rigid religious beliefs passed down via birth, via religious scripture written by humans in past ages, or via marriage, is to acquire religious beliefs based on reason---and the reasoning based on the current state of knowledge at the time of the reasoning. The greatest gift given to humans, by the Creator through His created evolutionary process, is the ability to reason. Reasoning accumulated over time, based on a changing knowledge base, improves human life in all aspects, and there is no obvious reason why this should not include religion. Religious beliefs cannot improve if they do not change. Philosophy, which is really a form of religion, works best when human religious authorities are not regarded as all powerful. The nature of God is a central focus of both religion and philosophy.
Religious wars are ludicrous right up front. After all, beliefs of any sort are not facts. To die for a belief is not exactly heroic. I may believe a certain person would make a good President but that hardly justifies my killing someone who believes otherwise. And if I could pass a law requiring others to vote for my candidate, that adds nothing to the reality of whether or not my candidate would be a good President. Whether or not my candidate for President would really be a good President is based on the quality of reasoning as to why he/she would be a good President. Changing one's religious beliefs based on using reasoning applied to an advanced knowledge base of the times, is a healthy sign of religious progress, not an act of heresy. Only blinded fools brag that everything in life can change with the increased knowledge acquired over time except their religious beliefs which, with some sort of Bible in hand, are to remain etched in stone---to be changed only over their dead body.
In part the world is so warlike throughout history because those religions with the greatest intolerance and acceptance of war to resolve conflict, are the religions which become dominant over most regions on earth. Strangely, militaristic behavior is not supported by the tenets of their religion. The core religious values in all major religions are the same---some variant of do unto others as they do unto you, fair is fair, what goes around comes around, we are our brother's keeper, etc. But then there seems a split within each religion into two basic camps---the religious right fundamentalists and the religious left. The right tend to be rigid, intolerant, dead serious about their beliefs, angry, seek to punish perceived heretics, and act seeped in revenge. The left tend to be tolerant, forgiving, sympathetic, sharing, less dogmatic, open to change, more live and let live regarding religious beliefs. Thus it is never easy to provide any valid description of a Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc. Whatever one uses as a description applies only to a portion of the religious flock in question.
Missionary work is rarely wrapped in any real uplifting blessings for the targeted natives. Just ask the targeted American Indians or the tribes in Africa, South America, or anywhere else missionaries venture. What primitive people have ever been raised up by missionary zeal? Even in Europe, what were the Dark Ages but total dominance of religious authorities? In the end it will be freedom from religious persecution and access to economic opportunity which will raise and uplift primitive groups, not religious missionaries---this not withstanding any good intentions of the missionaries. Sadly, the good intentions of religious missionaries serve mostly to lull natives into accepting the economic and political entrepreneurs who follow---as night follows day---with their economic exploitation at gun point.
Most everyone looks for messages from God which will guide us how to live. A few, like Pat Robertson, get personal messages from God. Or so these few insist. Most of us simply inherit or marry into a religion and then accept the scriptures of that religion as true messages from God. When one examines history, and focuses on the forest, not the trees, this latter method clearly misses the mark. It manages to turn serious moral issues into mobs of religious soldiers acting in ways totally abhorrent to the basic precepts of their own religious scripture. Were it not for the slaughter and persecution it might be a humorous Laurel and Hardy show. Let us suppose, for a moment, that one rejects inheritance and marriage as the path to religious values. What then, is left. One could wait for messages from God to come booming out of the sky or to personally communicate with each and every one of us----OR, we can accept a God created universe operating via a God created evolutionary process---a process, over time, which we know more and more about, and then use our ever evolving powers of reason as the basis for religious beliefs. It is this God created evolutionary process which gave all of us a chance for individual existence, a process which frees us from blaming God for all the bad things that happen or praising him for every good thing that happens, while at the same time allowing us to praise the created self driven evolutionary process which, ever so slowly, evolves upwardly and onwardly to new forms and levels of life. Reason itself can lead to valid religious values which lead to a world that would truly be more peaceful, sharing, and just for all the life forms of an amazing God created evolutionary process. Reason does not deny the important contributions of any prophet written scriptures from the past anymore than modern science makes fools of earlier pioneering scientists. These past scientists are still heroes and so are past prophets in various religions.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
ETHICS OF WAR--Part 1
The Ethics of War:
As the years of age mount up, I see so many things different than as a young more uninformed know it all. In the most sarcastic vein maybe in youth I thought I knew it all and now, as an older survivor of the two earliest stages of life----maybe now I know I know it all. Even I, in my most self absorbed moment can see the absurdity of that.
War is good example of an activity many view differently as time passes. As a kid war was not much different from a sport contest. The Cowboys were the good guys, the Indians were the bad guys. The Brooklyn Dodgers were the good guys, the Yankees were the bad guys. It was all cut and dried. As I recall, the only good Indian was Tonto---a sort of Indian Step-n-Fetch-It. Back then War seemed straight forward enough. If someone like Hitler sent armies to capture other countries it was necessary to organize armies to stop him and those soldiers who did so were genuine heroes. That war, with the exception of the more recent Balkan War and first Iraq war may have been the last legitimate war this country ever waged. War was different back then, there was no volunteer army and all segments of society got drafted. Furthermore everyone in the country was required to sacrifice in assorted ways, not just the soldiers. It was kind of a common cause with common sacrifice. Today, our armies consist of those who choose a career of fighting, for whatever the purported reasons given for any particular fighting----whose military adventures now comprise the biggest industry in the country---in reality the biggest economic engine, outside the War on Drugs, which generates jobs and economic prosperity. The ethics of war and guns and death have become increasingly irrelevant. Even when the costs of war exceed the capacity to pay, it is now of no matter---we borrow money from other countries, give huge tax breaks to the wealthy, and bail out fraudulent speculators so the mirage of 'everything is just fine' can continue a bit longer.
It took me many years to realize how wars increasingly served as a strong economic engine for prosperity. It became the one industry which this country used for economic domination of the world. The vast majority of weapons loose across the globe were made by, and distributed by, the United States. In my earlier years military marches, parades, and patriotic songs gave me goose-bumps along with a feeling that this country was always right. If our President said some leader was bad I believed it. Every time we invaded another country, always of course for their own good, I supported it. When our Presidents said we had to fight in Vietnam to save us from some sort of domino effect of Communism, which would domino itself right across the ocean somehow and our great nation would fall, I believed them. Like most everyone I thought this was going to be a cakewalk for we had the most powerful military equipment in the world. It did seem strange, since we were killing them like flies and literally bombing their communities back into the stone age, that we could not win. It is hard to recall exactly when I realized winning had absolutely nothing to do with saving our own country from anything, that the whole shameless slaughter was driven by blind patriotism and economic interests. It took even more years for me to realize our foreign policy was being driven more and more by our now mammoth military industrial complex. Our biggest industry had become dependent on war for it's insatiable economic appetite. It didn't seem to matter much that this economic appetite was responsible for the needless and shameless slaughter of increasingly vast numbers of innocent victims across the globe. The reality was that war had become an economic necessity, and like the domestic War on Drugs, a politically effective way to garner votes. If we would not, or could not, find jobs for kids in the urban and rural ghettos we could at least lock them up and any politician who promised to lock them up longer increased his/her vote total. With the availability of modern methods of manipulating the baser emotions of the public, it became increasingly easy to package for the public images of domestic urban and rural slime balls who needed to be put in jail for longer and longer periods of time, along with foreign slime balls all over the globe whose existence required military bases and men to hunt them down before they toppled a government we propped up with economic and military support, all such support which just happened to be good for our own economy.
Vietnam caused a lot of people to rethink the ethics of what we were doing to that country. As Ali stated, "I ain't got nothing against no Viet Cong and refuse to go over and kill them". With the passage of time the protests grew larger and eventually so widespread that our government had to back down, close down the war, and bring the troops back home. Lesson learned? Not really. In a really deft maneuver, the military industrial complex, with it's huge economic engine, created the concept of a voluntary army. By removing any threat of personal involvement or danger, the George Bushs' of the world, the religious and political right, and assorted patriots with braces on their brains, would energetically support empire building----a logical expansion of our 'manifest destiny'.Of course the empire would be built over the dead bodies of a volunteer army. A neat bonus to these sort of ventures would be domestic full employment, all kinds of jobs relating to this massive global military deployment. For the Dick Cheneys' of the world visions of lucrative government contracts danced in their heads. To keep the vast amount of money flowing required active military engagement, in various forms, all over the globe. It became no longer engagement in military activity which was difficult to sell to the American public, disengagement became the hard sell.
MANIFEST DESTINY. This seemed so noble, so harmless, so sensible, so necessary back when America first began to use the term. We were here, we wanted the land, the Indians were in the way, they had to go and we had guns. I have often thought about the ethics involved. What about 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'? Let's face it, sometimes religious principles are useful and fit neatly into our activities and other times they become an impediment. America, at the time Europeans found it, was not really a sovereign nation with any singular government, singular army, centralized control over anything. In addition, it was a vast unpopulated country. Using reason to formulate an ethical solution is not particularly hard for a situation like that. With so much land there is no reason why one group could not have had sovereign control over part of the land and the other group have control over the rest. Let's just admit the Indians deserved statehood, their own sovereign nation, just a surely as displaced Palestinians deserve their own sovereign nation. Furthermore, if one group is going to displace another---for logical reasons, the group doing the displacing owes the displaced group assistance to develop a prosperous existence. With time, manifest destiny extended to South America for whom we then declared ourselves some sort of big brother protector. All of South America was declared off limits to foreign interference---except for us of course---whose manifest destiny gave us a sort of a God bestowed right to determine the political and economic destiny of the entire South American continent. The result is not very impressive.
No one could argue America did not have a hell of a lot of which to be proud, and the Statue of Liberty became a symbol of hope for others all across the globe. Practically every large society in history which became a prosperous and military power evolved two mentalities: One was that they were particularly blessed by God, singled out by God for the good blessings; and second the nation then embarks on some form of empire building. Reason and history should serve to put the brakes on both, but reason never prevails. Where is any evidence that God has ever had any long term favored nation or favored group? There simply is none. If there are no long term favored groups then one would have to postulate God favors this group for a while and then another group for a while and thus it continues like some sort of flavor of the times. Why is there this human need to construct a God Who is some sort of petulant temperamental prejudicial puppeteer responsible for all the good and bad things that happen to individuals or nations? The advantage humans have in the created evolutionary process is the ability to reason. What kind of future lies in store for humans as this evolutionary process proceeds depends on the extent to which human reason can deal with ever changing times.
In the context of the thoughts above I no longer feel the same way about "God Bless America', 'under God we trust', 'with God's help we can win this or that war', 'may God help this or that person or nation', or any other contrived statements which implies God is on this side or another side. The only legitimate question left is whether God ever interferes with His created evolutionary process. If reason can generate any answer here it is beyond my reasoning ability. Killing, as a defensive measure to protect oneself or a nation from an unprovoked military attack, is logically defendable. War, to help defend another country from external attack is defensible. War, to protect genocide within another country is defensible as long as there is a fair process to characterize the killings as genocide. After that war is not defensible. Deliberate interference with the politics or economics of another sovereign nation, which obviously could lead to war, is indefensible. In the early history of this country, certainly in the minds of the founding father's, meddling in the affairs of other sovereign countries was a big no-no. With the exception of Teddy Roosevelt and the Mexican Wars this concept of non meddling in the affairs of sovereign nations held up until after World War II.
After World War two, for maybe innocent enough notions, America decided we needed military bases across the globe. We kind of insisted we needed to be the policeman of the world, for the good of the rest of the world, and to protect ourselves from Communism. Never, in the entire history of our world, has any nation ever really benefitted very long from empire building. There is no population of any sovereign nation who appreciates military occupation via military bases and the subsequent propping up of some externally favored government by the occupying military forces. Many of the attacks on Americans across the globe, including 9/11 were not exactly unprovoked attacks. Al Qaida only came into existance after we established military bases in Saudi Arabia. The idea that we are over here minding our own business and others are attacking us is simply nonsense.
Based on the principles upon which this country was founded:
There is no country in the world with designs on capturing the U.S. and taking over our country, therefore why are we attacking other countries?
We have no business attacking sovereign countries because we don't like their form of government (which more accurately means not the form of government but whether they follow our economic agenda).
We have no business planting military bases across the globe in sovereign countries. (Like we would ever allow that, especially military forces from countries of a different religion).
We have no business with pre-emptive military attacks on other nations. If we do this then other countries have the same right, including terrorist groups.
We have no business selling military equipment across the globe so that third world governments can terrorize their own people with the weapons.
Nuclear weapons should be banned, for ethical reasons, period. That means all countries, not us deciding who can or who cannot have nuclear weapons.
If any country refuses to sell us goods at market prices we do have the right then to use military force to force free trade. That takes care of the oil nonsense.
There is no moral basis for attacking poor countries, leveling their communities, creating chaos so that thugs terrorize their population while we drop bombs which kill civilians almost indiscriminately.
We have no business torturing suspected anybodies. The info gained is rarely worth much, is often downright misleading---which generates even more unjust arrests, and gives the green light for other groups to follow suit. What really is the difference between beheading someone vs launching some sort of missile bomb which blows up a bunch of people. At least the beheaders know exactly who they are killing.
Live and let live was the foreign policy motto of our country's founders and we need return to that wonderful philosophy.
We desperately need to lead by example in the world, not demanding things right and left at bomb-point.
We need to focus our money and efforts on humanitarian and environmental needs, not spending most of our money on maintaining a military industrial complex whose function today is mostly to keep the pockets of the well connected peddlers of govt military contracts brimming with absurd profits, fostering religious and political intolerance, and creating an ever increasing number of terrorist groups determined on revenge for the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by our 'freedom' fighters'. We are spreading freedom alright, the kind of freedom which means 'nothing left to lose'. Ask the Iraqis.
Part 2 to be continued.
As the years of age mount up, I see so many things different than as a young more uninformed know it all. In the most sarcastic vein maybe in youth I thought I knew it all and now, as an older survivor of the two earliest stages of life----maybe now I know I know it all. Even I, in my most self absorbed moment can see the absurdity of that.
War is good example of an activity many view differently as time passes. As a kid war was not much different from a sport contest. The Cowboys were the good guys, the Indians were the bad guys. The Brooklyn Dodgers were the good guys, the Yankees were the bad guys. It was all cut and dried. As I recall, the only good Indian was Tonto---a sort of Indian Step-n-Fetch-It. Back then War seemed straight forward enough. If someone like Hitler sent armies to capture other countries it was necessary to organize armies to stop him and those soldiers who did so were genuine heroes. That war, with the exception of the more recent Balkan War and first Iraq war may have been the last legitimate war this country ever waged. War was different back then, there was no volunteer army and all segments of society got drafted. Furthermore everyone in the country was required to sacrifice in assorted ways, not just the soldiers. It was kind of a common cause with common sacrifice. Today, our armies consist of those who choose a career of fighting, for whatever the purported reasons given for any particular fighting----whose military adventures now comprise the biggest industry in the country---in reality the biggest economic engine, outside the War on Drugs, which generates jobs and economic prosperity. The ethics of war and guns and death have become increasingly irrelevant. Even when the costs of war exceed the capacity to pay, it is now of no matter---we borrow money from other countries, give huge tax breaks to the wealthy, and bail out fraudulent speculators so the mirage of 'everything is just fine' can continue a bit longer.
It took me many years to realize how wars increasingly served as a strong economic engine for prosperity. It became the one industry which this country used for economic domination of the world. The vast majority of weapons loose across the globe were made by, and distributed by, the United States. In my earlier years military marches, parades, and patriotic songs gave me goose-bumps along with a feeling that this country was always right. If our President said some leader was bad I believed it. Every time we invaded another country, always of course for their own good, I supported it. When our Presidents said we had to fight in Vietnam to save us from some sort of domino effect of Communism, which would domino itself right across the ocean somehow and our great nation would fall, I believed them. Like most everyone I thought this was going to be a cakewalk for we had the most powerful military equipment in the world. It did seem strange, since we were killing them like flies and literally bombing their communities back into the stone age, that we could not win. It is hard to recall exactly when I realized winning had absolutely nothing to do with saving our own country from anything, that the whole shameless slaughter was driven by blind patriotism and economic interests. It took even more years for me to realize our foreign policy was being driven more and more by our now mammoth military industrial complex. Our biggest industry had become dependent on war for it's insatiable economic appetite. It didn't seem to matter much that this economic appetite was responsible for the needless and shameless slaughter of increasingly vast numbers of innocent victims across the globe. The reality was that war had become an economic necessity, and like the domestic War on Drugs, a politically effective way to garner votes. If we would not, or could not, find jobs for kids in the urban and rural ghettos we could at least lock them up and any politician who promised to lock them up longer increased his/her vote total. With the availability of modern methods of manipulating the baser emotions of the public, it became increasingly easy to package for the public images of domestic urban and rural slime balls who needed to be put in jail for longer and longer periods of time, along with foreign slime balls all over the globe whose existence required military bases and men to hunt them down before they toppled a government we propped up with economic and military support, all such support which just happened to be good for our own economy.
Vietnam caused a lot of people to rethink the ethics of what we were doing to that country. As Ali stated, "I ain't got nothing against no Viet Cong and refuse to go over and kill them". With the passage of time the protests grew larger and eventually so widespread that our government had to back down, close down the war, and bring the troops back home. Lesson learned? Not really. In a really deft maneuver, the military industrial complex, with it's huge economic engine, created the concept of a voluntary army. By removing any threat of personal involvement or danger, the George Bushs' of the world, the religious and political right, and assorted patriots with braces on their brains, would energetically support empire building----a logical expansion of our 'manifest destiny'.Of course the empire would be built over the dead bodies of a volunteer army. A neat bonus to these sort of ventures would be domestic full employment, all kinds of jobs relating to this massive global military deployment. For the Dick Cheneys' of the world visions of lucrative government contracts danced in their heads. To keep the vast amount of money flowing required active military engagement, in various forms, all over the globe. It became no longer engagement in military activity which was difficult to sell to the American public, disengagement became the hard sell.
MANIFEST DESTINY. This seemed so noble, so harmless, so sensible, so necessary back when America first began to use the term. We were here, we wanted the land, the Indians were in the way, they had to go and we had guns. I have often thought about the ethics involved. What about 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'? Let's face it, sometimes religious principles are useful and fit neatly into our activities and other times they become an impediment. America, at the time Europeans found it, was not really a sovereign nation with any singular government, singular army, centralized control over anything. In addition, it was a vast unpopulated country. Using reason to formulate an ethical solution is not particularly hard for a situation like that. With so much land there is no reason why one group could not have had sovereign control over part of the land and the other group have control over the rest. Let's just admit the Indians deserved statehood, their own sovereign nation, just a surely as displaced Palestinians deserve their own sovereign nation. Furthermore, if one group is going to displace another---for logical reasons, the group doing the displacing owes the displaced group assistance to develop a prosperous existence. With time, manifest destiny extended to South America for whom we then declared ourselves some sort of big brother protector. All of South America was declared off limits to foreign interference---except for us of course---whose manifest destiny gave us a sort of a God bestowed right to determine the political and economic destiny of the entire South American continent. The result is not very impressive.
No one could argue America did not have a hell of a lot of which to be proud, and the Statue of Liberty became a symbol of hope for others all across the globe. Practically every large society in history which became a prosperous and military power evolved two mentalities: One was that they were particularly blessed by God, singled out by God for the good blessings; and second the nation then embarks on some form of empire building. Reason and history should serve to put the brakes on both, but reason never prevails. Where is any evidence that God has ever had any long term favored nation or favored group? There simply is none. If there are no long term favored groups then one would have to postulate God favors this group for a while and then another group for a while and thus it continues like some sort of flavor of the times. Why is there this human need to construct a God Who is some sort of petulant temperamental prejudicial puppeteer responsible for all the good and bad things that happen to individuals or nations? The advantage humans have in the created evolutionary process is the ability to reason. What kind of future lies in store for humans as this evolutionary process proceeds depends on the extent to which human reason can deal with ever changing times.
In the context of the thoughts above I no longer feel the same way about "God Bless America', 'under God we trust', 'with God's help we can win this or that war', 'may God help this or that person or nation', or any other contrived statements which implies God is on this side or another side. The only legitimate question left is whether God ever interferes with His created evolutionary process. If reason can generate any answer here it is beyond my reasoning ability. Killing, as a defensive measure to protect oneself or a nation from an unprovoked military attack, is logically defendable. War, to help defend another country from external attack is defensible. War, to protect genocide within another country is defensible as long as there is a fair process to characterize the killings as genocide. After that war is not defensible. Deliberate interference with the politics or economics of another sovereign nation, which obviously could lead to war, is indefensible. In the early history of this country, certainly in the minds of the founding father's, meddling in the affairs of other sovereign countries was a big no-no. With the exception of Teddy Roosevelt and the Mexican Wars this concept of non meddling in the affairs of sovereign nations held up until after World War II.
After World War two, for maybe innocent enough notions, America decided we needed military bases across the globe. We kind of insisted we needed to be the policeman of the world, for the good of the rest of the world, and to protect ourselves from Communism. Never, in the entire history of our world, has any nation ever really benefitted very long from empire building. There is no population of any sovereign nation who appreciates military occupation via military bases and the subsequent propping up of some externally favored government by the occupying military forces. Many of the attacks on Americans across the globe, including 9/11 were not exactly unprovoked attacks. Al Qaida only came into existance after we established military bases in Saudi Arabia. The idea that we are over here minding our own business and others are attacking us is simply nonsense.
Based on the principles upon which this country was founded:
There is no country in the world with designs on capturing the U.S. and taking over our country, therefore why are we attacking other countries?
We have no business attacking sovereign countries because we don't like their form of government (which more accurately means not the form of government but whether they follow our economic agenda).
We have no business planting military bases across the globe in sovereign countries. (Like we would ever allow that, especially military forces from countries of a different religion).
We have no business with pre-emptive military attacks on other nations. If we do this then other countries have the same right, including terrorist groups.
We have no business selling military equipment across the globe so that third world governments can terrorize their own people with the weapons.
Nuclear weapons should be banned, for ethical reasons, period. That means all countries, not us deciding who can or who cannot have nuclear weapons.
If any country refuses to sell us goods at market prices we do have the right then to use military force to force free trade. That takes care of the oil nonsense.
There is no moral basis for attacking poor countries, leveling their communities, creating chaos so that thugs terrorize their population while we drop bombs which kill civilians almost indiscriminately.
We have no business torturing suspected anybodies. The info gained is rarely worth much, is often downright misleading---which generates even more unjust arrests, and gives the green light for other groups to follow suit. What really is the difference between beheading someone vs launching some sort of missile bomb which blows up a bunch of people. At least the beheaders know exactly who they are killing.
Live and let live was the foreign policy motto of our country's founders and we need return to that wonderful philosophy.
We desperately need to lead by example in the world, not demanding things right and left at bomb-point.
We need to focus our money and efforts on humanitarian and environmental needs, not spending most of our money on maintaining a military industrial complex whose function today is mostly to keep the pockets of the well connected peddlers of govt military contracts brimming with absurd profits, fostering religious and political intolerance, and creating an ever increasing number of terrorist groups determined on revenge for the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by our 'freedom' fighters'. We are spreading freedom alright, the kind of freedom which means 'nothing left to lose'. Ask the Iraqis.
Part 2 to be continued.
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