The Case Against Voluntary Armies
The case here begins with an attempt at historical perspective. Except for Cuba and Mexico the U.S., early on in our history, was not much concerned about invading other countries. If others didn't bother us, we didn't bother them. I don't know how much of this was any ethical or moral superiority to other nations---it was more likely due to our vast frontier. Expansion, for the United States, was within our own nation, we hardly needed colonies in other parts of the world.
But the frontier vanished rather quickly coupled with a vast increase in our ability to produce a wide variety of marketable products. Our interest in Hawaii, the Philippines and a few other Pacific nations was fueled by economic considerations, not any genuine desire to bring progress and freedom to primitive peoples. This kind of motive may have been the motive of individual missionaries, but in reality these missionaries just made it easier for us to invade and thereby ensure a foothold for American Corporations. The profits from these markets barely affected the economic prosperity of the native populations. It was trickle down in it's most abused form. There has hardly ever been any native population who has ever profited much being invaded by, and subjugated by, any foreign nation. Ask the American Indians, the native Hawaiians, the native Philippinos, the Vietnamese, the Afghanistans, most African nations, etc. Despite the assertions of many, these 'friendly' invasions have little to do with religion, form of government, culture-----no, it has invariably more to do with economic exploitation. Cheap labor and cheap products are the fueling points.
Until World Wars I and II the United States was dead set against getting involved in the wars of other nations. World War I and World War II remain the most noble wars the U.S. ever waged. We really did help prevent other countries from being conquered by armies from Germany, Italy, and Japan. All other major powers paid a painful price in terms of destruction to their own infrastructure and industries. We did not. No one bombed our cities and manufacturing facilities. The second World War did a lot to pull the U.S. out of the depression and establish us a a robust industrial and military power. It is becoming less and less clear that this was any long term blessing. Some, and I included, would argue that all this military and unregulated capitalism has brought us to the brink of catastrophic collapse. Time will tell.
It was only after World War II that the United States began to view itself as not only the protector of the 'free world' but the policeman. Politicians saw evil behind any country whose policies we could not control. You were either for us and cooperated with us, or you were against us. That was the bottom line, not democracy or Christianity, or culture or ethnicity. We expected, and mostly got nations to let our companies mine their natural resources or own land to cultivate crops. We believed we were chosen by God with a manifest destiny to save the world and protect the world from evil sources.
Colonialism by Europe didn't end because of any moral principles, but primarily because the colonies became too expensive to maintain and too expensive to control. Without putting a policeman on every corner local populations become increasingly difficult to control. In other words the cost of exploitation became greater than the benefits. The U.S. became rich enough that it could afford military bases all over the globe and mount invasions of other countries to protect our economic interests. The turning point was Vietnam. This, or so it was thought, would be a cake walk. A primitive third world country against a country with vast military might. We lost 35,000 soldiers and we killed roughly 2 million Vietnamese. And we lost. Ho Chi Minh was, if nothing else, a very perceptive military genius: "You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win." It was here that effective terrorism began. It was here where the notion that the security of the United States is dependent on what type of government some small nation has was debunked. It was here, that for the first time, the American public stopped an American invasion through street protests and widespread disillusionment.
Vietnam could have been a real learning lesson but it was short lived. As Eisenhower had predicted, a vast military industrial complex had grown to such a proportion that enabled it to virtually control many government decisions. It was that sly ole Nixon who correctly assessed that the draft had to go or the U.S. would be limited on what kinds of wars we could begin. People care if they or their own kids and friends get drafted into a war and possibly killed. And people care if they themselves have to sacrifice for wars of questionable necessity. And thus America became a nation with a voluntary army AND in order to ensure most people don't have to sacrifice for wars the wars were fought on borrowed money. This takes care of street riots. Through all the recent wars most Americans have not suffered at all. In a very real sense war and weaponry have become our most viable industry. Wars are now being waged, hardly at all on any ethical basis, but for economic reasons and blind patriotism. We still use words like freedom fighters and peace warriors and insist our sacrifices are all for sound moral values---peace, freedom, democracy, etc.
Why, it might be asked, would anyone volunteer to serve in the armed forces and be sent to virtual hell holes all over the globe? A good percentage of the young who volunteer do it because they need a decent paying secure job. They either sign up or remain unemployed or trapped in a bad neighborhood environment. A much smaller percentage are attracted to the violence and the adrenaline rush which goes with it. Of course these kind of young people shouldn't be let loose in anyone's neighborhood with a weapon. If you talk to one of these young people and see the eagerness with which they seek military engagements it is really scary. They wouldn't last long on our own domestic police force. Then there are those who are filled with blind patriotic propaganda: "My country right or wrong". They see it as their patriotic duty to go any where, fight any war, for any reason, if the government declares it is necessary. In all these cases courage cannot be denied. Most of us don't have that kind of brainless courage. These people need to become cliff climbers and bungee jumpers and anything which requires courage without killing other people. They are certainly useful in legitimate wars as long as they are a minority of soldiers and are kept in line. This balance is hard to accomplish with a voluntary army.
A military draft serves a necessary purpose. It prevents our Government from waging unethical wars. It ensures our armies don't become goon squads--- disrespecting, torturing, and mistreating citizens in the area of conflict. And if war is necessary, it ought to be something for which all Americans are asked to sacrifice. There needs to be a strong reason to go to war, much like there was in World War I and II. And war should be paid for by the generation who wages it. We have waged war and instituted tax cuts at the same time while borrowing huge amounts of money to pay for the war. In all the recent wars I can't think of any way in which I personally had to sacrifice anything. In a legitimate war every citizen sacrifices for legitimate reasons. I don't see humor that in the last few decades the U.S. has gone from the largest creditor on the globe to the biggest debtor, all of which happened under a so called conservative President (Ronald Reagan). All this unethical and self serving madness is rapidly coming home to roost. Most all empires of the past collapsed because the cost of maintaining a foreign empire of any sort was too great, and because the wealth at home became so accumulated by the very rich wealthy class at the expense first of the poor, and then the middle class. What is different for our empire situation are all the environmental problems, including species extinction and human overpopulation, which are descending on the entire globe. Some say we are past the point of return. It seems we very well might be. One can only hope not.
The word volunteer is a misnomer. While a good number really do volunteer because they want the thrill, excitement, and adrenaline rush that goes with combat, most are there because they need a job, and some are there for the same reason kids join gangs---they want to feel important and belong to some sort of 'family' values. Sad to say, but for some a military experience is the only time in their life where they will feel important, a genuine part of something. The old fashioned way of war with two uniformed armies going at each other is gone, probably gone for good. Modern weaponry is too sophisticated for that, with buttons to press to track and chase down any known soldiers. This leaves terrorism, on both sides really, as the primary method of assault. With more communication devices terrorists of any ilk, whether it be the 'good' guys or the 'bad' guys, can be carried out quite effectively without most terrorists having to ever actually meet each other. In places like Afghanistan most citizens have no source of income if they don't cooperate with whatever 'terrorist' group---uniformed soldiers or otherwise----who control their countryside for the time being. They don't fight for any of the reasons we babble on about, they fight to stay alive, to protect their families, to fight with whomever seems to be on the winning side. Residents of Afghanistan sometimes switch sides several times a year. To call this a war is a real stretch. It is unadulterated terror and torture by the Mollatoffs and Cheneyites of the globe. A war is something where people fight for land or religion or form of government. In Afghanistan the vast majority of people simply fight to stay alive, if one is permitted to use the word alive loosely. It is not much of a life.
At any rate the replacement of the military draft with a voluntary army has been a disaster. If frees up the military industrial complex, with all their lobbyists, to always find a reason to fight a war somewhere to justify the expense and existence of such a large employer. Lately, we can't win the conflicts no matter how many people we kill or displace from their homes and we can't afford the costs. Reinstate the draft and fund wars by a special tax on those making more than $100,000/yr and see how many wars the U.S. ever starts.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
QUESTIONS TO PONDER
Questions To Ponder
I don't think one can attain a high level of contentment in life until one has thoroughly examined the meaning of life and what one values most. If we can just figure out on what basis we are to believe anything, and understand our own innate nature, then perhaps we can progress to a level of contentment. You cannot get GOOD ANSWERS if you do not ask the right questions. You cannot UNDERSTAND if you do not ask the right questions. Following are questions which I find worth thinking about.
How important is it for one to live an admirable life as well as live a life which is affluent? A lot of people live a good (affluent) life and we envy them. Others, like Lincoln, hardly led enviable lives, but certainly admirable lives. Can a purely enviable life be really a contented life? I have known many an affluent person who lives an apparent enviable life, but are upset, looking over their shoulder, agitated, and angry all of the time.
If one does the right thing for the wrong reason is this ethical? If you don't hit someone you dislike only because you don't want to be punished for it, is this really ethical behavior? If I do some good things only because I think maybe it will get me to Heaven am I really that good of a person? "If you don't shoot me I will give you a $1000 dollars." If you don't consequently shoot me what is ethical about your not shooting me? Put another way do you really want someone to be nice to you solely as a means to get to Heaven? Every person who is a disliked minority in some aspect of their lives know full well that many people are nice only on the surface, and given an opening, will find some sort of religious or otherwise justification to ensure you get the short end of the stick.
Is something right because God or the Pope or a Minister etc. says it is or does God or others approve an action because it is right? On what basis do we decide what is right? Do we examine the evidence? Do we just accept whatever inherited scripture says or the Pope says? If Popes over the years have committed every major crime known, then how can a Pope be truly any kind of mouthpiece for God? Is it wrong to believe anything based on insufficient evidence? Maybe, if it hurts others it must be wrong, since you have then hurt others based on beliefs which have insufficient evidence to support such beliefs.
Has religion produced more good than bad throughout history? Has there ever been a religion which has not committed massacres of common people? Maybe Buddhism. All religions, at one time or another, have oppressed certain groups of people. Slavery is an example. Are those who believed at the time slavery was right not to blame because of the time they lived in? Or should they have known better? What about groups of people still oppressed today? Are we to be condemned for this oppression, or if we are raised to believe it is ok to oppress certain groups does that make us a candidate for forgiveness? Probably not. I say probably not because we have little evidence to support such beliefs. You can't assault someone or kill someone or discriminate against someone because someone or some dogma simply states they are evil or whatever. Human behavior in the absence of reason is precisely wrong because there is no reason for the behavior. To simply justify your oppression of others by 'God wills it" is oxymoronic, self serving, and intellectually bankrupt.
How useful is blind obedience to inherited dogma if people who claim to believe the same dogma reach different conclusions? In terms of pure ethics what religious dogma adds any more ethical strength to issues than the Golden Rule? Any religious dogma which does not meet the Golden Rule is justifiable on what basis? What do rituals, ostentatious cathedrals, prayers, hymn singing, social events, etc have to do with ethics? None of it is necessarily wrong, but simply irrelevant to ethics.
Is ethics relative to culture? Is something really right in one culture and wrong in another? We mock Muslims who think they can get into Heaven by killing perceived enemies. If suicide bombing is the only tactic available to them they use that. We, on the other hand, push buttons to kill people and send soldiers into supposedly sovereign countries to kill those who our government perceives to be enemies. If our soldiers die in the process we have funerals and a minister or priest assures us, in one way or another, that they died for a noble cause and therefore will go to Heaven. Is there that much difference? One religion says kill in advance, and the other says, after the fact, that you did good and will therefore go to Heaven. There is never a shortage of priests of some sort to bless patriotic massacres by combatants on all sides. Some cultures kill and eat dogs, others kill and eat cattle, others think cows are sacred, etc. Whatever the correct moral stance, it must be derived via reason, not inherited dogma or culture.
Is it reasonable to believe God answers prayers? He certainly doesn't answer all prayers. Why would God, to save anyone or any group from horrific happenings, need to have our prayers before doing the right thing? Hume's questioning is still valid today: "Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then He is impotent. Is God able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is God both able and willing? Then God is evil." There has always been a lot of strange posturing throughout history in this respect. Some kind of 'thou shalt not kill' UNLESS GOD WILLS IT. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" UNLESS GOD WILLS OTHERWISE. It is hard to conceive of unethical behavior as something which becomes ethical if God wills it. The logic is bizarre. Why would God will unethical behavior?
If God decides the future and controls the evolutionary process then what difference does it make what kind of ethics rules my behavior? What will be will be. If someone else decides the outcome of a game---not the players, then all the talk about effort, fair play, training, game plans, etc, are all a waste of time and have no meaning. Isn't "Thy will be done" kind of asinine? If you stand at the top of a cliff and say to a rock as you release it, "Thy will be done". Huh? Like as if the rock needs your permission to fall down. Let's suppose God is the creator of the evolutionary process, including all the laws which govern this process. Evolution is chance, diversity, and survival of the fittest. If God never intervenes in His created process, then God Himself doesn't know the outcome either. The only question is whether God ever intervenes. And that is unanswerable. God clearly does not always intervene and statistically it seems He/She hardly ever intervenes. If God will always make things come out right then it matters not at all what I do.
How do we know when we need reconsider our moral beliefs? Probably, when our moral beliefs start to line up to support our personal advantages in life, we ought to pause and think it through again. Those with the most advantages are more likely to win the game. Thus any system which ensures that certain teams will have better players, better coaches, better equipment, better training, better facilities, etc. will of course find those teams winning most of the games. But what would be ethical about such a system? Of course, ironically, all these advantages don't stop the winning team from claiming they 'earned' the victory. The game of life is much the same way. Those with the most advantages---genetically, inherited wealth-wise, and environmentally---are most likely to gain for themselves a comfortable affluent life. They are not likely to share too much of their material gains because "I earned it, let others be like me and earn it the old fashioned way---earn it!!!!" What a farce.
To the extent I have achieved some kind of 'good (affuent) life', chance, environment, and genetics get most of the credit. What part does free will play? One plays with the cards held in one's hand. Free will is of course important. But even more important are the cards dealt to you. Ethics, to a large degree, boils down to making the effort to level the playing field for those dealt poor cards. The purpose of ethics? Ethics is the road to contentment. Materialism, by itself, cannot generate any genuine contentment. Anyone who has ever been around and observed the wealthy or powerful can see this is obvious IF they lack real commitment to ethics (the Golden Rule).
Is there such a thing as moral luck? Two people get real angry at each other over this or that and a physical fight ensues. There are several possible consequences here which depend almost entirely on luck. One can win and no one gets seriously hurt. No one wins and no one gets seriously hurt, someone wins and someone gets seriously hurt, someone wins and both get seriously hurt, or someone falls during the fight, hits their head on something and is killed. The consequences for this moral luck are not minor. There may be no charges whatsoever, there may be assault charges, there may be attempted murder charges, there may be murder charges. No matter what the charges or lack of charges the intent was the same. Of course life is full of this. You may drive 90 miles an hour and kill no one, or maybe just cause a non lethal accident or you may cause a lethal accident. Was this action of driving 90 miles an hour an intent to murder? Probably not, but if someone is killed, a murder took place as a consequence. The examples here are endless. Of course there is moral luck. And intent is no easy activity to measure.
Is intent the sole measure of ethics? I give you a herb of some sort because I believe it will cure your illness, but you die from the herb. Aren't the ethics of this rather complex? We are now back to the belief in slavery as part of a culture.
Shouldn't you have known that your belief in the herb has no tested studies? On the other hand, anecdotal science is not always incorrect. Some herbs probably really do work, have just never been put through any scientific testing. The net result of all this doubt stuff demonstrates that personal or religious beliefs should never be the law of the land. Thomas Jefferson made this point over and over. Thus, in the herb example, if you present the herb as something you or some people believe in, the recipient has a choice to make. They understand the risk. It is similar to the question of who should be allowed to marry or to have an abortion. These are areas of belief. Making things like these a matter of law is unethical because individual rights trump individual beliefs. Because a belief is not made into a law does not reflect on the validity of the belief one way or the other. People should always be free to get others to believe as they do. But THAT SHOULD BE IT. Over time, truth eventually wins out. There are not too many people anymore who argue that slavery is ethical or denying women the vote is ethical etc. God's created evolutionary process works, it just takes millions of years. I wonder just how far this process can go and if it will ever end? Does God even know? And where did God come from anyway? It is always best to remember that what we don't know is more impressive than what we do know----except for you and I. And sometimes I wonder about you.
What exactly is free will? We understand the importance of genes and environment. If I were born and raised in the Gaza strip with different parents just about everything about me would be different, physically and mentally. It is pretty absurd then for me to say that I, with a capital I, earned my affluent and pleasant lifestyle, including my ethics. How much of it did I really earn? Luck, chance, and diversity are seeped in the evolutionary process. Yet, all of us know how many times in life we personally made decisions which impacted greatly on our lives. Who one marries, what kind of career one pursues, the kind of friends one has, etc. are not minor decisions. We do have free will to a substantial degree---or maybe this is true more for some than others. Perhaps in the right environment free will exists to a greater degree. Some unlucky kid born in one of our own urban Drug War Zone ghettoes has far less opportunities to invoke their own free will on their destiny. They are, from the start, and without relief, often deprived of emotional, social, and intellectual opportunities. Fear, distrust, and anger reign as the emotional state. No one much seems to care about them and they in turn often decide they don't care about others then either. Pleasure is then derived from hurting others and even more pleasure if hurting others can be done in packs. Family becomes gangs. And gangs essentially know others don't give a shit about them and they don't give a shit about others. They have a unique kind of freedom---NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE. Now add the obvious importance of the formative years to anyone's emotional, intellectual, and physical development and we begin to see how free will in an urban or rural ghetto often ends up stunted, PERMANENTLY.
No one who has ever had serious sustained contact with the truly environmentally disadvantaged cannot but be impressed with the permanent damage done by such an environment. No society which allows such environments to continue to exist or even worsen can be labeled an ethical society. Blaming the victims is hardly an honest or logical response. When someone views their own success as a personal achievement available to these 'others' and feel all these low lifers have to do is earn their blessings like he/she did----well I have this intense wish to see them be raised in the same environment, with the same heredity and see how far they would go in life. Free will is most important when the cards in competing hands are somewhat similar. When the playing fields are level, free will can make the difference between losers and winners. The ethical charge to any society, under any political or religious system, is to make the playing fields as level as possible. Even then, one's own blessings should be shared with the less blessed. Where the Golden Rule prevails the amount of happiness for the greatest numbers will be achieved. And on a personal basis, those with the greatest tolerance for diversity and support for those in need are exactly the people in any society with the greatest contentment. The conservative right of any religion or political system are always the angriest ones in their society. When they talk you can feel the intensity of their dislike for diversity, hear the shrillness of their voice, see the anger all over their face, and they are always the ones who want to make their own beliefs the law of the land, who support every war, who see military or police actions as the solution to every problem, and who blame minorities for the failure of the majority to have made life better in society. It is always those 'damn' others, invariably some sort of minority, who has ruined life for the good people like themselves---even if, by any objective measure, they themselves are at the pinnacle of their own described 'good life'. Where is their contentment for the good life they claimed they 'earned'? Rush Limbaugh and others like him will be unhappy campers in life no matter how many millions they earn or how many mansions they own, or how many expensive delicacies they ingest. When one's ethics is right, contentment follows. Heaven may or may not be in the cards, but the reward of ethical behavior is bestowed in the form of contentment right here on earth.
In the absence of thinking about and resolving in your own mind the larger questions about life and your own place in it, you become simply a pawn of heredity, circumstance, and luck----reacting emotionally to an endless series of events and hurdles erupting daily without yourself having mastered the proper ethical response to life's travails. Without the proper ethical perspective no one can roll with the punches, take the hits, find contentment in justice or tolerance of diversity. Without confronting the larger questions of life God's created evolutionary process cannot be appreciated or remotely understood. Without such understanding contentment is elusive and fleeting as one becomes an emotional reactor to the mechanisms embedded in the evolutionary process. We are part of the process, what is---IS, and we make the most of it for ourselves and our fellow travelers, as best we can, as often as we can, with a thankfulness for the chance of individual contentment. To some degree contentment is a state of mind, dependent on others and our own ability to appreciate and do justice to all we meet along the way. Circling the wagons wrapped in family, religious, or patriotic "values" seeds discontentment of an insidious and endless nature. Happiness in such a state is limited to periods of brief spurts.
I don't think one can attain a high level of contentment in life until one has thoroughly examined the meaning of life and what one values most. If we can just figure out on what basis we are to believe anything, and understand our own innate nature, then perhaps we can progress to a level of contentment. You cannot get GOOD ANSWERS if you do not ask the right questions. You cannot UNDERSTAND if you do not ask the right questions. Following are questions which I find worth thinking about.
How important is it for one to live an admirable life as well as live a life which is affluent? A lot of people live a good (affluent) life and we envy them. Others, like Lincoln, hardly led enviable lives, but certainly admirable lives. Can a purely enviable life be really a contented life? I have known many an affluent person who lives an apparent enviable life, but are upset, looking over their shoulder, agitated, and angry all of the time.
If one does the right thing for the wrong reason is this ethical? If you don't hit someone you dislike only because you don't want to be punished for it, is this really ethical behavior? If I do some good things only because I think maybe it will get me to Heaven am I really that good of a person? "If you don't shoot me I will give you a $1000 dollars." If you don't consequently shoot me what is ethical about your not shooting me? Put another way do you really want someone to be nice to you solely as a means to get to Heaven? Every person who is a disliked minority in some aspect of their lives know full well that many people are nice only on the surface, and given an opening, will find some sort of religious or otherwise justification to ensure you get the short end of the stick.
Is something right because God or the Pope or a Minister etc. says it is or does God or others approve an action because it is right? On what basis do we decide what is right? Do we examine the evidence? Do we just accept whatever inherited scripture says or the Pope says? If Popes over the years have committed every major crime known, then how can a Pope be truly any kind of mouthpiece for God? Is it wrong to believe anything based on insufficient evidence? Maybe, if it hurts others it must be wrong, since you have then hurt others based on beliefs which have insufficient evidence to support such beliefs.
Has religion produced more good than bad throughout history? Has there ever been a religion which has not committed massacres of common people? Maybe Buddhism. All religions, at one time or another, have oppressed certain groups of people. Slavery is an example. Are those who believed at the time slavery was right not to blame because of the time they lived in? Or should they have known better? What about groups of people still oppressed today? Are we to be condemned for this oppression, or if we are raised to believe it is ok to oppress certain groups does that make us a candidate for forgiveness? Probably not. I say probably not because we have little evidence to support such beliefs. You can't assault someone or kill someone or discriminate against someone because someone or some dogma simply states they are evil or whatever. Human behavior in the absence of reason is precisely wrong because there is no reason for the behavior. To simply justify your oppression of others by 'God wills it" is oxymoronic, self serving, and intellectually bankrupt.
How useful is blind obedience to inherited dogma if people who claim to believe the same dogma reach different conclusions? In terms of pure ethics what religious dogma adds any more ethical strength to issues than the Golden Rule? Any religious dogma which does not meet the Golden Rule is justifiable on what basis? What do rituals, ostentatious cathedrals, prayers, hymn singing, social events, etc have to do with ethics? None of it is necessarily wrong, but simply irrelevant to ethics.
Is ethics relative to culture? Is something really right in one culture and wrong in another? We mock Muslims who think they can get into Heaven by killing perceived enemies. If suicide bombing is the only tactic available to them they use that. We, on the other hand, push buttons to kill people and send soldiers into supposedly sovereign countries to kill those who our government perceives to be enemies. If our soldiers die in the process we have funerals and a minister or priest assures us, in one way or another, that they died for a noble cause and therefore will go to Heaven. Is there that much difference? One religion says kill in advance, and the other says, after the fact, that you did good and will therefore go to Heaven. There is never a shortage of priests of some sort to bless patriotic massacres by combatants on all sides. Some cultures kill and eat dogs, others kill and eat cattle, others think cows are sacred, etc. Whatever the correct moral stance, it must be derived via reason, not inherited dogma or culture.
Is it reasonable to believe God answers prayers? He certainly doesn't answer all prayers. Why would God, to save anyone or any group from horrific happenings, need to have our prayers before doing the right thing? Hume's questioning is still valid today: "Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then He is impotent. Is God able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is God both able and willing? Then God is evil." There has always been a lot of strange posturing throughout history in this respect. Some kind of 'thou shalt not kill' UNLESS GOD WILLS IT. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" UNLESS GOD WILLS OTHERWISE. It is hard to conceive of unethical behavior as something which becomes ethical if God wills it. The logic is bizarre. Why would God will unethical behavior?
If God decides the future and controls the evolutionary process then what difference does it make what kind of ethics rules my behavior? What will be will be. If someone else decides the outcome of a game---not the players, then all the talk about effort, fair play, training, game plans, etc, are all a waste of time and have no meaning. Isn't "Thy will be done" kind of asinine? If you stand at the top of a cliff and say to a rock as you release it, "Thy will be done". Huh? Like as if the rock needs your permission to fall down. Let's suppose God is the creator of the evolutionary process, including all the laws which govern this process. Evolution is chance, diversity, and survival of the fittest. If God never intervenes in His created process, then God Himself doesn't know the outcome either. The only question is whether God ever intervenes. And that is unanswerable. God clearly does not always intervene and statistically it seems He/She hardly ever intervenes. If God will always make things come out right then it matters not at all what I do.
How do we know when we need reconsider our moral beliefs? Probably, when our moral beliefs start to line up to support our personal advantages in life, we ought to pause and think it through again. Those with the most advantages are more likely to win the game. Thus any system which ensures that certain teams will have better players, better coaches, better equipment, better training, better facilities, etc. will of course find those teams winning most of the games. But what would be ethical about such a system? Of course, ironically, all these advantages don't stop the winning team from claiming they 'earned' the victory. The game of life is much the same way. Those with the most advantages---genetically, inherited wealth-wise, and environmentally---are most likely to gain for themselves a comfortable affluent life. They are not likely to share too much of their material gains because "I earned it, let others be like me and earn it the old fashioned way---earn it!!!!" What a farce.
To the extent I have achieved some kind of 'good (affuent) life', chance, environment, and genetics get most of the credit. What part does free will play? One plays with the cards held in one's hand. Free will is of course important. But even more important are the cards dealt to you. Ethics, to a large degree, boils down to making the effort to level the playing field for those dealt poor cards. The purpose of ethics? Ethics is the road to contentment. Materialism, by itself, cannot generate any genuine contentment. Anyone who has ever been around and observed the wealthy or powerful can see this is obvious IF they lack real commitment to ethics (the Golden Rule).
Is there such a thing as moral luck? Two people get real angry at each other over this or that and a physical fight ensues. There are several possible consequences here which depend almost entirely on luck. One can win and no one gets seriously hurt. No one wins and no one gets seriously hurt, someone wins and someone gets seriously hurt, someone wins and both get seriously hurt, or someone falls during the fight, hits their head on something and is killed. The consequences for this moral luck are not minor. There may be no charges whatsoever, there may be assault charges, there may be attempted murder charges, there may be murder charges. No matter what the charges or lack of charges the intent was the same. Of course life is full of this. You may drive 90 miles an hour and kill no one, or maybe just cause a non lethal accident or you may cause a lethal accident. Was this action of driving 90 miles an hour an intent to murder? Probably not, but if someone is killed, a murder took place as a consequence. The examples here are endless. Of course there is moral luck. And intent is no easy activity to measure.
Is intent the sole measure of ethics? I give you a herb of some sort because I believe it will cure your illness, but you die from the herb. Aren't the ethics of this rather complex? We are now back to the belief in slavery as part of a culture.
Shouldn't you have known that your belief in the herb has no tested studies? On the other hand, anecdotal science is not always incorrect. Some herbs probably really do work, have just never been put through any scientific testing. The net result of all this doubt stuff demonstrates that personal or religious beliefs should never be the law of the land. Thomas Jefferson made this point over and over. Thus, in the herb example, if you present the herb as something you or some people believe in, the recipient has a choice to make. They understand the risk. It is similar to the question of who should be allowed to marry or to have an abortion. These are areas of belief. Making things like these a matter of law is unethical because individual rights trump individual beliefs. Because a belief is not made into a law does not reflect on the validity of the belief one way or the other. People should always be free to get others to believe as they do. But THAT SHOULD BE IT. Over time, truth eventually wins out. There are not too many people anymore who argue that slavery is ethical or denying women the vote is ethical etc. God's created evolutionary process works, it just takes millions of years. I wonder just how far this process can go and if it will ever end? Does God even know? And where did God come from anyway? It is always best to remember that what we don't know is more impressive than what we do know----except for you and I. And sometimes I wonder about you.
What exactly is free will? We understand the importance of genes and environment. If I were born and raised in the Gaza strip with different parents just about everything about me would be different, physically and mentally. It is pretty absurd then for me to say that I, with a capital I, earned my affluent and pleasant lifestyle, including my ethics. How much of it did I really earn? Luck, chance, and diversity are seeped in the evolutionary process. Yet, all of us know how many times in life we personally made decisions which impacted greatly on our lives. Who one marries, what kind of career one pursues, the kind of friends one has, etc. are not minor decisions. We do have free will to a substantial degree---or maybe this is true more for some than others. Perhaps in the right environment free will exists to a greater degree. Some unlucky kid born in one of our own urban Drug War Zone ghettoes has far less opportunities to invoke their own free will on their destiny. They are, from the start, and without relief, often deprived of emotional, social, and intellectual opportunities. Fear, distrust, and anger reign as the emotional state. No one much seems to care about them and they in turn often decide they don't care about others then either. Pleasure is then derived from hurting others and even more pleasure if hurting others can be done in packs. Family becomes gangs. And gangs essentially know others don't give a shit about them and they don't give a shit about others. They have a unique kind of freedom---NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE. Now add the obvious importance of the formative years to anyone's emotional, intellectual, and physical development and we begin to see how free will in an urban or rural ghetto often ends up stunted, PERMANENTLY.
No one who has ever had serious sustained contact with the truly environmentally disadvantaged cannot but be impressed with the permanent damage done by such an environment. No society which allows such environments to continue to exist or even worsen can be labeled an ethical society. Blaming the victims is hardly an honest or logical response. When someone views their own success as a personal achievement available to these 'others' and feel all these low lifers have to do is earn their blessings like he/she did----well I have this intense wish to see them be raised in the same environment, with the same heredity and see how far they would go in life. Free will is most important when the cards in competing hands are somewhat similar. When the playing fields are level, free will can make the difference between losers and winners. The ethical charge to any society, under any political or religious system, is to make the playing fields as level as possible. Even then, one's own blessings should be shared with the less blessed. Where the Golden Rule prevails the amount of happiness for the greatest numbers will be achieved. And on a personal basis, those with the greatest tolerance for diversity and support for those in need are exactly the people in any society with the greatest contentment. The conservative right of any religion or political system are always the angriest ones in their society. When they talk you can feel the intensity of their dislike for diversity, hear the shrillness of their voice, see the anger all over their face, and they are always the ones who want to make their own beliefs the law of the land, who support every war, who see military or police actions as the solution to every problem, and who blame minorities for the failure of the majority to have made life better in society. It is always those 'damn' others, invariably some sort of minority, who has ruined life for the good people like themselves---even if, by any objective measure, they themselves are at the pinnacle of their own described 'good life'. Where is their contentment for the good life they claimed they 'earned'? Rush Limbaugh and others like him will be unhappy campers in life no matter how many millions they earn or how many mansions they own, or how many expensive delicacies they ingest. When one's ethics is right, contentment follows. Heaven may or may not be in the cards, but the reward of ethical behavior is bestowed in the form of contentment right here on earth.
In the absence of thinking about and resolving in your own mind the larger questions about life and your own place in it, you become simply a pawn of heredity, circumstance, and luck----reacting emotionally to an endless series of events and hurdles erupting daily without yourself having mastered the proper ethical response to life's travails. Without the proper ethical perspective no one can roll with the punches, take the hits, find contentment in justice or tolerance of diversity. Without confronting the larger questions of life God's created evolutionary process cannot be appreciated or remotely understood. Without such understanding contentment is elusive and fleeting as one becomes an emotional reactor to the mechanisms embedded in the evolutionary process. We are part of the process, what is---IS, and we make the most of it for ourselves and our fellow travelers, as best we can, as often as we can, with a thankfulness for the chance of individual contentment. To some degree contentment is a state of mind, dependent on others and our own ability to appreciate and do justice to all we meet along the way. Circling the wagons wrapped in family, religious, or patriotic "values" seeds discontentment of an insidious and endless nature. Happiness in such a state is limited to periods of brief spurts.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Assata
Assata
My life and career have forced me into meaningful contact with a wide variety of religious, political, ethnic, and geographical people. I have had Chinese, Jewish, black, and Korean roommates. I have taught in a rural high school, a Big Ten Suburban University, an inner city State University, worked summers on a Grounds Crew, been a Chauffeur, a front end loader driver, a clerk In a Sears Roebuck store, mower of the fairways on a golf course, a high school track and cross country coach, set a course record, earned 8 varsity letters in college, been fired from a job once, an attempted firing once, received teacher of the year awards in three different educational institutions, lived in the hills as a kid, lived in rented rooms for years, lived in apartments for years, lived in high rises, lived for 20 years lived on a two and a half acre highly landscaped home in a rural area, and for shorter or longer periods have formed friendships with simply all sorts of people of every race, political bent, religious bent, sexual orientation----poor, middle class, and extremely rich.
Anyone who knows me knows I like to write, and with the background above there is much to write about. Let's just say, like many others, I have seen a lot in life, and more important, have seen life through the eyes of diverse players on life's stage. The terminational years, for me, are spent in large part putting all the experiences together to form perspectives on life, which, of course, will upon my death mean absolutely nothing. Life, in my case, continues to mean a lot and be interesting as long as I can be out and about in nature, and have the mental where-with-all to gain new understandings about different facets of life.
I just finished reading a book titled Assata. She was a young blk revolutionary during the sixties caught up in the turmoil which only those who lived in the 60's remember. The book is interesting because it depicts the personality and thought processes of the young in any revolutionary movement. It is hard to get any revolutionary movement going if there is no truth at all to their cause. It is hard to get progressive change in any society without revolutionary movements. Revolutionary movements, by nature, create a lot of young victims, and not too often any victory for them in the normal sense of victory. Women's lib, blk power, union power, religious crusades, gay power, etc never change society without bloodshed, and many young lives will be destroyed in the struggles BUT society does change as a consequence and these lost lives are not totally in vain.
I was teaching in a major metropolitan area during the sixties, myself young then and energetic too. I knew many young people like Assata----wide eyed, bright, energetic, very verbal, emotional, determined, brave, likable, independent, impatient, dogmatic, vulnerable, angry, careless, brave, stubborn, anti authority, and foolish. They invariably had tunnel vision and could see the wrongs in society all blown up until that is all they could see. You were either with them or you were against them and that was about the sum of it to them. Like their opponents the world was simply divided between the good guys and the bad guys. The conflict was usually about some sort of tyranny by the majority. They sought justice and the status quo sought rule and order. Young people like Assata thrived on excitement and all the planning and the comradeship within which they found themselves cocooned. Like strong believers in just about anything, violence follows when stymied or frustrated by the realities of injustices. The Have's always have the power, the wealth, and laws, including the police and army power to win any direct confrontation. What the revolutionaries have is always nothing much to lose, anger, and the freedom to destroy property and lives of authority figures. People who have things don't really like to see riots in the streets and police and other authority figures being killed. For most of the young revolutionaries, if they don't get themselves killed, they will end up in jail or at best delusional, penniless, and unemployable. It is a rough life.
It would be too long a tale to recount the specifics and experiences of Assata. There was a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. Assata was severely wounded and eventually was sentenced to prison for her part in the murder of a state trooper. I am sure at that time I was all for hanging her and all those of her kind. I know, at this time in my life, that such acts are not justifiable or tolerable. Of course neither is injustice. In societal conflicts of this sort good people die on both sides, good people on both sides do unfair despicable things. Emotion rules the day, sides are drawn, and the raw emotional actions by so many on both sides are not pretty. In societal conflicts it is almost always the young who cannot stand the oppression and turn it into an immediate life or death struggle. Older adults with authority and power feel a need to defend the status quo at any price and teach protesters a hard lesson or two. on who is in control.
A lot of life is pure tragedy. Everything that happens on both sides is understandable but simply seeped in tragedy. Assata escaped from jail and was given asylum in Cuba. She is still there. The evolutionary process may produce amazing results in the long run, but the script is a bloody one, a merciless one, an ever on going situational challenge of Tails you lose, heads someone else wins. Most of us never have the guts or stupidity or whatever to lay everything on the line for our beliefs. Of course we never change the world either.
My life and career have forced me into meaningful contact with a wide variety of religious, political, ethnic, and geographical people. I have had Chinese, Jewish, black, and Korean roommates. I have taught in a rural high school, a Big Ten Suburban University, an inner city State University, worked summers on a Grounds Crew, been a Chauffeur, a front end loader driver, a clerk In a Sears Roebuck store, mower of the fairways on a golf course, a high school track and cross country coach, set a course record, earned 8 varsity letters in college, been fired from a job once, an attempted firing once, received teacher of the year awards in three different educational institutions, lived in the hills as a kid, lived in rented rooms for years, lived in apartments for years, lived in high rises, lived for 20 years lived on a two and a half acre highly landscaped home in a rural area, and for shorter or longer periods have formed friendships with simply all sorts of people of every race, political bent, religious bent, sexual orientation----poor, middle class, and extremely rich.
Anyone who knows me knows I like to write, and with the background above there is much to write about. Let's just say, like many others, I have seen a lot in life, and more important, have seen life through the eyes of diverse players on life's stage. The terminational years, for me, are spent in large part putting all the experiences together to form perspectives on life, which, of course, will upon my death mean absolutely nothing. Life, in my case, continues to mean a lot and be interesting as long as I can be out and about in nature, and have the mental where-with-all to gain new understandings about different facets of life.
I just finished reading a book titled Assata. She was a young blk revolutionary during the sixties caught up in the turmoil which only those who lived in the 60's remember. The book is interesting because it depicts the personality and thought processes of the young in any revolutionary movement. It is hard to get any revolutionary movement going if there is no truth at all to their cause. It is hard to get progressive change in any society without revolutionary movements. Revolutionary movements, by nature, create a lot of young victims, and not too often any victory for them in the normal sense of victory. Women's lib, blk power, union power, religious crusades, gay power, etc never change society without bloodshed, and many young lives will be destroyed in the struggles BUT society does change as a consequence and these lost lives are not totally in vain.
I was teaching in a major metropolitan area during the sixties, myself young then and energetic too. I knew many young people like Assata----wide eyed, bright, energetic, very verbal, emotional, determined, brave, likable, independent, impatient, dogmatic, vulnerable, angry, careless, brave, stubborn, anti authority, and foolish. They invariably had tunnel vision and could see the wrongs in society all blown up until that is all they could see. You were either with them or you were against them and that was about the sum of it to them. Like their opponents the world was simply divided between the good guys and the bad guys. The conflict was usually about some sort of tyranny by the majority. They sought justice and the status quo sought rule and order. Young people like Assata thrived on excitement and all the planning and the comradeship within which they found themselves cocooned. Like strong believers in just about anything, violence follows when stymied or frustrated by the realities of injustices. The Have's always have the power, the wealth, and laws, including the police and army power to win any direct confrontation. What the revolutionaries have is always nothing much to lose, anger, and the freedom to destroy property and lives of authority figures. People who have things don't really like to see riots in the streets and police and other authority figures being killed. For most of the young revolutionaries, if they don't get themselves killed, they will end up in jail or at best delusional, penniless, and unemployable. It is a rough life.
It would be too long a tale to recount the specifics and experiences of Assata. There was a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. Assata was severely wounded and eventually was sentenced to prison for her part in the murder of a state trooper. I am sure at that time I was all for hanging her and all those of her kind. I know, at this time in my life, that such acts are not justifiable or tolerable. Of course neither is injustice. In societal conflicts of this sort good people die on both sides, good people on both sides do unfair despicable things. Emotion rules the day, sides are drawn, and the raw emotional actions by so many on both sides are not pretty. In societal conflicts it is almost always the young who cannot stand the oppression and turn it into an immediate life or death struggle. Older adults with authority and power feel a need to defend the status quo at any price and teach protesters a hard lesson or two. on who is in control.
A lot of life is pure tragedy. Everything that happens on both sides is understandable but simply seeped in tragedy. Assata escaped from jail and was given asylum in Cuba. She is still there. The evolutionary process may produce amazing results in the long run, but the script is a bloody one, a merciless one, an ever on going situational challenge of Tails you lose, heads someone else wins. Most of us never have the guts or stupidity or whatever to lay everything on the line for our beliefs. Of course we never change the world either.
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