Life As a Gated Goal

Life As a Gated Goal

Note: ( Above Musing follows this note)

Author Notes about this Blog

This blog was set up originally simply as a file deposit for musings which I sent out to friends. Somehow a lot of people managed to find the URL, and that is ok.  Since the blogs were not originally meant for general distribution most have not been carefully edited.  I may go back now and do the proper editing. I have recently published a book titled: The Meaning of Life.  Anyone interested can find it listed in Amazon.com under the author name Reid S. James. There is a description of the content along with the listing. It was published in late October 2013. Any income from the book will be donated to various 501 category charities. Given the nature of the book, to do otherwise would be hypocritical. Given the original intent of this URL I have never provided an opportunity for any response to these musings. I think I will leave it that way as I don't have the time for a lot of responding to comments by others. These musings are written as food for thought, and do not purport to be anything other than what the blog implies: personal musings. Were I to personally know many of you who visit this URL I sense we would have a lot of engaging conversations. There are too many now for that to be practical.

Life As a Gated Goal

For people like myself, kind of living in the best of all possible worlds, our goals, aspirations, and efforts are essentially, when viewed from the broadest perspective, little more than an endless struggle to build a life gated off from reality. 

What is reality? This is a term whose definition requires more brain power than all or most of us really have. So I reckon my use of the word above refers to some sort of majority existence. Early on we learn that life is not particularly fair, ethical or tolerant, and is seeped in diversity, unescapable tragedies for many, seeped in chance, emotions, wants, fears, regrets, hopes, effort, uncertainty, and unpredictability. Despite all this, most people value life, albeit for so many it would be hard to explain exactly what it is that they value.

I know, and we all probably know, even if we won't acknowledge it, that our lives would be so different if we had been born to different parents, in a different time, in a different environment. These variables are so drastically varied that any personal orientation to reality is elusive. One thing is obvious, when we were born we certainly did not earn any of our 'environment' or 'genetics'----whether good or bad.  An egg and sperm hooked up, both from already living cells, and we arrived in the world with a hand of cards dealt us, not earned in any remote way. 

Everyone should read the book by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait, and Andrew Thompson titled Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures). The Title is misleading in that it sort of suggests it is a tawdry sex adventure of some sort.  But actually, it is a well written account describing the lives of three humanitarian aide workers who were involved in countries like Rwanda, Haiti, Somalia, Cambodia, Liberia, and Bosnia. For those of us who live in some sort of Best of All Possible Worlds, reading this book is about the only way to envision the life of those who live in the Worst of All Possible Worlds. 

Relating to this 'other' world is rather incomprehensible to the rest of us, and worst of all, it is hard not to arrive at the ghastly conclusion that most of the world, in varying degrees, is more like this 'worst' world than the world in which we live.  In fact, the majority, or increasingly near-majority of people who live in our own country, live more in a world like this 'worst' world than any world we ourselves live in. I have no more contact with the world of inner city Detroit or Newark, or LA, or Chicago, or Washington D.C, or Birmingham, etc than I do with those who live in Rwanda or Haiti. I love to wander around Chicago as part of my almost daily wanderings in nature, or the city of Chicago, but I sure as hell don't wander around the majority parts of Chicago. Like most others I gate myself off from these areas. I do see some of them on the city trains and buses, but mostly I just wonder about their lives. Change the environment and I guess that could be me sitting there all raggedy-dressed, or with an aura of 'don't even think of messing with me" (I don't), or just a picture of having no good cards in their life's hand. 

It is hard to let a book like Emergency Sex go. So I wonder just what percentage of people in the world live, in varied degrees, in this other world so different from the one of my daily life.  As an educated guess, if I can use this phrase lightly, I suppose most of the people in the United States, most of Europe, Australia, Canada, and maybe a few other places, live more like me. But wow, that leaves most of the people in South America, Central America, Russia, China, India, Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans, the Near East, all mired to varying degrees in this other, 'worst of all possible worlds." 

It is not the poverty itself so much which is ghastly, but the inhumanity of humanity in these places. Life simply has so little value. It is understood that people can be poor and still contented, often far more contented than the wealthy. BUT, and this is the kicker, there is no real personal security at all in these countries, and whatever 'little world' of contentment achieved can be cruelly, abruptly, and savagely upended at most any moment.  And when this happens these humanitarian aid workers end up exposed to a form of human civilization that is not civilized at all. Change in these countries does not involve simply some sort of economic shift from one group to another but unimaginable acts of cruelty to others which have no reasonable basis, and no limits to the torture and hatred regarding the acts committed on others. No one is exempt from the most heinous cruelty including young children, women, pregnant women, old people, pets, spouses, and so on. No horror movie could be more repugnant and frightening than these real life upheavals. Everything about this 'other' world becomes unimaginable to those of us in 'the best of all possible worlds'.

Here are two extreme examples taken from the book: 

"These were unarmed civilians, mostly women and children, almost all  died of blunt or sharp-force trauma.  They were hacked or clubbed to death, or both….This is an average massacre by Rwandian standards, unremarkable in scale or circumstance.  Several thousand civilians had gathered in the church grounds, promised protection by the Hutu governor.  Hutu militias went methodically through the crowd instructing other Hutus to leave, and government soldiers cut off the escape routes….It's hard work killing that many people in a confined space with only machetes and clubs, so the killers returned home to their families each night to rest and drink before the next day's work. It took three days and so far we know of only two survivors."

Here's one from Liberia:

"There is an area in the south where a Nigerian ECOMOG contingent (A UN peace force) was deployed for several months this summer.  They were in the habit of encouraging very young Liberian girls from the nearby displaced persons camp to visit and 'seducing' them with rice and a little money.  The girls were nine or ten.  Then a Ghanaian ECOMOG contingent established a camp nearby.  The Ghanaians were more gentle and generous with the girls.  They would give them a whole can full of rice as opposed to the more paltry handful from the Nigerians.  So the girls started frequenting the Ghanaian camp more than the Nigerian.  One day dead little girls started appearing on the path from the displaced persons camp to the Ghanaian camp---but not on the path to the Nigerians.  The girls had been decapitated and their heads inserted inside their nine-year-old genitals.  In the opinion of the investigating officer, this was a message to the girls from the Nigerians that it wouldn't be worth it to frequent the Ghanaians for the sake of a little extra rice. 

And these are the peacekeepers" 

I blame most of this nightmare on human overpopulation, communities who are fighting for limited natural resources in ways which are devoid of any lofty humaneness. It is not enough to acquire the meager wealth of others but the most horrid forms of genocide must be used in the process. Take Rwanda, the government could have ordered guns to give out to the Hutus to kill the Tutus, but instead the government ordered machetes to achieve their goals. That is beyond understanding, but no more so than the willingness of 'good' people to actually use these machetes on their neighbors.  If push comes to shove, am I capable of this kind of behavior towards others who have never personally harmed me?  Yet every time one cabal of humans commits attempted genocide of another group, the vast majority of those in that cabal go along with the atrocities, and actively, or at least passively, participate. 

It is hard to understand what we should think of all this which is going on in most of the world today. Life on this planet has been going on for billions of years and human life for hundreds of thousands of year. The process is brilliant enough and the laws which control the process seem to apply to every species with no exceptions, and thus we can assume the future will bring positive changes---eventually---to the imperfections still existing in human behaviors. What is hard to envision is whether our own species will improve with time, as it has in the past, or whether a new and 'better' species will evolve after our species manages to implode upon itself. In other words, are we the last species to evolve?  The best I can do at this stage of my life, is wander and wonder. 

Progress Arriving on Marriage, Marijuana, and Control Over Our own Dying Process.

Progress Arriving on Marriage, Marijuana, and Control Over Our own Dying Process.

Note: ( Above Musing follows this note)

Author Notes about this Blog

This blog was set up originally simply as a file deposit for musings which I sent out to friends. Somehow a lot of people managed to find the URL, and that is ok.  Since the blogs were not originally meant for general distribution most have not been carefully edited.  I may go back now and do the proper editing. I have recently published a book titled: The Meaning of Life.  Anyone interested can find it listed in Amazon.com under the author name Reid S. James. There is a description of the content along with the listing. It was published in late October 2013. Any income from the book will be donated to various 501 category charities. Given the nature of the book, to do otherwise would be hypocritical. Given the original intent of this URL I have never provided an opportunity for any response to these musings. I think I will leave it that way as I don't have the time for a lot of responding to comments by others. These musings are written as food for thought, and do not purport to be anything other than what the blog implies: personal musings. Were I to personally know many of you who visit this URL I sense we would have a lot of engaging conversations. There are too many now for that to be practical.

Progress Arriving on Marriage, Marijuana, and Control Over Our own Dying Process.

15 years ago I railed/whined/ranted against several issues which now appear to be falling in place as resolved. Marijuana, gay marriage and control over our own dying process are all issues currently well under way to resolution. 

Most surprising has been the advancement of gay marriage. Progress here is simply astounding. It may be a simple enough proposition that if we want the right to choose who to marry, then others then need the same right. It may have seemed rational enough to claim who someone else marries has no bearing on our own marriage. And it may have seemed fair enough that our own religious beliefs should not be made the law of the land. But sex and love, being sex and love, are hard issues about which to be rational. Emotions tend to rule in this area. As James Baldwin once said, "Everybody's journey is individual.  You don't know with whom you're going to fall in love…..if you fall in love with the wrong color, wrong religion, wrong sex---you fall in love."

The most irrational of the three policies on the issues listed above have been the policies on marijuana.  As a physiologist with adequate physiological knowledge of how recreational drugs act on our body systems, placing marijuana as more toxic to the body than alcohol or nicotine has always been a major absurdity. We all know many people who die from medical conditions related to the use of nicotine or alcohol. Who do we know that dies from conditions related to marijuana use? Most everyone knows moderate use of alcohol can be relatively harmless. Medical scientists know that some people have a gene which can induce a person toward becoming an alcoholic, and these people should not drink at all.  And we all know that no level of nicotine use is safe---period. And history has shown that making a popular recreational drug illegal does not work, but just fosters a huge underground criminal industry to market the illegal drug.  And history has clearly shown the impact on our inner cities by making a popular recreational drug illegal.  And what ethical, social, or economic sense does it make to take teenagers who sell marijuana on a street corner, put them in jail (at a cost of @$30,000/yr) with mandatory sentences of up to ten years?  And on what scientific basis would football claim marijuana to be a drug which enhances athletic performance and therefore make it a basis for discipline? Assault---tolerable up a pt., robbery---tolerable up to a point, binge drinking---tolerable, etc and so on. But smoke pot to mellow out from stress? Suspension is on the way. 

It seems safe to predict now that marijuana is finally going to put in the same category as nicotine and alcohol. Mostly, it seems, because states and the federal government need the money from taxing it, and our prisons are not only bulging at the seams, but costing a huge fortune.  So it seems it will become legal, albeit for the worst of reasons.  Recreational drugs are always used to affect our mind-set and often to lessen the pain of reality. Recreational drug abuse, and in fact, all addictions of most any sort are medical problems and the money spent treating them as criminal behavior and requiring police attention is better spent on providing addiction rehabilitation centers all over the country. 

Finally, movement is underway to give all of us control over our own dying process. This has always been the most puzzling hurdle. Why would anyone want to lose control over their own dying process? Why would anyone want the government, someone else's religion, or any other source be allowed to tell any of us how to die or when to die? There is no need to fear death because it is inevitable, and when you are dead what the hell is there to fear? We have all been dead 99.9% of the time life has existed on our earth---and does this haunt us? Do we lose sleep over the fact we were not present during these millions of years?  Of course we don't, and why should we lose sleep over the fact we will not be around for millions of years in the future? I doubt I am the only one who doesn't fear death, but does fear having no control over my own dying process. 

At any rate, progress on all of my pet issues for many years are beginning finally to break in the direction of science, logic, and fairness. Unfortunately, if we cannot enforce responsible reproduction and the human population of the earth doubles, as it has in my lifetime, nothing else much matters, since humans are no doubt subject to the same dire consequences of over population as any other species. Yes, humans, too, are subject to God's laws which govern the evolutionary process. 

FOOTBALL CULTURE---SHERMAN-ESQUE + Postscript

Football 'Culture'

Note: ( Above Musing follows this note)

Author Notes about this Blog

This blog was set up originally simply as a file deposit for musings which I sent out to friends. Somehow a lot of people managed to find the URL, and that is ok.  Since the blogs were not originally meant for general distribution most have not been carefully edited.  I may go back now and do the proper editing. I have recently published a book titled: The Meaning of Life.  Anyone interested can find it listed in Amazon.com under the author name Reid S. James. There is a description of the content along with the listing. It was published in late October 2013. Any income from the book will be donated to various 501 category charities. Given the nature of the book, to do otherwise would be hypocritical. Given the original intent of this URL I have never provided an opportunity for any response to these musings. I think I will leave it that way as I don't have the time for a lot of responding to comments by others. These musings are written as food for thought, and do not purport to be anything other than what the blog implies: personal musings. Were I to personally know many of you who visit this URL I sense we would have a lot of engaging conversations. There are too many now for that to be practical.

Football 'Culture'

When Professional Football Players contend that the nature of their game justifies locker room behavior more akin to street gang mentality/language/taunts along with trash talking throughout the game, it just seems rather strange that certain professional athletes are the only ones in an American civilized culture who need this special 'culture' in order to function. 

We can all understand adolescent kids getting carried away with juvenile indiscretions. But it is quite another issue to claim adult males, many of whom are married with kids, need some sort of exceptional license to remain adolescents in adulthood. Why do grown men with exceptional athletic abilities need to communicate during a game with endless vulgar nonsensical trash talk? If there is such a need why doesn't it extend to the owners and coaches and why, when the game ends, should the league then expect them to step before microphones and recite canned meaningless noble and lofty sentiments about just everything? This Jeckle and Hyde nonsense needs to cease. If such a need really exists for trash talk to each other during the game, then for the sake of forthrightness, be the same when you step to the microphone: "These motherfuckers are sorry ass wussies, and we whipped their sorry asses and sent them home to their mommas crying. They ain't nothin but a bunch of cocksuckin chokers in a big game."  Well, you get the idea. It approaches inane ridiculousness to claim these very same athletes can't try just as hard, train just as hard, and be just as good during a game acting like adult civilized men. Of course this is the extreme. Taunting during games is a common practice when young and in neighborhood pick-up games. It is part of maturation. But shouldn't professional sports mean that maturation has taken place, both in physical skills and mindset? What need really, is there to taunt at the professional level? The whole nation watches a player fumble or miss a tackle or make a bad throw etc. Part of being a professional player, it seems to me, is to elevate oneself above adolescent taunting. Well, we might say, how can you stop it? Simple, if a player complains another player is taunting him he can wire himself and the offender subsequently be fined or suspended, whatever. It just seems professional players should be concentrating on their play out there on the field---that's what the great players do. The Payton Mannings, Walter Paytons, Terrell Owens', and so on have no room in their focus on the game for taunting another player during the game. Name calling is something best left for neighborhood pick-up games where social skills are still primitive. 

There is no reason when out in public --bars included--- they can't act like upperclass affluent professionals which they are handsomely paid to be. Perhaps some of them have been cuddled spoiled brats since junior high but that hardly gives them license to take our national culture and act on the job like Neanderthaloid retards. Trash talking on the field ought to be an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty---period. Civilized tolerant society demands it. 

Then there are the locker rooms. Forget all the adolescent hazing, name calling, bullying, and shaking down other players financially to participate in 'adventures' they care not to be a part of. This highly paid select group of superior athletes can't relate to each other without endless adolescent adjectives about their fellow teammates? It is understood that some players are pretty much exempt from most of this atmosphere, but there is no reason why any players should be subjected to it. No wonder impressionable kids start to think so much of it is 'cool'. Every Sherman like outburst will be duplicated by kids in a host of situations just as inappropriate as it was for Sherman. Parents, teachers, police, and so on, will have their jobs made more difficult because some professional sport players claim they need to behave this way as part of their traditional culture.

Sherman is not alone in using his emotions to act and think. All of us do to varying degrees. Sherman may be emotionally unstable but he is not a mental retard. He knows, like all players, coaches, owners, and any serious fans know---that the winner of any single football game between teams relatively equal in talent cannot be predicted with any remote degree of accuracy. There are simply too many uncontrollable variables. Thus, the winner has every reasonable basis to simply rejoice to have won and be gracious to the loser. Talent-wise there are no losers, since every player has long since proved his talent as a player or he wouldn't be in the game. Sherman may be a poster-boy for character assassination of his opponents but he is not much different than many media player character assassins like Peter King, et al and the accompanying trash talk only on a slightly higher plane. Sherman has boxed himself in. His coach may kindly and honestly refer to him as a spirited player, but the players certainly resent him making the game all about Sherman's disrespect for certain other players or teams. Bragging about your own play is no sin, but trashing the play of an opponent is. Graciousness elevates your own status as a person. 

When Sherman says he is not a villainous or disrespectful person, just ask his friends, his family, his teammates, his coaches-----well, that is just the point Sherman. In an ethical civilized society, it isn't just your own chosen cabal of associates, of any sort, that deserve tolerance, respect, and a kindly demeanor toward them. When a championship game is over, everyone should be allowed to be proud of the effort they gave---not be the subject of a personal tirade by another player, short some egregious behavior on the field by the player targeted.  After all, the game was not about who Sherman may personally like or dislike. 

I suspect most professional football players would not object to working in an  atmosphere that was more professional and adult-like. The vast majority of them are not going to be in football that long anyway, and will need to behave differently on a job after football.  These athletes work hard under all sorts of pressures and deserve admiration for their skill and effort. Their play on the field speaks volumes, regardless of who wins or loses. Their relations with each other, on or off the field, should be as exemplary as their play on the field. Otherwise, don't call it professional football, call it juvenilized adult football. 

Postscript:

This is a quote from Sherman about a week after I wrote the above:

""No one has ever made himself great by showing how small someone else is. That’s not mine. It belongs to Irvin Himmel. Somebody tweeted it at me after the NFC Championship Game. If I could pass a lesson on to the kids it would be this: Don’t attack anybody. I shouldn’t have attacked Michael Crabtree the way I did. You don’t have to put anybody else down to make yourself bigger."

Good. If he follows through on this, I call that progress. When Peter King follows suit I would call that a miracle.  

Missing a Football Game a Blessing

Missing a Football Game a Blessing:

Note: ( Above Musing follows this note)

Author Notes about this Blog

This blog was set up originally simply as a file deposit for musings which I sent out to friends. Somehow a lot of people managed to find the URL, and that is ok.  Since the blogs were not originally meant for general distribution most have not been carefully edited.  I may go back now and do the proper editing. I have recently published a book titled: The Meaning of Life.  Anyone interested can find it listed in Amazon.com under the author name Reid S. James. There is a description of the content along with the listing. It was published in late October 2013. Any income from the book will be donated to various 501 category charities. Given the nature of the book, to do otherwise would be hypocritical. Given the original intent of this URL I have never provided an opportunity for any response to these musings. I think I will leave it that way as I don't have the time for a lot of responding to comments by others. These musings are written as food for thought, and do not purport to be anything other than what the blog implies: personal musings. Were I to personally know many of you who visit this URL I sense we would have a lot of engaging conversations. There are too many now for that to be practical.

Missing a Football Game a Blessing:

There are reasons why professional football is the most watched sport in the US. 

Some of them would include:  the game is about the right pace for most people; the game is about the right complexity for most people; the game depends on a host of varied physical talents; the game contains so many unpredictable possibilities that it keeps spectators on the edge of their seat the entire game. It is a game most amendable to instant replay when we so often think, "wait a minute, exactly what just happened here?". 

There are also a growing number of reasons why football should not be so addictive to any of us: the number and seriousness of  injuries is probably already past an ethical justification. It may be riveting to witness so many bodies lying wounded on the ground during a game, but the ethics involved is getting pretty tough to justify for spectator amusement; there is a growing inability to predict winners of any given game. Talent and coaching are still important but are increasingly offset by computer manipulations of the game, by endless possible happenings during a game which are hardly preventable by good coaching or player playing----fumbles will happen but when in the game makes a hell of a lot of difference---as is the same with missed tackles, dropped balls, errant passes, offsides, personal fouls, weather factors, and so on, until the best of experts who win a pool of picking winners will win with a percentage in the low 60's; the sport itself is controlled by a handful of very wealthy persons as a personal monopoly with no regulation, no limitations, and no responsibility to the fans, the taxpayers, or the cities in which they play; the salary and contract situation is an unfair farce; and so on. 

Today I missed a playoff game because I attended a workshop which I signed up to go to some time ago. When I returned, I watched the highlights of the game and then a lightbulb went on in my mind. By missing the football game I had a better and more satisfying day. I did not spend 3-4 hours on the edge of my seat, emotionally acting like the game really meant something to MY life. Of course it doesn't---Whoever wins or loses has no bearing on my personal life at all. I didn't even miss all the craziness of a football game since I watched the highlights, and read some sport commentaries about the game. Instead I spent hours learning something about an aspect of life that does impact on my life. I cannot spend time arguing or reliving some game with others. After all, I did not really see the game. 

For me a day not spent with time in nature or wandering about an interesting neighborhood, or reading, or writing, or pondering about life, or cooking, or eating good food, watching an interesting movie or documentary, engaging is interesting conversation of a meaningful nature, or listening to my favorite music, or the absence of stress---including arguments over inane matters, prejudices---or struggles over power, titles, money, popularity, out maneuvering others, looking over my shoulder, etc. is day worth having lived. Of course there is a time and place for all of that and there is also a point when enough is enough. 

Addiction to anything is a mistake whether it be watching football, gambling, eating, sex, power, titles, control, work, recreational drugs, shopping, material gain, inherited religious obsessions, computer games, computer chat rooms, emails, twittering, texting, TV, exercising, and so on. To achieve some contentment in our lives, requires a firm understanding of when enough is enough. Too much of most anything can ruin our lives. 

I ask myself, in the case of watching too many football games, and caring too much about each one I watch---"just what do I gain from it?"  What is there, when the day is over, that I have gained from it?  If we ever come across some radio talk show or some TV sport commentators debating football, the most striking aspect of it all is the absolute emotional commitment to opinions that have so little bearing on anything important or consequential. In general, whenever we are so certain about matters upon which no certainty can be found, we are wasting our emotions. If we could get just one tenth as excited about the less fortunate in our immediate environment, or on our own planet, so much more good would be achieved that had some real meaning.  When I see an orphan getting medicine which will cure him/her from a curable disease it seems something worth cheering about has occurred. And if we read books by those volunteers who do this under the most trying situations imaginable, well---there is an activity notable and worth financially supporting. It cost roughly $38 to pay for the vaccines children need to prevent curable diseases. Imagine how many children's lives could be saved by the cost of one season football ticket? Or one less trip hither and thither to gawk at buildings and people. 

Others put all this more eloquently:

"I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing often-times

The still sad music of humanity." William Wordsworth (British Poet)

"The world is too much with us, late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours." Willaim Wordsworth (British Poet)

"The more a man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life."  Carl Gustav Jung (Swiss psychologist, psychiatrist)

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

"Look at one of your industrious fellows for a moment.  He sows hurry and reaps indigestion; he puts a vast deal of activity out to interest, and receives a large measure of nervous derangement in return....I do not care how much or how well he works, this fellow is an evil feature in other people's lives. They would be happier if he were dead...He poisons life at the well-head."  Robert Louis Stevenson (British essayist, novelist, poet).

"Wealth, after all, is a relative thing, since he that has little, and wants less, is richer than he that has much, and wants more." C. C. Colton (English Cleric and Writer)

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Henry David Thoreau. (American author, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, surveyor, historian, transcendentalist)

"Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to the garage makes you a car. Laurence J. Peter." (Educator, author of Peter Principle)

"Incompetence is vanity and PR and people who talk about 'massaging' or positioning' or 'spin control'. It's a society that celebrates style over substance, image over reality, credentials over experience; a society that embraces the credo of the Philadelphia sheriff John Green---'Fake it till you make it'; a society devoted to consuming and acquiring, to self-fulfillment and self-indulgence, a society infatuated with money, power, sex, and drugs; a narcissistic, solipsistic, materialistic society saturated with advertising, dominated by entertainment, and living only for the here and now." Art Carey (American editor and author)

"In our complex, modern world....large private fortunes can easily be extracted by clever folks through imaginative zero sum or negative-sum games. You may become engineers, physicians, or product entrepreneurs who earn your income as a reward for contributing to the welfare and prosperity of society as a whole....On the other hand, you may join the ever-growing corps of income redistributors---tax experts, legal experts, regulatory experts, financial wizards, lobbyists, legislators, and so on---who use so much of their time and intellect not to create net social value added, but merely to redistribute toward themselves and their clients claims to the useful production of others."  Uwe E. Reinhardt (Princeton Economist) 

"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat."  Unknown

"I am richer than E. H. Harriman, I have all the money I want and he hasn't." John Muir  (American Naturalist)

"I have to live with myself, and so

I want to be fit for myself to know;

I want to be able as days go by,

Always to look myself straight in the eye."  Edgar A. Guest  (English born American poet)

"Youth is a period of building up in habits, and hopes, and faiths---not an hour but is trembling with destinies; not a moment, once passed, of which the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blows struck on the cold iron.....by all means sometimes be alone; salute thyself; see what they soul doth wear; dare to look in they chest, and tumble up and down what thou findest there...for the principles now implanted in thy bosom will grow, and one day reach maturity; and in that maturity thou wilt find they heaven or they hell."  Unknown

"We dwell in times of great perplexity and are beset by far-reaching problems of social, industrial, and political import..... We shall not greatly err if upon every occasion we consult the genius of Abraham Lincoln. We shall not falter nor swerve from the path of national righteousness if we live by the moral genius of the great American commoner....Men and measures must not claim him for their own. He remains the standard by which to measure men....Lincoln has become for us the test of human worth, and we honor men in the measure in which they approach the absolute standard of Abraham Lincoln. Other men may resemble and approach him; he remains the standard whereby all other men are measured and appraised...."  Stephen S. Wise. ( A President of World Jewish Congress)

"But though the world roars and rages about us, we must secure our peace of mind, a quiet place of tranquility and of order and of purpose within our own selves. For it is doubt and uncertainty of purpose and confusion of values which unnerves men. Peace of mind comes to men only when having faced all the issues clearly and without flinching, they have made their decision and are resolved.....'You came into a great heritage made by the insight and the sweat and the blood of inspired and devoted and courageous men; thoughtlessly and in utmost self indulgence you have all but squandered this inheritance. Now only by the heroic virtues which made this inheritance can you restore it again.'  It is written, 'You took the good things for granted. Now you must earn them again'. It is written, 'For every right that you cherish, you have a duty which you must fulfill. For every hope that you entertain, you have a task that you must perform. For every good that you wish to preserve, you will have to sacrifice your comfort and your ease. There  is nothing for nothing any longer'......So here we are today. We are where we are because whenever we had a choice to make, we have chosen the alternative that required the least effort at the moment. There is organized mechanized evil loose in the world. But what has made possible its victories is the lazy, self-indulgent materialism, the amiable, lackadaisical, footless, confused complacency of the free nations of the world. They have dissipated, like wastrels and drunkards, the inheritance of freedom and order that came to them from hardworking, thrifty, faithful, believing and brave men. The disaster in the midst of which we are living is a disaster in the character of men. It is a catastrophe of the soul, of a whole generation which had forgotten, had lost, and had renounced the imperative and indispensable virtues of laborious, heroic, and honorable men." Walter Lippman. (American reporter, political commentator)

"We have built rockets and spaceships and shuttles; we have harnessed the atom, we have dazzled a generation with a display of our technological skills. But we still spend millions of dollars on aspirin and psychiatrists and tissues to wipe away the tears of anguish and uncertainty that result from our confusion and our emptiness....The closed circle of pure materialism is clear to us now---aspirations become wants, wants become needs, and self-gratification becomes a bottomless pit. All around us we have seen success in this world's terms become ultimate and desperate failures. Teenager and college students, raised in affluent surroundings and given all the material comforts our society can offer, commit suicide. Entertainer and sports figures achieve fame and wealth but find the world empty and dull without the solace of stimulation of drugs. Men and women rise to the top of their professions after years of struggling. But despite their apparent success, they are driven nearly mad by a frantic search for diversions, new mates, games, new experiences---anything to fill the diminishing interval between their existence and eternity---the way to serve yourself is to serve others; and that Aristotle was right, before them, when he said the only way to assure yourself happiness is to learn to give happiness." Mario Cuomo. (U.S. Governor)

"A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient." Unknown

"The rich have a passion for bargains as lively as it is pointless." Francoise Sagan (French playwright and novelist)

"He does not possess wealth; it possesses him." Benjamin Franklin (American author, printer, politician, scientist)

New Year Reflective Insights From A Well-Lived Aged Chap

New Year' reflective insights from a well-lived aged chap.

Note: ( Above Musing follows this note)

Author Notes about this Blog

This blog was set up originally simply as a file deposit for musings which I sent out to friends. Somehow a lot of people managed to find the URL, and that is ok.  Since the blogs were not originally meant for general distribution most have not been carefully edited.  I may go back now and do the proper editing. I have recently published a book titled: The Meaning of Life.  Anyone interested can find it listed in Amazon.com under the author name Reid S. James. There is a description of the content along with the listing. It was published in late October 2013. Any income from the book will be donated to various 501 category charities. Given the nature of the book, to do otherwise would be hypocritical. Given the original intent of this URL I have never provided an opportunity for any response to these musings. I think I will leave it that way as I don't have the time for a lot of responding to comments by others. These musings are written as food for thought, and do not purport to be anything other than what the blog implies: personal musings. Were I to personally know many of you who visit this URL I sense we would have a lot of engaging conversations. There are too many now for that to be practical.

New Year Reflective Insights From A Well-Lived Aged Chap

In earlier years New Year's day would be a day for generating insights about where I was at with my life, where I wanted to be, and how to get there.  At 73 the reflective insights are quite different. However far I have gotten, or how much achieved in life, those efforts are over. Certainly any achievements are hardly anything of historic note, but I have survived quite well, and let that be the sum of it. As long as good health prevails I can sit and think about just how fortunate I have been, and all those who helped me along the way. Sometimes I just sits. 

I am a big advocate of enough is enough, and for me that enough has been plenty enough. It is very satisfying not to feel any further need to seek more of anything modernity has to offer. I don't have to chase the dollar, and that is a good feeling.  I could care less about adding any titles, power, social stature, exciting adventures, or any extensive social circuit. I simply cannot relate to any of this as something important to my dwindling future. If we can secure for ourselves a little healthy rest during our terminational years---well, let that also be the sum of it. 

Thus, on New Years day, these days, I can focus more on the big picture of life and not fail to see the forest for the sake of the trees. Feeling no threat to my own welfare in the trek of life, I ponder more the difficult circumstances so many others, younger in life, who struggle for a meager existence. I rarely, or ever cry, but I see a lot of sadness in the lives of so many, and thus, often now, feel like crying when I read or see some real tragedies. And what makes me happiest is to see others really happy over some break in life. It doesn't much matter what group is happy, it just makes me happy these days to see almost any group happy. There should be more happiness and less sorrow, and while humans, collectively, could make there be so much more happiness for so many more people, we still don't---and I guess further advancement for that kind of justice is for the future. If it is the simple things in life that fuel the most happiness, then that sums up life for me in my terminational years. 

For every dollar I spend on myself past the simple basics of modern living, I try to spend a dollar on the less fortunate. I do this as one insight I perceived in this process called life, is that others count as much as myself. That is an insight hard to actually accept. But the reward in terms of contentment is huge. This can be done in two ways----direct assistance to those in need, and grants of money to those organizations which work to make the playing fields of life more level for everyone. No one is going to find me trying to justify why any group of people should not have the same rights or circumstances that I have or had when I was younger. Every time someone starts squawking that they are not going to let their taxes be spent to help educate the children of the poor, I feel a real urge to make them relive their life as part of one of these poorest of families. If freedom from Government meddling is a good thing, then strange it is that is not a good thing for everyone. It was the same argument used to justify slavery. Of course is slavery is not a good thing for everyone so just why is it a good thing for some and not others? The answer back then would inevitably be that slavery is just the way God made things. What a logically and brilliant way to defend wrong. God, not us, made wrong the right.

I thought when I set up my own FANAFI (Find a Need and Fill It) Fund that it would be a difficult sacrifice to adhere to that notion of a dollar for me, a dollar for the less fortunate. Yet, precisely because of valuable insights from earlier years in my life, this dollar for me, dollar for others less fortunate, was a breeze---and a breeze to the extent I no longer have to keep close tabs, as I find myself now giving far more monetary grants from this Fund than I remotely spend on myself above my basic needs. I don't have a single expensive hobby. I don't feel any great need to travel the world and gawk at people and things. I don't feel any need to live in ornate glittering upperclass palaces of any sort and yet, inside my own condo, things are plenty palatial enough for me. Others are very kind to me with precious few exceptions. 

We do best, when successfully reaching the terminational years, to simply drop out of the 'rat' race. Whatever might be the need for a rat race in our productive years, we certainly don't need any such thing to be a part of our terminational years. I thought, at first, that it would be a good idea to go out and personally help some of the less fortunate. That was a complete bust. Short of adopting them and paying to fix their teeth, help with rent, fight any number of battles for them, etc. just what is there most of us can do to help them personally? Furthermore, it is depressing, really depressing, to actually become part of their struggles. So, I changed directions and now I give grants to those organizations that help to do things like Save the giant Redwood Trees, or to organize lawyers to fight in court to protect our natural resources or organizations that help fight legal battles for all individuals to get the same rights others already have, or to help refugees across the world get some medical help, or food, or water, or housing etc. 

Whenever we focus on helping the less fortunate our politics change a lot. The notion some people have about liberty and freedom from government is really little more than a selfish maneuver to be sure the less fortunate are left to stew in their own unfortunate situation and kept in their place---and their place being the source for the ever increasing accumulation of society's wealth by those who already have more than enough. For all the limitations of governments, which are inefficient by nature--all types---they are about the only way we can collectively help level the playing fields for everyone. Just in my life-time huge progress has been made on a wide array of issues----women have more rights, blacks don't have to sit in the back of the bus, the handicapped have more accommodations made for them, the right to vote has been protected for more and more people, social security and medicare has been instituted, gays are acquiring rights others have long since had, children have more work protections and the list goes on and on. We still, however, have a long list of injustices to correct. We peg social security to the cost of living but leave the minimum wage to fall further and further behind the cost of living. I guess the old are valuable and the young expendable. We still leave endless tax breaks, loop holes, exemptions, shelters, and so on to ensure those with substantial wealth are greased a way for the acquisition of even more wealth. The list of all these greased ways established for the already wealthy is a musing unto itself. 

This trend of giving other groups rights or assistance they never had would make the future look bright except for one caveat: The human species is not exempt from the same consequences as every other species from over population. In the absence of any serious, and global, enforcement of responsible reproduction, every aspect of quality human existence is subject to imploding. It is already underway, and if the world population is really allowed  to double again, as it has in my lifetime, then just about everything in life we value will implode, and we will have a global 'Haitian Empire', with every single tragic situation currently existing in Haiti a global reality everywhere.  

New Years Day is no longer about me and my future. It is certainly not a sad or morose state of mind. What, really, do I have, considering the larger picture, to complain about? Wouldn't it be a bit insane to think that I, of all the individual organisms which have existed during millions and billions of years of life on this planet, am somehow entitled to everlasting Heaven---and even more insane to suggest I earned it? I think that is one illusion to discard. It really comes down to whether enough is ever enough. By chance a particular sperm combined with a particular egg and I was born into a particular place at a particular time to particular parents with particular genes. If I didn't, by chance, get the best genes or the best environment I certainly did quite well. Since I was given all this at birth I certainly did not earn any of it. Except for Time, the Evolutionary Process, and the Creator of this process, everything else has a beginning and an end. There is nothing unfair here.  We go through changes in every aspect of our lives over our lifetime. Would life be better if there were no changes?  Of course not. That is a good portion of the brilliance of this whole life experience. 

In the last analysis there is too much tragedy in human life: We, unlike other species, have strong feelings coupled with advanced reasoning. This also means we comprehend the inevitability of death, that we understand the consequences of many things that happen to us, and physical/emotional suffering is greater because of our elevated ability to understand consequences. The goal of human society is always to generate the greatest contentment for the greatest number of people. We collectively fail at this because of individual greed. Here is one example of just how badly we collectively fail. It costs $38.75 for a total vaccine package to ensure a young child does not die from numerous preventable diseases. 22 million children each year do not get the vaccines they need.  There are 4 billion adults in the world. Let's assume at least half have some degree of wealth.  I don't have a calculator which can handle dividing $38.75 by 2 billion, but the truth is clear enough. The cost to pay for these vaccines, if borne by half the adult population in the world would be an infinitesimal fraction of one penny. How pitiful is this? What do we do instead?  Hell, we prefer to pray and instruct God to help these kids. And so it goes, right down the line. If we calculated the cost to give every child a good education, good health care, good food, sufficient housing, and a safe environment---the cost per adult in this world would not be an infinitesimal fraction of a penny but it would be an eminently reasonable amount per person. Of course to be most fair the figure would be derived on a progressive scale depending on the actual wealth of every adult. But that is not the real world at all. In reality the wealthy give a smaller percentage of their wealth to the less fortunate than do the non wealthy.  And the vast number of parents, on death, actually give all or most all of their acquired wealth to their offspring regardless of whether their offspring are well enough off regarding the basics needed in life. 

Nothing leaves me more aghast than the ethical priorities of most people. And most of these most people are good persons with a huge ethical lapse in their priorities. It is a massive army of people for whom enough is never enough for them or their offspring. To look into the eyes of some refugee child (or adult) dying from hunger or a curable disease, or a cherished pet dying on a veterinarian table is for me, the ultimate sadness in life. To see life recede from the eyes or the inner hopelessness of an expiring life is the ultimate reality check about life. Every time we return from putting a pet down we are devastated by the realization that it is really over. Every time we come from a funeral of a loved one we are devastated by the realization that it is really over. We can try to pretend otherwise but, short of a faith based illusion, we know it is over. We will have dealt with this so many times in our lives that when we think about our own life in our terminational years, we know---we really do know, that the game will be over for us too. Only if we have learned to appreciate the forest in spite of the trees can we keep it all in perspective. If the only way we can enjoy life is to be individually the center of attention, protected by God from His own laws that run evolution---if this is what we need to enjoy life---well, the enjoyment will never come. Illusions and addictions never lead to contentment. Never. 

Ethics comes easy for us if we have developed our ethical human trait properly. I could, for example, take a trip to some distant place for let's say $8000 or I could pay to get 260 destitute children all the vaccines they need. The trip will be, in a short time, mostly forgotten, but the good feelings for doing the right thing for children will generate an inner contentment that lasts far longer. Losing the addictions for the self serving aspects of modernity in any historical age is the first step on the road to achieving contentment. To properly understand where we fit in the total scheme of God's created evolutionary process is a prerequisite for achieving contentment. Doing the best we can for ourselves, our family, our culture, our country, and so on is all great and proper as long as this list of priorities is topped by always doing the best we can also for the less fortunate.

At any rate, New Year's Day is a much different kind of insightful pondering these days compared to the days in my productive years. The race itself was a challenge and a great experience, but when the race has been run and the finish line crossed, there is much to be said for the feelings associated with having run a race well and reached the finish line. Nothing but death is ever going to take away from us all the insights we learned in life, or the gratitude for all those who helped us along the way, or the valuable memories from friendships along the way, or the satisfactions gained from helping others along the way. In fact, the satisfactions from duties done, are the cornerstone of contentment. Contentment comes from within, no one can give it to us. 

When older and still healthy, the New Year is seen through different lenses. We don't need exciting adventures.  We don't need mountains to climb.  We don't need more money and things piled higher and higher. We don't need titles, fame, responsibility, or to be the center of social circles. If we can't shed all these remnants of the rat race, the terminational years are going to be a bumpy ride.  Rather we need to tie some loose ends about our lives, appreciate any good luck, and all those who made some contentment in our lives possible. We need time to catch our breath from the race of life we just ran, we need time to reflect and put so many pieces of the puzzle together to finish our final chapter of life. We need to assess our gains and work out plans to distribute these gains to those most in need. The terminational years need not be years of uselessness, but rather an excellent time to BE USEFUL to the less fortunate. At the end of next year I don't want to be in the position of having only some materialistic silly-ass 'better things' lying around. Rather than some fancy and expensive car to soothe our minds we need be able to envision all the joys we were able to bring to those with little joy in their lives through our charitable activities. It is only then that we can tilt back in our recliners, and feel good about our lives. If so many others, especially the younger, are too busy with their lives to spend much time amusing us----that is a good thing, a natural thing, an expected thing---and this gives us an opportunity for the first time in our lives to amuse ourselves at our own pace, at a time of our own choosing, by doing exactly the kind of things we want to do, or see, or eat, or watch, or read, or simply ponder. Life is an experience worthy of a contemplative well-earned conclusion. We need go gently down the stream feeling secure in having done our duty to have given to the least fortunate every bit as much, tit for tat, that we gave to ourselves. It is our mind set which is the reward for ethical living. And that inner reward is there for all those humans who dare to confront the nature of themselves, and the world in which they live. Every era of the evolutionary process generates the next era of progress, and we need remember, when feeling like time seems to fly, that no---Time stays, We Go. 

Acquired Insights

Note: (Musing follows)

Author Notes about this Blog

This blog was set up originally simply as a file deposit for musings which I sent out to friends. Somehow a lot of people managed to find the URL, and that is ok.  Since the blogs were not originally meant for general distribution most have not been carefully edited.  I may go back now and do the proper editing. I have recently published a book titled: The Meaning of Life.  Anyone interested can find it listed in Amazon.com under the author name Reid S. James. There is a description of the content along with the listing. It was published in late October 2013. Any income from the book will be donated to various 501 category charities. Given the nature of the book, to do otherwise would be hypocritical. Given the original intent of this URL I have never provided an opportunity for any response to these musings. I think I will leave it that way as I don't have the time for a lot of responding to comments by others. These musings are written as food for thought, and do not purport to be anything other than what the blog implies: personal musings. Were I to personally know many of you who visit this URL I sense we would have a lot of engaging conversations. There are too many now for that to be practical.

Acquired Insights

New Year's Day is always special to me. That is the day I sit down and type out my thoughts about where I am at in life, where I want to get, and how to get there. Maybe the first insight I gained early on in life was that we need start with long term aspects of life and work back to short term plans of action. Early on thoughts tend to be mostly of materialistic and social goals. That's ok. Most kids have little and want more, not just things, but power over their lives, recognition, and achievements of varied sorts. The outside world seems so huge when young. Later in life, when we return to our place of youth, everything seems so small. Our world got bigger, we learned to see the bigger picture. My parents, especially my father, were not the type of parents who attempted to dictate every aspect of my life. They parented by example, and pretty much let me be myself. Still, youth is a period in which much of what we think and do is dictated by others. That is all good too, since at that age we need some sort of structure to such bewildering inexperienced aspects of life. 

All of us are unique individuals with unique personalities and talents. For us to achieve contentment we need, once reaching mid teenage years, to begin to understand that personal satisfaction in life comes from being our unique selves. Everything we had been taught in our formative years needs to be reexamined, and we need reach our own conclusions about all aspects of life. Almost all progress in human life over the years has come from those who dared to be different. It seems a mistake for us to allow ourselves, from young age on, to become too much of a social butterfly. When this happens, instead of being ourselves we become copycats of societal norms. So I learned early on that for me to feel comfortable and contented with myself, I had to be myself, do things my way, go at my own pace, and head down pathways of my own choice---with one important caveat: whatever we do, it ought to meet the demands of the Golden Rule. When all is said and done, that principle is the universal human ethical guideline. No parent can give a more valuable lesson to a child then to live their lives as a parent by the Golden Rule. Countless times I saw my parents in a position to use others to gain something for themselves and they never would. As a child this embarrassed me. We see, as a child, many others bulldoze their way to power, money, titles, social positions, etc. by trampling over others in their way and being cruelly intolerant to those different from the norm.  I remember so many occasions when I would say to my father, "Why can't (I or we) do it?"  And he would always say, "Because that is not the way we live our lives". And whenever I would behave in ways which were outside the Golden Rule, my mother would plead with my father to punish me, but my father would invariably say: "He knows right from wrong and he has to figure out to what extent he is going to do right rather than wrong."  At least with me this worked.  I would then spend time thinking about what is right and what is wrong, and why, rather than be angry I was being punished for how I wanted to behave.    

So early on I learned to formulate some ethical standards and found the strength to dare to be different. These two are inherently bound together. And if we do not keep them bound together we can never be truly contented.  I have gone through life in various capacities, and varied settings, with all kinds of people---from every race and culture---and I have yet to find people who reached much contentment in life by trampling over others, or failing those for whom they are employed to protect. Every day I had to spend around such people in social or job situations was an annoying day. They see everything in terms of their own advancement, in terms of their own gain, and manipulate others to achieve some further advancement goal---usually related to money, power, popularity, or titles.

If we can early on dare to be different, and reassess everything we have ever been taught in our formative years, we begin to have a chance at contentment in life. To reassess we have to be a thoughtful observer of life around us. Any honest assessment of life reveals just how much we need to "learn to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth; but hearing often-times the still sad music of humanity" (Wordsworth). 

Unfairness in life was a relatively early realization in my young adult life. I remember back in my youth, when certain groups were rioting, and creating havoc, about rights they did not have, I felt annoyed, and like so many others, I felt if they did not like it here why don't they leave? It is hard now to realize what kind of logic drove me to feel that way. Certainly, for example, if I had to sit in the back of the bus because of my skin color I would be furious.  I grew up a Baptist and went to church every Sunday, prayed for all sorts of things---some selfish and some for others---went to Billy Graham revivals, and felt moved to the message. A bit later when my country attacked Vietnam I was a true blind patriot, and no matter how many we had to kill to win, I was all for it---my country, right or wrong. God always blesses this country. Every President assured us of that at the end of every major speech. 

But as the war dragged on I finally thought through a lot of things I had been programmed to believe.  Things were not adding up. Via athletics and the places where I taught, I was thrust into daily contact with all sorts of others. It is hard to relate to 'others' rationally until we are faced by circumstance to help them become successful. The old saying that we cannot see the forest for the sake of the trees gets reversed. Suddenly, our indoctrinated beliefs about the nature of the forest are inconsistent with the individual trees. And the trees make up the forest. Suddenly we realize we can't help the people we are paid to help if we cannot remove the injustices being heaped upon them. Suddenly, for example, we can't find any real justification for why we attacked Vietnam. We lost that war and absolutely nothing bad happened to us by losing except 35,000 of our young men and 2 million of 'them' were dead. Suddenly we begin to realize that we, individually and collectively, are praying for God to correct things that we, if not individually, then collectively, can correct. God is not letting people starve to death, we are. God is not telling anyone to sit in the back of the bus, we are. God is not deciding to let children from poor families go to poor schools or get poor health care, we are.  And so it goes, until our support of injustices becomes an ingrained habit, and like a pretzel twisted to fit inside our inherited or by marriage religion. 

Clearly we have every right to battle for our own basic needs---good health care, good education, individual freedoms, good housing, good food, etc. No matter how unimportant we might be to a lot of others, we certainly are important to ourselves. Once arriving at a point where we understand the injustices imposed on certain others, we then have to think through our own sense of ethics. The Golden Rule makes it simple in almost all cases to understand right and wrong.  We understand right from wrong, but many times we simply do otherwise for varied reasons.  And most of the time when we go with the wrong it is because we get personal advantages by doing so. These personal advantages most often involve money, power, titles, recognition, social success, family values, and cultural or religious beliefs.

At some point in life I started to stop viewing life as evil vs good, with some sort of Heaven and Hell awaiting us at the end of life.  We all need to believe in a lot of things, but the beliefs need to be reasonable, based on evidence and logic.  Most everyone believes in God, and for me I decided to make such a belief simple: Wherever there is a gift given, there must be gift giver.  All of nature is a gift and the giver I call God.  There is no logical reason why we should decide that we know all that much about God. Whatever the nature of God, He/SHe is not some sort of half assed entity Who endlessly toys with us like a cat might do with a mouse before the mouse finally dies. IF God wants us to behave in a particular ethical way why would such directions be written by humans decades after some prophet had died?  Why would all scriptures of major religions contain some things which eventually would be absurdities based on the ignorance of the times?  Certainly, if God was going to write down instructions of behavior, seeped in rituals, and often performed in glittering cathedral-like structures, such instructions would not be delivered via genetic inheritance of religious beliefs. Where is the slightest evidence that God ever adopted any particular group of any sort as his favorite flock? There is no evidence for this in History. There is no real evidence that God selects or protects any human individuals from any of the pitfalls of life.  After all, we all know some pretty bad things happen to the best of us, and some good things happen to the worst of us. Whatever we understand about ethics is an inherent attribute of human nature. Ethics is a genetic characteristic of the human species, albeit like many of our characteristics it must be developed, and the extent to which it is developed varies like every other human characteristic. 

It is not that we know nothing about life on our planet because, as time passes, we begin to know more and more about the history of life on our planet, including human life. Clearly there is a process, known to us as an evolutionary process, which has been going on for millions of years. We certainly did not create or develop this process, so God must be the creator of this process. Viewing this process as a whole, why would we assume God would provide the human species with some sort of life after death? Or create diversity so that the results of such diversity would lead to some sort of Heaven and Hell. This lacks any logic. What we do know is that diversity is what drives the evolutionary process, along with chance, genetics, and environment. Thus, diversity has a purpose, and it is not to create candidates for some Heaven or Hell. 

At some point in life I accepted, after much effort, to understand when enough is enough. We are raised in a culture which portrays more is better with no limits. But this, when observed more objectively, is often an illusion. Any kind of addictive behavior is self destructive. It makes little difference whether the addictive behavior is regarding recreational drugs, food, gambling, sex, money, titles, power, social life, work, exercise, sports, and so on. If it becomes addictive, by the very nature of addiction, it makes contentment impossible. Those who are satisfied with less are more content than those who have more and want more.  All we can hope to achieve in life is some contentment. That is the goal, everything else is deception.  Enough is enough is one of the best insights achieved, at least for me. 

Duty done is satisfaction achieved. This is another insightful relationship we can gleam from this venture called life. In most cases, at least major cases, what is right according to the Golden Rule is easy enough to figure out, but doing the right is often a problem. We too often do the wrong and than rationalize our actions. We rarely fool even ourselves, however, and since it goes against human ethical nature, we can never really be content about doing the wrong thing. 

While doing the wrong thing can often achieve short term selfish objectives with short term peaks of happiness, doing the right thing will pay off in the long run, while astute preventive actions can limit the damage any others can impose on us for doing the right thing. For a start here, if doing the right thing involves getting justice for others in some way, and does not involve personal gain for ourselves in any way, then we cannot lose the respect of anyone (maybe receive anger from them) and often one can, through publicizing the situation, force those who would do wrong, to back down. Once those involved in our daily lives understand our commitment to justice for others, especially those who cannot defend themselves, we will have built a support base for protection. There is a caveat here though. Be sure the support base is large enough to be effective. We may be able to win a battle with a few backers, but then there is the possibility we could win and others who sided with us, who we cannot protect, become victims of retribution. 

While every person's situation in life is different, in many cases a game plan to protect doing the right thing can be utilized to form a protective wall around right over wrong. I spent much of my life in University settings as a Professor. There are ample enough activities going on in such a setting that are simply unfair to students. These injustices can be corrected by an individual Professor when two things are in place: there need to be strategically located points of protection from key administrators, and there has to be a willingness to utilize publicity and firm support from students on the issue in question.  If this seems easy enough and obvious enough it really isn't. Unless one is tenured nothing can be done. But most get tenured at some point so then there is job protection for those willing to force justice to triumph. However, personal gain complicates the situation. Individual teachers can't get promoted, or gain bonuses, or gain additional duties and titles without administrative support right up the line. Most of the time any of these things can be blocked anywhere along the line. The truth here is that we cannot fight for justice, in most settings, without personal sacrifice. For example, in my case I was told one time; "You may have won this battle, but sooner or later, papers are going to come across my desk for my signature to give you advancement, a bonus, a new title, etc. and you certainly know I am not going to sign."  This is where enough is enough comes in.  It wasn't like I would not survive without a bit more money in the till.  Willingness to sacrifice for justice depends on accepting when enough is enough in terms of our own needs.  

The truth is that most of the time these sort of threats are bluffs. First of all, top administrators come and go like bad weather.  And, in the case above, every few years the whole pay system gets reworked so that everyone gets equity pay adjustments up or down. Thus, in reality my pay would get adjusted upward every time because the adjusters are not figuring in who likes who. Those who fight for justice, especially for those who cannot themselves achieve the justice they deserve, are rarely destroyed career wise or pay-wise. As long as any such battles do not achieve personal gain for the battle we take on, the integrity of our actions cannot be attacked. 

To restrict the length of this musing, I will now skip to the present time and my thoughts this past New Year's day and put this in another musing titled "New Year's reflective insights from a well-lived aged chap."