Climate Change Videos That Nail It.

Climate Change Videos That Nail It.

Climate Change is a complex topic, and complex enough that I, for one, leave the debate to those whose profession is to study climate change using long established guidelines for legitimate scientific research. When they reach consensus I accept that as the most reliable source for accepting whether human activities are precipitating huge future changes in our climate. Most any scientist not yet on board with the consensus is employed by companies that have a vested interest in rejecting climate change being brought on by global human activity. At 74 years of age I reckon there is not a lot personally at stake for me. But I am amazed at how many parents who repeatedly express concern for their children’s future prefer to dismiss climate change as nothing more than nonsense. It is almost like they are saying: “What, me worry?  I’ll be dead”. Perhaps they will but their children will not be. Concern for their children is extremely short sighted. 

But I think the following 2 videos expose these charlatans for what they are: Self-serving idiots.

http://theweek.com/article/index/268601/speedreads-jon-stewart-gives-a-remedial-science-lesson-to-house-gop-climate-change-skeptics

Ray Rice (Follow-up #3) Justice in Physical Assault Cases

Ray Rice (Follow-up #3) Justice in Physical Assault Cases

The current NFL controversies over physical, sexual, and child abuse are useful in that they are causing all of us to focus on the issues involved. From all the focus, perhaps and hopefully, something sensible, just, and effective will evolve to bring the best results for all involved. 

Let us remember that there are 1.3 million cases in the U.S. of physical assault on someone in a close personal relationship. There are 6 million reported cases of child abuse in the U.S., of which about 2 million are reported physical abuse. There are 238,000 sexual assaults in the U.S. every year. How many unreported cases in all three categories above is pure guess. 

About 30% of physically abused children will later abuse their own children. Children who are physically abused are twice as likely to end up in jail as adults.  More than half of adults being treated for drug abuse were physically abused in childhood. 

The stats above indicate how extensive the problems are. 

Given the widespread nature of these problems it is not clear why these problems should be addressed via the NFL. IF we somehow made professional football players squeaky clean in all of the above areas the dent in the national statistics would hardly be noticeable. 

Any advance in prevention, punishment, and rehabilitation for the perpetrators of these crimes should be across the board and not giving the NFL still another exemption to operate outside the rest of our society. Just look at what we have already given a highly select group of millionaires who own the NFL teams already, at a cost to the public which is astronomically high. They are exempt via Congress from anti-trust laws; they are exempt from almost all corporate taxes; they are exempt from any open bidding on just which millionaires can purchase these financial plums (only those millionaires voted in by the existing owners can purchase a club), The Commissioner who runs the league is appointed by the owners and his primary responsibility is to maximize the profit for the owners and protect the ‘image’ of the NFL. The NFL is allowed to be a corporation with no bottom line, and consequently salaries of players and profits for owners have no limit. Cities are allowed to be blackmailed. Fans are forced to pay high ticket costs, and the public is bilked billions of dollars to pay for a huge good ole boys club outside the restraints placed on other corporations. Amidst all this, the Commissioner is allowed to play cop, judge and jury on legal matters involving players or owners.

It seems to protect the image of football, we are about to see the League set up a huge and separate legal system to protect the sport from players whose behaviors mirror the same behaviors prevalent  in the rest of society.  While that might be a nice ‘feel good’ present to fans of football and the public in general, it does nothing to help the millions of others being subjected to the same crimes. Thus, instead of helping reduce such crimes in our society, it will simply shunt such crimes away from football. Ray Rice will have to punch his wife in some other profession, Adrian Peterson will have to beat his son outside of football, and Des Bryant will be gone and free to commit assaults against his mother and others without a 24 hr security guard to protect the public from him. And of course who will pay for this huge expense to protect the image of professional football?  Of course it will be the public. The League may lose a few quality players and leave them loose in society without the ability to do the one thing they are good at, and  free to commit crimes they are inclined to commit, with the public once again picking up the cost of any prison time (@$30,000/yr) and/or welfare costs for them or their victims. 

This is an insult and injustice to the millions of Americans victims of the same crimes. The NFL should stick to football and the legal system itself should be the focus of reform to help prevent, punish, and rehabilitate actual or potential perpetrators of these crimes in question. 

It should always be remembered that all of us should be innocent until proven guilty, and that includes football players. Perhaps we all need be reminded that all children need proper health care, proper parenting, the same amount of money spent on them for education, and a safe environment in which to live. We already know there are millions of children in this country who are being raised in situations which are going to lead to criminal behavior in many cases as adults. But we collectively do nothing except ensure those of us more fortunate are gated off away from them, that we put more and more young people in jail with maximum sentences for selling drugs in a police war on drugs which we created (deliberately providing poor neighborhoods with a huge underground criminal, but highly profitable, drug industry), provide support for school via property taxes so the children of affluent neighborhoods get the best education, deny poor children access to proper health care, and ignore the conditions in which millions of kids are being raised. 

These problems of violent behavior towards other will only be reduced in any meaningful numbers when we, through the government, invest in preventive measures which ensure all children are raised in a proper supportive environment.  We, through the government, keep closer tab on automobile drivers than we do parents who raise kids. We need faster and fairer trials for those who commit physical or sexual abuse towards others including children. We need proper medical clinics throughout the entire country which specialize in treating addictions of any sorts and physical assaults of any sort. When you commit a physical assault against someone it should not matter whether you are a football player or not, the cases should be handled the same way, on an individual basis, by professionals trained to both administer proper punishment and provide medical treatment for the behavior. If Ray Rice, who as best as I can determine, has only punched one person his entire life (if he has a history of it, has never received any medical help for his physical abuse tendencies). If Ray Rice deserves to be banned from his professional job indefinitely, then so should every other person who throws a punch at someone. As Terrell Owens would say, “fair is fair”. 

If Adrian Peterson should be suspended from his profession for ‘whupping’ his kid, then millions of other adults who were taught this was a proper way to discipline a child, should be suspended from their professions. He already had a problem here before and what medical help did he ever receive? It is right and important that we declare these kind of behaviors wrong, but these problems are endemic in our country, and need to be addressed nationwide, not once again give the NFL the special right to set up their own court system to punish football players who commit these crimes of assault. If speedy trials are needed for immediate action then let the court system produce these trials. What are we saying here? That if anyone accuses a football player of assaulting them, the player is suspended immediately?  There are plenty situations where false accusations are made for various reasons. If, after a lengthy trial, a player is declared innocent, does he get back pay for the games he missed? With a salary cap where does the club get the money to pay both the replacement and the player who was suspended?  And what if the false accusation is against a star player who is later declared innocent in a regular court system trial? Suppose the player missed game was a playoff game in which the player was suspended?  Does the team get a rematch if they lost the game? The unique situations are endless here. Suppose a player throws a punch after being hit over the head with a frying pan?  Suppose a player catches his wife having sex with someone else and punches them? He is then definitively suspended from his profession?  Suppose a child has shown repeated tendencies to be physically abusive to others and never receives any medical help for his mental problem? We should throw the book at this child or someone, who exasperated, throws a punch at him? What purpose does it do for Ray Rice’s family or kid to be thrown on the unemployment line?  What other skills besides football does he have? That is why we should have professional judges and juries to mete out the proper punishment AND treatment program for the perpetrators, AND medical centers to help the victims.

It doesn’t take much vision to see the real danger of where this is heading. A ‘position starter’ who commits a first offense or is simply accused of an offense, will be suspended immediately.  A potential or actual ‘position starter’ with a history of physical assaults, will be given quality medical help. Any player further down the talent line will not be given a contract at all since the image risk is too great. A talented football player will be given millions of dollars a year, not just to play football, but to postpone any physical assault tendencies until after football. The millions of other people with physical assault tendencies will be given nothing—no medical attention, no monetary carrots, no early intervention. Most of the biggest stars have been given special attention since junior high school. We will now add medical help if they have tendencies to be physically abusive. There will be no justice until all the other 4 million people who commit crimes of physical assault are given the same kind of opportunities to overcome their problem in this area. There will be no justice until all persons who commit acts of physical violence are given the same consequences and help.   

The NFL has already demonstrated clearly that it handles off the field behavior problems solely on the basis of protecting the image of football and current public opinion. The NFL is the last organization in the world which should be given any more exemptions for anything. There is nothing neutral or fair or ethical about the NFL. They should stick to football. And the whole ownership structure of the league should be changed by Congress which created such a predatory monster on the public, fans, cities, and most players. Enough is enough. We are all being abused by the NFL.

The $64,000 Dollar Political Question:

The $64,000 Dollar Political Question:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/17/elizabeth-warren-ceos_n_5838040.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

Ray Rice and Justice (Ray Rice Follow-Up)

Ray Rice and Justice (Ray Rice Follow-Up)

Something was missing in my original musing about the Ray Rice Incident. How would justice really be served here? It is not that unlike recreational drug abuse. Do we criminalize and punish or identify and help, or some combination of the two?

With 1.3 million women being physically assaulted every year in the United States, the problem is not minor, nor do I think most people want all 1.3 million perpetrators jailed at a cost of $30,000/yr. or all 1.3 million perpetrators suspended from their profession indefinitely. Neither can we ignore the problem or begin to think we can eliminate it by making it illegal. Well, not really—we thought we could remove marijuana by making it illegal, just like we once thought we could make the use of alcohol disappear by making it illegal.  In both cases we just took a problem and made it worse. Every case, in both recreational drug abuse, and physical assault of partner in a close relationship, is unique. 

Ray Rice has no history of off the field issues. The goal, ethically and practically, considering the cost of jailing or removing the person from the work force, should be to intervene with those who have a tendency to resolve conflict by violence, and cure them of this emotional problem. In the case of Ray Rice there was no basis to intervene beforehand. 

We have a choice to make in our society. We can have a mindset of helping those with problems or a mindset of punishing those with problems. Some problems are clear cut——you steal, or kill, or rape, and other such actions, and punishment is clearly earned. The very fabric of our society is at stake with these kind of crimes. We all have, to varying degrees, moments when we would like to steal something, or kill somebody, or have sex with some attractive person. We cannot afford, as a society, to put up any green light here. What we need to remember though, is that some problems do not lend themselves to a green or red light, but require a caution light followed up with professional help. 

A person does not abuse a recreational drug because they are evil, but because they are trapped with an emotional state that can be relieved by this or that drug. That a drug can do this does not make taking the drug a good idea for the simple reason the mental state which spurs the use of the drug remains. Why do we treat people with emotional/mental problems as criminals? It solves nothing and costs a lot of money, not to mention the destruction of many family circumstances. 

Let’s look at this from another prospective.  Why would someone, Ray Rice’s age, who has no history of assaulting someone, suddenly do so, and especially to someone with whom he is in an intimate relationship?  Football players with the talent of Ray Rice make a lot of money, probably too much money, but they also are trapped in a profession run by 32 millionaires whose primary purpose is to make money as best they can. And they have the where-with-all to do so.  Kicking Ray Rice off the team was not as bold and principled as it might seem on the surface. His best years appear to be behind him, running backs are becoming more and more expendable and replaceable. Cutting Rice frees up a lot of money to strengthen the team in other areas. Philadelphia does it all the time, promise a long term contract with absurd salary increases, then dump the player when the time to pay up arrives. For players a contract is a contract, for millionaire owners, a contract is not binding to them, unless one takes the tact that a non binding contract is bound to being not binding. The point is, professional football players are under a lot of stress career wise every year. The idea that professional football teams are one big close knit family is pure fantasy. It is cut throat every day out there for them. No one is retained because they are such a wonderful locker room presence. They are retained because some computer printout indicates they are getting the job done in the games. Period. 

So pressure is there for all the players. What varies is their personality, their family situation, their health issues, and their emotional issues. From this mix comes the moment when the player may lose it and punch someone intimate to them. What should come next? Is what was done to Ray Rice a solution to anything? It certainly validates that we as a society do not like that kind of behavior. What are we saying here?  Is it that the first time any adult throws a punch at someone they should be suspended indefinitely from their profession?  If that is what we are saying then why just punish Ray Rice? There are 1.3 million more males out there who did the same thing. This is not justice. Or at least selective justice. 

One or both of this couple need help. And are we also saying it is ok for males to punch other males but not females? I am not huge in size or strength. I don’t really think it is ok for every male who is huge and stronger to punch me out every time I am an annoyance. And they don’t, because most everyone knows it is not right to use physical violence to solve annoyances. Saying one or both of them need help is not to say no punishment can be applied. That is what we have courts for, and professional judges, to decide the kind of punishment which is best for the particular situation. Why is the NFL even involved?  Since when did the Commissioner of Football, a high paid lackey for the millionaire  owners, become some sort of legal cop, prosecutor, and jury for off the field issues like physically assaulting someone? They are not there to provide justice but to protect the image of football. They ought to stick to football. 

That does not mean the problem here should be ignored. This is a problem for society in general, not just football. We are the richest country in the world. Machines and computers are making full employment difficult. If we can afford weapons of mass destruction far past any need to protect ourselves, and spend decades in useless wars, then maybe we could provide good health care for all our citizens, and that includes drug and violence rehabilitation centers. Why are such facilities only available to the affluent? 

It is not clear what we are ruling against in the Ray Rice case. Was it that a punch was thrown?  Or was it that she was knocked out?  What knocked her out—the punch or hitting her head in the fall? I assume the crime was punching his wife, not whether the punch knocked her out. Had she not been knocked out we would not likely have known there was an incident. Acting properly in a close relationship all the time is no easy task. If instead of punching his wife would it be ok to verbally abuse her often and long? Would it be ok for her to verbally or physically abuse him often and long? It just seems when incidents of any sort occur which are abusive and the abusiveness is reported by a spouse or anyone else observing the abusiveness then the law should require a visit by both to a rehabilitation center, or maybe a more nonthreatening name be used for such centers. 

Whether someone wants to take someone to court over the incident or incidents is another matter. No one is suggesting there be no consequences, only that courts handle the consequences, not the Commissioner of Football. What is being said here is that help should always be required, and any punishment should be doled out by our court system. Does this mean an employer cannot fire, suspend, or penalize employees who commit a crime off the job? This is a tough question because employers can have a wide ranging diversity of attitudes about what constitutes an off the field action which requires action by the employer. There needs to be some sort of court established system where the employer submits his intentions to this system for QUICK action on whether the action can be taken by the employer. After all, there are potentials for abuse at every level here, from the principal players in the incident, to the courts, to an entire family, to the health of the principle players, to fellow workers, to the safety on the job of others, to the ability of the accused to function well on the job etc. 

For all these ramifications we should not give any one individual carte blanch permission to deal with it as they feel like at the time. For any employer to fire someone for off the field behavior, that employer should list off the job actions that could result in disciplinary action, and any employee can challenge an action not deemed relevant to the job in question. When the NFL does routine drug testing for drugs which can enhance performance, they are establishing a common sense principle which clearly affects performance on the field. When they arbitrarily test for marijuana also, which is in no way a performance enhancing drug—unless a player claims smoking pot helps him reduce the stress involved in playing football. The courts would obviously, if they were to rule on this,  remove pot from the routine testing. Now some would say, hold it, pot smoking makes their football performance worse. Fine, let’s accept this opinion, which is all it is, and when the player’s performance goes down, the player can be released just like they can whenever their performance goes down. Fair is fair. Players lose their jobs a lot for things they do off the field—like eat too much, not get enough sleep, binge drink too much and so on—because their performance level goes down. 

Behavioral aberrations are not subject to easy resolution. But it just seems any solution has to involve intervention before hand where possible, medical help with the problem at centers specialized to deal with such problems, and a judicial process which includes analysis of each behavioral aberration as unique, and the punishment be such that deterrence will be an effective warning, and the future of all those involved in the consequences of the behavior be enhanced, not careers and families destroyed arbitrarily. Justice, after all, includes not just punishment but effectuating a clear road to recovery for all concerned.   

Emotional Feelings with Age

Emotional Feelings with Age

As unique individuals from birth, our given/acquired emotional states are not going to age the same way. The goal here is an attempt to perhaps identify some general trends on our emotional state with aging, while granting many exceptions to any generalizations. Plus, to the extent we can control our emotional state with aging, what should we be attempting in this regard?

For a start some people are quite lost after retiring, find themselves bored, or simply miss being ‘important’ in ways they once were. In most cases, if the truth be known, more and more people were considering them less important on the job as they aged. The younger simply learn to work around aged relics in the workplace. This is less necessary these days since with the new ‘Goddess’, Bottom Line, aging employed workers, in any capacity, are often traded in for newer models who cost less salary-wise. 

In general, our emotional states are less intense as we age, we go to the extremes in our emotions less and less. Part of it may be we have been there, done that, know where it is all going. Then again, there is nothing new in our aged emotional repertoire, so it is not like when we were in our formative years and were experiencing these kind of emotions the first time. Sometimes I look at young people and wish I could get as excited about something as they do about so many things. But of course, with age, that is not going to happen. A lot of things we focus on when younger and are entirely normal, like material things, power, influence, control, love, competitive winning, outsmarting others and situations, excitement, stress, and so on create our emotional state. None of these agendas are evil in themselves, but only if we eventually are unable to accept when ‘enough is enough’. All of these things can become compulsive behaviors, and no compulsive behaviors can bring real contentment. 

To the extent we see so many of these things to be important in our terminational years, we suffer the consequences of disappointment, frustration, and helplessness. I always am amused by athletes, who expended so much effort, for so long, during the season. to win a championship, with all the stress that comes with such a feat—to hear them scream “I am going to disneyland!!!!.”  Hey, for me, after that kind of effort, stress, and being in the public eye, I would choose some quiet nature setting to cool down and relax, in a setting where there would be no stress whatsoever. I suspect these high profile athletes have achieved enough excitement for the year.

It is kind of that way after retirement for many people whose jobs were filled with daily unpredictable stresses and issues. When people advise me to do some exciting things in my terminational years I just smile, and inform them that I don’t need anymore excitement, challenges, to win any contests, to out maneuver anyone, to acquire more THINGS, etc, I just look forward to some peace, quietude, and opportunity—with decent health—to sit back and enjoy the simpler things in life. Those older people who are a bundle of nerves, flailing away at endless windmills, trying still to be the decider in other people’s lives, fussing about nothing-burgers, demanding continued involvement in other people’s lives, are missing the point of retirement. Let those in their productive years do their thing, those in their productive years are supposed to be in charge now, and the rest of us have this wonderful seat in the audience to enjoy the theatre of it all. I remember being at a meeting some time ago and someone asked what I thought since I have been around in life for some time. I replied, “I think my days are numbered and thus the consequences of anything being discussed here are not likely to impact me for long, if at all. So think it through the best you can and good luck.”

If we are lucky enough to reach our terminational years with good health, then we need to have developed our level of tolerance to diversity in such a way that we understand the function of diversity in the evolutionary process, and the need for change as the tool for progress. The world is not full of evil and good, governed by some sort of sadistic demanding temperamental God who provides His protection to those who inherited some human devised religious dogmas. Instead, the laws which control the evolutionary process seem to apply to everyone, and were devised to ensure progress over evolutionary time, not necessarily during our minuscule time——human time.   

All of us need be careful about this phrase ’sanctity of life’ which is often combined with ‘family values’. These are not realistic perceptions at all. While the laws which govern the evolutionary process are beyond amazing, and are complex, they are not built around any sanctity of individual life or lend any protection to any family over another.  It is a psychological mistake to start viewing ourselves, or our ‘family’ (however extended), as special in the scheme of things. We do this out of pure self serving needs. To reach any true inner peace, one that is compatible with the genetic nature of ethics in our species, we have to accept the Golden Rule, and accept that others count as much as ourselves, and that we all have, individually and collectively, the obligation to make a more level playing field for those less fortunate genetically or environmentally. ‘Survival of the fittest’, however hard we may try to sugarcoat the process, is inherently cruel when it comes to individual members of a species, and can be cruel to even the best individual members of any species. Very bad things can happen to the best and very lucky good things to the worst in any species. 

Humans have an ethical nature in part because we understand the concept of death and the consequences of injury, disease, accidents, etc. Much of the pain we suffer from physical injury or disease is our realization of the consequences. A while back I was present when a horse got kicked by another horse when they were frolicking, and one horse got a fractured bone in a front leg. The horse could hardly move but was as stoic about it as could be, while those humans closely associated with that horse were overcome with tears and anguish. The horse only knew it was hurt, had felt physical hurt before, and things were done to heal the hurt. The horse had no idea the end was but a few hours away. That is why the human species requires an ethical nature, a means to bring some contentment to the less fortunate. There is no way a Donald Trump will ever have any peace of mind, any contentment in his life. He has this addiction, this compulsive behavior to acquire more and more material things, money, and power which comes from these kind of acquisitions. Enough is never enough and to reach the same high as before there has to be more and more of all this. His happiness is of a fleeting nature and is always followed by emotional lows which go lower each time as his efforts to get another equal high must be even greater.  We all know far less fortunate people in life with more contentment and real joys in life than a Donald Trump. 

Once adapted to the terminational years as a spectator in this theatre of life being run by those in their productive years, what does this mean for our emotional state? Well, like any theatre performance, we are put through varied emotional states. When we see good things happen to good people we become emotionally pleased—after all, we have been there and know how good it feels to have something good happen to someone in need. With todays plethora of internet video snips we get to see some really happy, sad, cruel, amazing, depressing real life theatre things.  And our emotions follow. I, for example, for varied reasons, choose not to participate in a lot of social things anymore, but there are those who do, and it makes me happy see them continue enjoying such social situations.  So in this sense, our emotions in our terminational years can run the full spectrum many times in a day, the difference being it is not so much about our own lives anymore. That can be a good thing since when we are the center of the situation, especially difficult situations, the emotion may be too stressful or linger too long, or never get resolved. Sometimes people comment on how cheerful I tend to be all the time. Part of that is because I don’t have any real reason any more to be un-cheerful. I am not arguing with anybody about anything that is personal, I am not competing with anyone about anything, I feel no need to manipulate others to achieve some sort of outcome, I am not looking over my shoulder to see if anyone is gaining on me regarding work, social adventures, family matters, etc. There is a time and need for all that, especially during our formative and productive years, but when the ‘race’ of life is over, the time is ripe for some peace, tranquility, and contemplation. 

The point is this: we cannot depend on self serving goals in life alone to achieve contentment. Age, if we are healthy, gives us the chance to let go of compulsive behaviors that were appropriate in our productive years, and begin to appreciate the simpler things in life along with sharing any of our material gain, and/or our time, with the less fortunate. Being the center of attention, for whatever reasons, is not something that wears well with age. Trying to relive the past never works. Trying to stay important in the same way we were once important will fail. As more and more of our past slips away including parents, former friends, former activities etc, we have little left but gratitude for any good luck we have had, special talents or abilities we had, and a real sense of appreciation for those people in our lives who helped us along the way. What is often left for us in the terminational years is the chance to finally appreciate the simpler things in life, the sereneness of solitude, and the peace that comes with having run the race of life well enough to have gotten to the finish line of our productive years exhausted, but healthy. Our race is over, we really did achieve some successes, and now we get to genuinely relax, put the pieces of life together which we have accumulated along the way, and finally, to varying degrees, be able to see the forest of life instead of individual trees. When we are in our productive years there are so many things we HAVE TO DO as part of our paid job duties. When we retire we are free, for the most part, to do what we want, when we want, as often as we want. That is a good deal The total picture is uplifting and full of hope, not for us as individuals, but for this evolutionary process to which we have been fortunate to be a part. If we can only be happy when we ourselves play a major role in the process, and be some sort of protected and favored special person protected by God, destined to be forgiven for all our sins and enter some sort of Heaven after death—-if this is the prerequisite for being happy, then the terminational years are going to be a bumpy road.  Heaven or no Heaven is not something we, as humans, can remotely conclude much of anything. We cannot comprehend how this thing called life really began, with something coming from nothing. Why would we remotely think we can therefore comprehend what the future is like? All of us missed most of life in evolution and we don’t seem depressed over that. Why would we be depressed over the very real possibility we are going to miss life in the evolutionary process after we die? Way back in time, in early Greek society, Epictetus (a Greek philosopher) made the following astute observation: “Thus that which is the most awful of evils, death, is nothing to us, since when we exist there is no death, and when there is death we do not exist.” 

In the last analysis that is fair enough. We need not worry. Things are moving along as they should. There is no reason to think the evolutionary progress is coming to any end. It is a vast relay race, and we will, like others before us, hand off the baton to the next generation.  It is a good thing that we have aged, as it seems to be the only way to live a long time. And with good health, we have the best seats to watch the greatest show, called life, as pure theatre. 

The Ray Rice Incident

The Ray Rice Incident

This one is a nightmare. It is hard to be logical. It is hard to know where to start, and what part of this episode should carry the most weight. What are the issues anyway? Let’s start there.

Should a man ever punch a woman?

If he does what is the appropriate punishment?

Does prior behavioral history have any impact?

On all these questions nothing is clear cut. It is easy enough to say a man should never punch a woman. It is easy enough to say no adult should hit a child. It is easy enough to say no one should hit a pet. It is easy enough to say no sibling should hit another sibling. 

The trouble is the playing field is never level here. Personalities differ. The environment a child is raised in differs and affects his future behavior. Situations differ. The evidence differs. Relationships, some of the most intense ones, can be highly stressful. It is legal to binge drink and everyone knows binge drinking often leads to violence. Why then is it legal to do something which we know can lead to physical violence against others, no matter of what sex or age?

Here are the stats: Over 1.3 million American women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner every year. That’s a lot. The punishments vary from no punishment, to jail, to a fine, or loss of one’s career/job. There is no consistency. What about verbal violence? Can’t an endless ongoing verbal assault to a child, an employee, an unattractive kid, an unattractive spouse, a coworker produce as much damage to a person as a knockout punch?  And a physical punch itself—if it doesn’t knock out the person the punishment is different? Maybe I am free to punch away.

No man should ever hit a woman—that sounds good, but maybe if the woman is attacking him with a frying pan that is different. Maybe it’s different if the person is someone in the public eye. I think there are many things we all know, if we say or do to someone, the response might be physical. Aren’t we part of the problem if we knowingly precipitate a physical response? People argue every which way on these questions.

Physical assaults happen, they happen for all sorts of reasons, and depend on the conditions at the time. We all know we can make the same comment to someone and they will laugh, but the same comment at a different time might result in a verbal or physical assault. We all know this. People make mistakes, especially when they are in a bad mood, the wrong environment, are high on a drug, feel insulted, and so it goes on and on. In some environments, especially ghettoes, the image of potential violence can be the measure used to protect oneself. Many ghetto youths dress and act a certain way to broadcast “no one better mess with me”. Many of the mass murderers of late get the time and space to do what they do because no one who knows them wishes to set them off. We all shy away from people who everyone knows is emotionally unstable and potentially dangerous. 

Now enter the case of Ray Rice and his wife. They are angry at each other and apparently high or drunk. She becomes the 1.3 million plus one woman to be physically assaulted. But it is caught on video tape. At first just the aftermath of the punch. We all say, not good, not acceptable, not manly. But Ray Rice is a pleasant enough guy who has no record of violence, drunken assaults on anyone, and most everyone likes him. So maybe his wife may have done something real bad to deserve getting punched. If Ray Rice were not a running back in professional football the punch probably wouldn’t have knocked her out. She would have fared better if I had punched her. Well, said the NFL Commissioner, there are a lot of things we don’t know, and he has no history of violence so it’s a two game suspension, in part because the wife pleaded on behalf of her husband. Then the actual video appeared of THE PUNCH. Now he is indefinitely suspended from football. What really changed here? What do we know now that we didn’t know before? I mean, were we uncertain he really had punched her before? Of course not. We just didn’t see the punch. 

And why is the NFL permitted to be the cop, judge, and jury on a domestic violence case? Other such cases are handled by the court system. Why does our society let the 32 rich millionaires who own football teams have a monopoly business which is outside any regulation or limits, and allowed limitless economic predatory behavior against fans, cities, and individual players? The first priority for these millionaires is to make more and more money—enough is never enough—and the second priority to is to hire an army of profession spinners to protect the image of football. 

But enough here, what is the solution to this punching a female situation? There probably is no hard fast solution.  That is why we have trials.  That is hardly the perfect solution, but it is the best we currently have. If the right action has been taken with Ray Rice, what about the other 1.3 million males in our society who have also assaulted a female in a close relationship? Shouldn’t every one of them be suspended from what ever their profession is indefinitely? How many employers fire a guy because the guy physically assaulted his wife or girlfriend? I sense they almost always leave it to the courts. How many times do the police or courts or employer ever press charges if the victim won’t press charges? What have we really established here except that you can’t punch a female IF you are a professional football player because it hurts the image of the sport. Damaged image—reduced revenue and that, above all, cannot be tolerated by millionaires for whom enough is never enough. 

The priority here should be measures which will reduce violence between humans period. Violence begets violence whether it is in the home, at work, or in our foreign policies. A tendency to be violent needs to be caught early on. That is where it starts. This is why the recent attention to bullying is good. Let’ not be so restrictive. The use of violence to settle disputes is not ‘manly’ PERIOD. If the NFL wanted to be serious about violence to other people by it’s players it would react to physical violence the same way by any player who resorted to it. But it doesn’t. With the NFL it is always image and spin control. As long as they can maintain a rosy public image their economic  predatory behavior against the public, cities, fans, and individual players can continue. Ray Rice was suspended indefinitely because he threatened the image of football. 

The only legitimate response to physical violence is to incessantly push the concept that violence begets violence, and to vastly level the playing field so that everyone who uses violence to solve conflict gets similar punishment, one that contributes to reducing the frequency of human violence. Instead, we are focused on the right to ‘stand your ground’. The number of assaults on other people from this kind of focus is clearly going to rise. The NFL has taken it’s ‘image’ stand. Nevertheless, next year, another 1.3 American women will be physically assaulted by a male with whom they have a close relationship. As usual, the NFL is all spin control. Football is a great game to watch, and this enables the NFL to continue it’s predatory actions against the public, fans, cities, and individual players. They have us trapped, these millionaires, and and we are too weak to resist. Try to tell fans to ignore football a week no matter what the cause and see how many of us can really stop. 

The Killing Fields

The Killing Fields

This title was used to describe the genocidal rampage that took place in Cambodia years ago.  Mass senseless slaughter of people for no sane reason. “The radical Communist Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, during which time nearly two million people were killed outright or died as a result of torture, disease overwork and starvation.” It was many years ago but the ‘killing fields’ expanded globally since then. After Hitler everyone said never again. But it did continue to happen in Korea, Vietnam, Rwanda, Stalin’s purge, Argentina, Honduras, the mideast, Africa, South America, the Balkans, and so on. Why, we might ask, are human civilizations in so many places turning so barbaric and intolerant?

We now live in an age where money, things, and power are King, with the best of all possible worlds for some, and the worst of all possible worlds for others.  Human life is routinely expendable. More and more people in more and more countries are becoming armed, with violence begetting violence right before our eyes all over the globe. I guess this is predictable in a planet reeling from human overpopulation, religious intolerances, rapidly dwindling natural resources, and an absurdly skewed accumulation of wealth in the hand of a small group of capitalists with no regulation or limits.  Entire nations become consumed by chaotic destruction of life, infrastructures, homes, schools, and whatever else is in the path of this madness. Individuals are rendered powerless, families are faced with a reign of terror, the only survival to flee to distant refugee camps. We spend billions to invade country after country to defend our own “national security”, with wars that last years, accomplish little, and then we tire of it and withdraw. Most of the time we spend billions of dollars in humanitarian help, lose track of where most of it ever went, and then observe escaped former citizens of the invaded country living amongst us, wealthy enough—perhaps a hint of where that missing money went. 

Where is the U.S. in the ‘killing fields’ contest? A little over 11,000 people were killed in the U.S. in 2013. Compared to many other countries that is pretty good. Interestingly, the U.S. leads the world in average firearms per 100 people with 88.8. The next closest is Yemen with 55. Ironically, most of the leading countries in this category are not hotbeds of violence. Why is that? Apparently, in many countries where the killing fields are most active, the beleaguered people are too poor to own guns. Or, those with the guns make sure those without guns can’t get any. No guns, stoning, decapitation, assassination, are all pretty effective in terrorizing trapped ‘have-nots’.  

Is violence as bad as it really seems to be across the globe and in our own country? The wild west  of our past was pretty bad and the southern states have always led, and still do, in violent crimes per 100,000 population. The media thrives on reporting violent happenings and this no doubt increases our fears. Old fashioned wars, government armies against government armies, are rather a thing of the past. The only country running around the globe engaging in wars with uniformed soldiers, for the most part, is the U.S.  Our opponents are not uniformed, and our own battlefield deaths are not from battlefields but from land mines, snipers, suicide bombers, planted bombs—that sort of thing. These modern wars are so brutal and senseless, with no respect at all for human life, that more U.S. soldiers died from suicide in Afghanistan than any battlefield deaths. The carnage in the two World Wars was far greater but soldier suicides were rare. Back in these days volunteer mercenaries were not used to fight wars, and everyone sacrificed greatly to conduct the war, they weren’t fought on borrowed money while all the suffering was spread around. I reckon if war is ever noble, these World wars were.  

How does any country protect citizens in another country from their own thugs?  McCain, who never misses a chance to promote invading another country, was himself a prisoner of war in an invasion that stands out as the most unethical war the U.S. has engaged in, at least since we eradicated, for all practical purposes, the American Indians—taking all of North and South America without leaving them even the tiniest portion of land for an independent nation of their own. While the U.S. voted that the U.N. should establish an independent Israel, there was no push to establish an independent nation of the American Indians. Justice is often illusive. 

There are two basic problems we face today. While there is no country which has the remotest ability to take over our country militarily, and we could, in fact, obliterate any nation that tried, we declare ourselves threatened by such military powers as Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Grenada, etc. The only thing threatened is our control over their politics and natural resources. The second basic problem is just how do we and other nations protect backward countries from their own band of thugs, which very often are their government leaders?  The situation is just weird. We can do nothing and watch the slaughter or we can intervene, fight for years, and leave the country worse off than when we entered. Nice choice. 

We perhaps need ask questions which we prefer not to address. On a planet which has become overpopulated with humans, and as a consequence is depleting natural resources, generating climate change, massive species extinction, and polluting land, water, and atmosphere—how do we stop any of this? Ironically, none of these situations developed quickly.  It took many decades to create these problems, and it would take many decades to reverse them. We still can’t seem to muster the focus and determination to do much about it all, and worst of all, it is too late now to get any immediate relief in an national atmosphere where few are willing to cut back or sacrifice at all.  

For centuries human civilizations have progressed, in spurts, to more civilized behavior, and technical advances which have made life so much more enjoyable to live—and to live longer.  We have, in theory, the brain power to have stopped any of the situations in the last paragraph. But we have met the enemy and it is us. The last thing humans needed as overpopulation commenced, is to have weapons of mass destruction—smart missiles, drones, all sorts of guns and bombs. While we now ponder how to stop the violence in third world countries, our own behavior is peculiar for the future security of our own population. We now have the most armed population in the world. We still don’t use our guns extensively, although that is a relative term. As more and more people begin to carry guns and train themselves to use guns, common sense tells us that more and more will begin to use them. We claim guns protect us, but guns can’t protect us from decreasing purchasing power, loss of pensions, the accumulation of more and more wealth into the hands of the wealthy and genetic cabals of wealth. Guns can’t replenish water reserves that are now being drawn from non-replenishible reservoirs, guns can’t restore soil fertility, stop pollution, stop political and social intolerance, educate poor children, provide medical care for all citizens, stop climate change, etc. Obama, one of those rare politicians who seems to genuinely care for all sorts of people of every race, religion, and economic class, finds himself now the target of all those who expected him to make everything better. And yet they have no idea who else could do better than him. Nor are most people in the mood for sharing or sacrificing in any way to make things better for everyone.  We now wage wars with voluntary armies, mostly souls needing a job, mixed with those who enjoy the killing fields. 

What do we have to face the future?  We have guns and of course more and more of us will begin to use them and ‘stand our ground’. We have replaced social intercourse with gadgets that enable us to spend endless hours per day with inane chats to a handful of friends or family members. Everyone now seems to be circling the wagons under the term ‘family values’ and neighborhoods have become huge centers of everyone being very much alone together.  For now, the killing fields in our country are the urban, suburban, and rural ghettoes, mixed with ‘terrorist’ killings which are growing exponentially in number. We are are fixated on security, but there is no known way to stop terrorism. Practically any of us could be a ‘terrorist’ if we so chose.  The population is now shifting as the poor seek personal security and employment in the suburbs. More and more affluent are beginning to move back into cities where they can live in ‘gated’ communities or high rises with security guards at the entrance. There is little job security and it is projected that a young person will have like 30 different jobs in their lifetime. Salaries are stagnating or decreasing as the bottom line rules the roost. Full time jobs are giving way to part-time jobs and contract jobs. Health care costs are rising exponentially and no party can stop the rise in costs. We have the medical where-with-all to keep people alive, in one way or another, for months, years, decades, using equipment and personnel that are all very expensive. Organized religions are losing parishioners at rapid rates as more and more consider the rituals and church dogmas out of date and irrelevant. Those remaining operate on ‘pure faith’ blinders, filled with anger at ‘heathens’ and like deer, are frozen in place as reality bears down on them. 

We are essentially living in a powder keg, a situation that could explode and bring chaos at any time. For those with wealth, there is no end to their greed—enough is never enough—while the poor have nothing more to give up, and the squeeze on the middle class just pushes more of them into poverty. We give cost of living raise to the elderly so their buying power can stay the same, but we give no cost of living to those working minimum wage jobs and thus the buying power of those in these minimum wage jobs is behind the buying power of these jobs back in the 50’s by $12-15 dollars an hour. How brilliant. With far less buying power and increasing numbers, these millions of people have no money to purchase much of anything and recession follows for everyone.  The average worker now works 46 hours a week and the number of people working more than that is rapidly rising, as is the number of people working two or more jobs. Gone are the days when a low wage job could provide a simple lifestyle. If we more than doubled their hourly pay, they would still fall behind the purchasing power of the 50’s. Clearly this strangle hold on wages for jobs at the low end of the pay scale is just waiting to explode. The beleaguered poor trusted Obama to make things better, but he cannot get his policies through Congress so nothing happens. The Republicans may succeed in the near future getting control of all three branches of government, but they likely will rue the day they got such control. When our situation explodes, chaos will permeate our society—-most everyone is armed, and it could be a virtual blood bath. The police and medical personnel may have complicated emergency plans but  enough of them will abandon their job to try and save/protect their families. The ‘Haves’ never win any full scale revolution by the “Have-nots”. Never in history. The ‘Have’s” have too much to protect and the “Have-nots” have nothing to lose. I suppose we could turn lose atomic bombs and blow everyone up or radiate them to death.

While all this sounds like some end of the world as we know it scenario, it must be remembered that Mother Nature bats last. The laws which govern the evolutionary process have been moving things forward for billions of years. It has never been a straight line and catastrophic events have stalled or regressed things for thousands, even millions of years. Evolution doesn’t progress on Human Time.  While we have done quite well researching the past footprints of evolution, we really don’t have the smarts to envision where it is all going. We can’t really fathom how it all began (can something really come from nothing?) and any vision for the future is about just as unfathomable. But there is no real reason to conclude evolution will end, or progress be stopped. All any of us have is the present for sure, we don’t miss the millions of years when we weren’t present, and after death we can’t really miss anything about the future. Many people still envision life after death, that they can have a personal relationship with God, that some sort of God will protect them from all the land mines of life if they inherited the right religion and are dutiful to all the rituals and dogmas attached to that religion.  But this is totally a faith based belief, there is no logic or reason behind such thinking.

Most of us err is thinking we personally matter too much in the evolutionary process. We don’t really comprehend responsible reproduction, the only salvation for human overpopulation. Instead we strongly feel we have a biased right to reproduce as often as we like, and that we have an endless personal special relationship with our offspring for life. It is the old cliche—“these are my own flesh and blood.”  Of course we have a genuine obligation to support our offspring during their formative years, just like most advanced species must do until the offspring fly the coop and venture away to live their own life. We tend to view our offspring as near replica’s of us personally. This is genetic ignorance. If we could put hundreds of parents and kids in room with only race as the common element, and then spend weeks looking at everyone and talking with everyone—the ability to match the parents with the kids would be slim indeed. There are some small number of cases where there is a strong physical relationship between parents and offspring. Personality wise is even less of a fit. Even though there appears to be no major religion in which the prophets lived their lives in any close knit family cabal, we are more and more adopting some sort of exclusive ‘family values’ mentality where family members circle the wagon, wall themselves off from others, and go through life with an “us vs them” mentality and actually believe God rewards such behavior.  

In the last analysis we can bitch, bitch, bitch about endless things, or be grateful that, by chance, a particular sperm met a particular egg, and, by chance, we got to live at a time and place with unearned genetic and environmental blessings and limitations. All we can ever do is the best we can do with the cards dealt us and hope, by chance, enough others will help level the playing field for us so that we can achieve some degree of contentment in this, our one chance, at life. We are not, cannot be, and never will be anything more than a bit player in the grand scheme. We are but a mere brick in an amazing and awesome process. For all of us to get something out of life requires the Golden Rule as the basis of human ethics. Humans are smart enough products of the evolutionary process, but even more amazing is the inherent nature of human ethics. Ethics had given us progress in civilized living, but clearly this trait is not developed enough for us to meet current challenges. That hardly means evolution is coming to an end. Not at all. To us, with transitory existence, times flies, but in reality Time Stays, WE Go.  In the long run, all is well with the evolutionary process. God’s laws which govern this process are still intact. The long run means little to us personally, and if any concept is bereft of legitimacy it is the concept of ‘sanctity of life’. If there is certainty about anything it is that we all, as individuals will die. If God or His/Her laws of evolution operated with this sanctity of life concept, none of us would die. It is we who create a God in our own image and create the notion that there will be a Heaven awaiting those of us who, after being forgiven a thousand times for our sins, and having followed the dogma of our inherited religion, will end up in this Heaven, although when it comes to specifics we haven’t the vaguest idea what this means. The basis for contentment in life is based on knowing when enough is enough. Maturity can bring to us the acceptance that we are in this life but once, are to make the best of it, and live our lives according to the Golden Rule so the maximum number of people can achieve some contentment with life existence. Amen.