The Religious Crisis, Gay Marriage, and Human Rights

The Religious Crisis, Gay Marriage, and Human Rights

A musing related to gay marriage has not been forthcoming earlier in time because some issues do no lend themselves to easy digestion.  Actually, just about anything to do with sex is more feelings than rationality. It is easy enough to understand the connection between sex and procreation, but after that everything else which pertains to sex—the attitudes and emotions involved, simply become individualized, personal, and mostly inexplicable. Sex jokes are so prevalent, and so common a source of humor, precisely because sex is an aspect of life so irrational. 

All of us can, but seldom do, talk about how we feel about sex, in part because it would be babble based on our own particular nuances relative to the whole subject. Somehow sex has played a meaningful role in our lives, even if we prefer abstinence, infrequency, or have a compulsive need for sex. And that is before we even talk about the kind of sex acts. On top of this, love and sex become mixed up somehow in the whole picture. Then add the relationship between sex and physical attraction and we have some sort of ultimate circus with which we all have to deal. And let’s not forget we are dealing here with emotions, not reason in any logical sense of the term. If we go on line to porn sites, there are like 50 different kinds of sex acts to choose from. 70 years ago access to pornography was difficult, even just naked pictures were not common. Today, some studies claim around 30% of high school males have seen naked pictures sent via email of naked girls in their class. Minus any required strenuous effort to get real sex, perhaps more and more young people become relatively bored with the subject, or maybe more and more become obsessed with it all. 

While there may be 50 categories of sex to choose from on the internet, individuals who use the internet for pornography focus on only particular kinds of sex acts. I guess it is like music or paintings—different strokes for different folks. The point here is simply that we cannot use reason to explain why people differ so much in their interest in sex or why their interest varies so much in the kind of sex acts. In reality, our sex life is pretty much the one major area of our life which we rarely talk much about in detail, albeit our interest in other people’s sex acts is not exactly non existent. The media is well aware of that. No matter how exemplary we may live the rest of our life, if our sexual behavior is over the top, even in harmless ways (no victims), our career may well be over, especially for a politician.  

All major religions have, in some form or other, tried to make sense of it all, apply moral meaning to it all, and incorporate a moral position on sex into specific dictates. However, no matter to what extent any organized religion tries to codify sexual behaviors, the percentage of people who engage in any kind of sex act is not much different regardless of their religious sect. The same is true for any political attempt to regulate sexual behavior via laws. It all just goes underground. 

Given the nature of love, sex, and marriage it is a pipe dream to think we can resolve these issues via reason and logic. Churches and politicians try to do it via laws or commandments. Married couples try to do it via vows. Lower animals in the evolutionary ladder control sex via hormones. Humans still have hormones, but are saddled with a brain capable of dominating hormones to a large degree. Sex for us is more mental than hormonal. Human civilizations have been around long enough now to finally begin to understand how much of a hodge-podge we are dealing with regarding the areas of love, sex, and marriage. Most people today, to varying degrees, understand that diversity is simply a reality, that sin is not involved. Love exists, but in many forms and ways, and most of the ways are just mysterious. Ask any parent who cannot understand how one of their beloved offspring can fall in love with someone so obviously a loser. More people today accept that people change over time, and a perfect match for marriage at one age may not prove to be so perfect 20 years later. Ask most anyone why their preference for sexual acts is what it is, and they will be speechless. We all know why sex jokes are so funny——most every sexual act is hilarious for the lack of rationale to it. A child not yet with a strong sexual drive will find any explanation for most sex acts, if not funny, as on the level of Abbot and Costello, at least find it weird and/or repulsive. 

Recently a solid Catholic country—Ireland, voted overwhelmingly to make gay marriage legal despite the insistence of the Catholic Church that gay sex and marriage is a sin. In short, reasoned ethics is now winning out over Church doctrines written centuries ago by humans. It is the same scenario that has played out over the historical years. If organized religious sects were ever the actual word of God, then animal and human sacrifices were once sacred aspects of life, as was slavery, serfdom, segregation of public facilities, witch trials, women having no right to vote, and so it goes. Over time, more and more citizens gained rights once held only by some of the citizens. In time, churches painfully adjusted, but each time it created doubt in the minds of parishioners as to how the church could have not gotten it wrong for so many years. Today there is so much accumulated knowledge and exposure to human diversity, that more and more people are using logic and reason to develop an innate genetic sense of ethics. In the United States 23% of adults claim no religious affiliation. In Ireland, the vast majority still say they are Catholics, but selectively choose which part of Catholic doctrine they personally believe. 

Many issues vital to modern civilization—like human overpopulation, environmental degradation, species extinction, climate change, and disparity of wealth distribution are spinning out of control, but human attitudes about the same rights for everyone are continuing to catch up with the ethical principle of the Golden Rule. When I was young and wandering around a crowded entertainment district in a city, the blacks hung with blacks, hispanics hung with hispanics, whites with whites, the good looking with the good looking, the ugly with the ugly, the athletes with the athletes, the bookworms with the bookworms, the poor with the poor, the rich with the rich, and so on. Today it is much different in that groups of young people are far more often to be diverse. Marriage between different religions and ethnic groups has risen at a dramatic rate. I reckon soon enough that fad will fade and the young will have to find a different way to be ‘hip’ besides marrying out of their own cabal. 

The specific reasons why gay marriage should be an acceptable form of marriage have been covered in great detail throughout the rapid and amazing growth of acceptance for gay marriages. When this notion of fairness finally caught on it grew exponentially, in large part because gay couples are not a large minority. If gays were 40% of couples this battle would still be raging on with explosive riots in the streets.  That means, despite the claim of some that marriages would lose their sanctity, most people realize their own marriage is hardly affected at all by who someone else marries. How do we measure sanctity in any scientific way? Is sanctity of marriage even definable? What is going to be different about a marriage when this ’sanctity of marriage’ is stolen by gay people? Is the sanctity gone from all marriages, or did gay people snatch it away for themselves or what? 

All of us sometimes wonder why others cannot change the way they ‘feel’ about issues which seem plenty fair and rational enough on paper. The answer as to why we are all so inflexible on some issues may be as follows: If we learn to ride a bike it is something which we have learned for a lifetime. We can get on a bike as an adult, not having ridden one for years, and it is no problem and away we go. But if we build a bike where we have to turn the steering bars in the opposite direction to get the wheels to turn as we wish, we cannot ride the bike unless we try doing it for a long period of time. That is because our brain has learned to process the nerve activity in certain ways to ride a regular bicycle. 

We clearly understand that to ride the new bike we have to think differently. But we can’t, at least without learning a new way all over again. If we have learned to view gay couples as an aberrance, then every time we think about this topic, the same old neuronal pathways become initiated and we get the same old abhorrent feelings. Same with an athlete. Once we really don’t like an athlete, for whatever reason, if is hard to suddenly like the athlete no matter what reasons for changing are thrown our way.  The point here is this: there is a neuronal circuit basis for why we so strongly hold our prejudices even when there is logical reason to abandon such neuronal circuitry. To accept new factual or logical reasoning on an issue we are mentally entranced in, requires shutting down established neuronal circuitry and opening up new ones. Take the recent Waco Texas biker brawl in which 9 were killed and over 1000 guns confiscated. How we feel about all this depends on our own established neuronal wiring. For example, if these had been black motorcycle gangs the perceptions and level of anger/fear for many would have risen exponentially. Suppose it had been female bikers?  Or hispanic? or an elderly motorcycle gang? What happened could be identical, but how we would feel about it would change. We tend to think what we see and feel is reality. But that is not how the human mind works at all. Our brains are not like computers in which we plug in data and get a solution based solely on the input. Our brains accept input and tend to filter the input and activate circuitry the brain has already put in place. If the original circuitry is incorrect regarding justice or fairness for example, then it takes time and conscious effort to create new circuitry for the same issue. Some people are more adaptable than others. Beliefs based on a religious basis can often be strongly hard wired in our brain. It is just hard to change.

This explains why new human rights for those not currently having such rights take time to happen. It is always the younger generation who readily interpret the same input on the same issue, and yet create neuronal circuits on the issue which differ from the previous generation. The same with music from one generation to the next. The same with dress codes from one generation to the next. Dress code history is a real circus. Humans started off with wearing practically nothing then decided modesty dictated more clothing until at one point, especially women, were wrapped like in a cocoon. Then the pendulum swung the other way until now less is better or at least for those with certain shapes. It perhaps is not accidental that ward robe ‘malfunctioning’ only seems to happen to those for whom such an event will elevate their career. When is the last time we saw a member of the church choir have a wardrobe malfunction? Or a member of the back up singers?  Perhaps if everyone simply wore nothing then the young would insist on clothing all over again. We may, via ingrained circuitry think all babies are cute, but there is no such luck after that, and none of us would appreciate being on an crowded airplane if no one had clothes on. 

Gay rights is logically a no-brainer. Contraceptive devices are a no-brainer. That a child can be raised successfully by a single parent is a modern day no-brainer. That the earth is now suffering from human overpopulation is a modern day no-brainer. That climate changed  by human activity is upon us is a modern day no-brainer, that modern day disparity of wealth distribution will lead to domestic implosion is a no-brainer. No-brainer is, of course, a silly term. We all have functioning brains, but when they get wired from input in the past these brains are not easily rewired based on new input. No logical person is ever going to claim everyone is safer if everyone is walking around packing assault weapons. I know some individuals who are inherently, by nature and personality, uncomfortable with guns, yet because they associate strongly with conservative Republican leaders, they simply cannot process any negative feelings about everyone owning guns. After all, this seems to be a requirement for being a Republican just as gay marriage being a sin is a requirement for being a good Catholic. Reason and logic become irrelevant.

While justice and equal rights for all citizens has made tremendous progress in most parts of the civilized industrial countries, those countries in which religious sects have a firm grip on government lag far behind any justice and equal rights for all citizens. Organized religion has never in history been a force to promote peace or justice for all. Look what organized religion and politics has done to all of Africa, most of South America, the Middle East, and the American Indians. History sort of dictates that when missionaries of any ilk arrive, run like hell or drive them out immediately. We now have an Africa whose borders were decided by others with no respect to rival tribes, and no understanding that the seasonal climate changes often require humans and animals to migrate with the seasons. Now there are nation boundaries so humans are forced to stay and suffer droughts and monsoons at their own peril. No more migrating with the weather.

It is uplifting, at least for many, to see more people gain rights and justice. I always prefer to see all kinds of people happy and able to earn a good living and diversity be appreciated. Unfortunately, all this progress regarding justice and equal rights is being overshadowed across the globe by human overpopulation and a rapid rise in those unemployed or earning less than a living wage. Two figures loom large in a depressing way regarding the global future. In the U.S. 43% of the adult population does not earn enough money to be eligible to pay federal income taxes. Of course that means they don’t have enough money to buy enough items to keep the economy healthy either. Worldwide, 75% of adults do not have a permanent job. This means total implosion not too far down the road. Without living minimum wages, more and more people need to work two jobs, more married couples need both work, and all this means there are not enough jobs now for everyone to have a job, and increased population just exponentially exasperates the problem. With so many competing for the few jobs, wages go down and without minimum wages being tied to increases in the cost of living, more and more people are forced to wallow in poverty. Then, when not enough people are paying taxes, government services become unaffordable and government employment gets cut back which puts even more people out of work and into poverty, and they also stop spending, and the economy spirals even further into the ditch.  It is positive feedback everywhere we turn. 

I watch all these groups finally get long denied human rights and more equal justice, and it makes me happy for them. The sad aspect is that they are getting all these rights and justices at a time when economic forces are rapidly making more and more citizens in every country poorer and poorer. All the rights and more justice will not stop human overpopulation, or global wage and benefit reductions, with the subsequent poverty on a massive level. The short term looks bleak, societies will implode, and as history shows the have-nots will topple the haves, and turmoil will set in for everyone. The Middle East mentality of intolerance and revenge will become the norm everywhere. But Mother Nature, as always, via God’s laws which govern the evolutionary process, now millions of years old, will force the proper corrections—not on human time, but evolutionary time (measured in eons) and progress, no matter now long the corrections lasts, will emerge, as it always has, to evolve into more complex and advanced global forms of life.

The real clunker here, from an overall vantage point is this; Those who have strong emotional objections to others getting the same rights they already have, or the same kind of justice others already have, or the same kind of health care, schools, benefits, tax shenanigans they already have, vote on these hot button issues with the 2-5 percenters who have the power and money to control elections and via that, stack the Supreme Court so that the means to retain their wealth and even accumulate more will stay in place. The 3-5 percenters could care less, for the most part, about these hot button issues, but without these issues they could not possibly win any elections.

While gay marriage is clearly here to stay, marriage is a stressful and complicated lifestyle. Half of marriages don’t even last.  As usual, be careful of what you wish for, you may actually receive it. 

I went to a gay parade maybe two years ago. It was celebratory bedlam, crowded, no room on buses or trains, the parade lasted 5 hours (not for me, like with most things, enough is enough), but all kinds of people, most not gay, were just festive, in good spirits, friendly, and this kind of atmosphere probably did as much as anything else to break down the persecution of harmless enough people. Live and let live is good tonic for our souls as well as enable us to live a more contented life.    

Willpower, SAT Scores, and Success the T.O. Way

Willpower, SAT Scores, and Success the T.O. Way

Most of the controversy about Terrell Owens is now history and the emotions generated subsided substantially. This musing is an attempt to ‘close the door’ on at least my own reasons for admiring how he lived a difficult life. It has been prompted by a lecture on will power by a Princeton University Professor.

Willpower is not just some vague unmeasurable concept. Willpower exists, can be measured in the laboratory, and has been measured for some time now. The relationship between willpower and success is better understood now, albeit many questions remain. What we do know is based, in this musing, on a lecture by Professor Sam Wang of Princeton University, a Professor of Molecular Biology and Neuroscience. 

My own overdone defense of Terrell Owens is well known by those who know me well, a diverse cabal limited in number. To many reasonable enough people, Terrell Owens is an annoying self centered character with a split personality: Terrell Owens off the field or before a camera, and T.O. on the field. His success on the field is not debatable and he currently stands 2nd or 3rd in wide receiver stats in the NFL record books. 

My own profession as a physiologist brought me into contact with hundreds of college students with a background similar to Terrell Owens. Terrell Owens was raised by his grandmother in a poor southern ghetto in Alabama. Students raised by single parents in poverty situations attending poor schools, with often the least competent teachers, and difficult family/ peer situations, arrive at college, if they ever get to college, with all kinds of difficult hurdles to overcome, if they are to achieve the kind of success students from better environments more easily achieve. That’s a long sentence, a consequence of condensation efforts.

When victims of such poverty pockets in this country are referred to as thugs, criminals, welfare leaches on society, lazy, and so on——usually when there are demonstrations or riots in these communities—it pains me to hear it, especially when it is obvious such shallow brained TV pundits have clearly never worked closely with this population. The truth is, at least for those in these environments who make it into college, they are more often than not some of the most admirable individuals we can ever meet. These young people did not earn a difficult family situation, did not earn the poor schools, the poor health care, the poor peer situation, their place of birth, the community they lived in, and so on. Many of these students are about the most honest, most dependable, most motivated, most eager for good advice, most forgiving, and most personable students an instructor will get to meet. Most of them haven’t been more than a stone’s throw from their own neighborhood and a more upscale college exposure is genuinely an emotional boost. They furtively hope they can see light at the end of the tunnel.

The reality however is this: they have endless hurdles to overcome which students from better environments never have to get over. It is not unusual for these disadvantaged students to work a demanding job for 40hrs a week, attempt to take a full load of courses, have heavy family obligations, poor health care, poor environments in which to study, personal social problems and pressures, and a long history of getting the short stick in almost every aspect of their lives. Yet there they are, struggling to stay afloat with a kind of effort that is genuinely admirable. I thought I had struggled in life to get anywhere, but the hand dealt to me in life was a cakewalk compared to what they had been dealt. Most of us ought to remember that, especially those claiming to be devoutly religious.

These multi-challenged young people often get help from certain others once in college, and they genuinely appreciate any help they get. Sometimes they succeed, but most of the time the endless pressures and hurdles wear them down—they become exhausted, just sort of give up, and end up in careers which are far below their potential. They may end up a mail person or in a lesser level position in a professional area they wanted to pursue. They didn’t fail, in that they escaped the extreme poverty, but they failed in that they never got to the level of their potential in a desired profession. Essentially, one can help them over some hurdles with delicate maneuvering, but in the end there are too many hurdles, and they run out of energy to fight on any further. Most of them never become outwardly bitter, and given their admirable personal traits they often live a more contented life then those who rose higher up the ladder in our ‘rat race’. Many of the people who have higher titles, higher salaries, more power over others, and whatever—are often the same ones who sustain the notion that ‘they earned their success the old fashioned way—they earned it”. The real successful are often trapped between compulsive behavior and self serving illusions. 

There is much more to elaborate regarding all of the above, but the above is enough to explain why Terrell Owens is an admirable example of success. Terrell Owens is a less a product of his community than a product of isolation from his community and peers. His grandmother was an eccentric sort of dictator who didn’t let Terrell out of the house and yard except to go to school and play sports. He couldn’t even ride his bicycle outside the small yard, and explained to Terrell: “You are special, you are not going to be like the other boys. They do bad things and are bad people. If you are to get anywheres in life you have to do it on your own. No one else will help you, they will just try to keep you down. Never trust anyone else but God.”  Hardly anyone from his home town or college community remembers much about Terrell Owens. He was shy, quiet, kept to himself, socially stunted, and just day dreamed about being somebody instead of a nobody. His physical ability for sports was limited; in high school and most of college he was a backup wide receiver, seeing game action only when the starter got injured. He received no favored treatment from anyone about anything, and Terrell Owens already had accepted the notion that any success had to come from himself. The first thing he did was devise his own workout sessions before dawn, running and working with weights on his own. He just listened to what the coaches would tell the starters on the team—a genuine fly on the wall. College was little different,  and his social life was mostly phone calls every night to his grandmother who managed to instill in him in a very real way (to Terrell) that it was him against the world—never give in, fight any attempt by anyone to hold him back. There are few, if any, tales, from anyone, about Terrell Owens in high school or college. He was just there in a vague sort of way. 

By the end of college he had really bulked up and understood the mechanics and strategies needed to be a good receiver, most of which he learned from what coaches told their starters. Terrell Owens was drafted 87th in the third round of the NFL draft by San Francisco. If his grandmother was the guru of his youth, Jerry Rice was the guru of his NFL career. It was Jerry Rice who got T.O. to realize that talent at wide receiver was only half the battle. The rest was finding a way to put pressure on quarterbacks and coaches to send the ball his way more so than any other way. In most other positions the game comes to you, for wide receivers a lot of success depends on creating pressure for the ball to come your way.

Almost overnight, after he came to pro football, Terrell Owens created T.O. This creation was going to be the ‘enforcer’, an intimidating presence who would make anyone uncomfortable if they tried to hold him back. As in his whole life, Terrell Owens was an ingrained loner. He lived in his own private bubble. He liked himself, and he liked being alone where he could focus on his dreams. Success to Terrell Owens was to be the best possible wide receiver, and achieving that would be his claim to success. His focus was so intense on his goal that no one, or anything else in his life, much mattered. Amazingly he succeeded. He got to the top essentially on his own. Every hurdle he either sailed over, ran through or ran around. It was a long complicated tense and lonely journey, a huge book if detailed.

The loud and persistent critics, almost always media commentators, players never on a team with him, and certain fans, never ceased in their attacks on Terrell Owens, or more precisely the T.O. persona.  After all, T.O. was the only personality of Terrell Owens they knew. Few, if any of them, were able to get any closer personally to Terrell Owens than were teammates or coaches.  And they attacked the T.O. persona with unrelenting vengeance. He was too self centered, bragged too much, was a bad teammate, a bad influence in the locker room, too full of himself, and some of these commentators, like Peter King of Sports Illustrated, claimed he should have been banned from football, while the adjectives they used to describe him were the kind we hear in ghetto neighborhood pick-up games.  It seemed a tad strange to me that they could be so unprofessional in their attacks on him, whose performance on the field and in practice was 5 star professional. Perhaps their inability to gain any more access to him than anyone else, was the real thorn in their side. Terrell Owens was never one of those undercover sources of character assassination many media analyzers depend on for their stories. Unless someone was being unfair to T.O. (in his mind), T.O. simply gave little thought to others.  If the song “I Did It My Way” ever applied to anyone, it applied to Terrell Owens.

Coaches and teammates were rather unanimously baffled by Terrell Owens. Most would say, in their own way: there is Terrell Owens—and there is T.O. Jerry Rice cautioned everyone not to cross T.O., he would never forget. Steve Young commented that whatever people wanted to say about T.O. off the field, no one was more prepared, tried harder, or knew his position better than Terrell Owens. Bill Walsh, who had plenty of opportunity to know T.O. well, commented that T.O.’s perception of what people are thinking about him does not always match the reality. He went on to say that things can be going along smoothly when all of a sudden T.O. tips over the whole boat. When someone sees all their struggles from the git go as being one of them vs the world, I guess the boat can sometimes be tipped over. It may well have been T.O.’s method of leveling the playing field. Once everyone is tossed into the water, T.O. figures he can stay afloat better than anyone else.  And those around him learn to be careful so he doesn’t turn the boat over and make surviving in the water the level playing field. 

Terrell Owens has always been a model citizen. No criminal record at all, no stealing, no assaults unless he was physically assaulted, and his personal ethics, which are strong, center around “fair is fair”. Any who think they can be unfair to T.O. because he/she has the leverage to do so find themselves badly mistaken. Just ask ask the Philadelphia Eagles owner and Donovan McMann. Much of the NFL operational rules favor the owners, and many players are paid well under their level of performance via disingenuous contracts. The contracts are one sided, bound by the players but not by the owners. When the owner ‘tricked’ Terrell Owens into signing a contract out of T.O.’s ignorance, the owner thought he had successfully made another killing. After all, even though underpaying Terrell, Terrell was still making big money. But the T.O. part of Terrell doesn’t care.  And T.O. never buckled, played as well as he ever played but spoke to no one telling the Offensive co-ordinator “You don’t talk to me unless I talk to you first”. He didn’t talk at all to Donovan. He told Andy Reid “Don’t you tell me to shut up. You shut up. My name is Owens, I am not your son. You shut up.”  Of course all this is outrageous, but in T.O.’s mind it was just like his grandmother warned him “They will try to take you down. Don’t let them.” They had to trade T.O. and he made far more money on the next team. 

The vicious attacks on Terrell Owens came almost exclusively from media commentators, some fans, players on other teams, and with precious few exceptions, never from former teammates or coaches.  Players mostly said, in their own way, “Terrell Owens is a good teammate. He doesn’t speak to me much, but we love having him on our side when the game starts. He speaks with his actions. That’s fine.”  He drove most coaches nuts, but they all pretty much state, again in their own way, that they enjoyed coaching him, that he belongs in the Hall of Fame, and admire his preparation, his focus, his success once the game starts. 

Now let me switch here and apply all of the above to the lecture by Professor Sam Wang from Princeton. What Terrell Owens has, more than anything else is willpower. While willpower can be tested and certainly exists, at the neuronal level much of it is still mysterious. It is finite, it can be used up, but the amount available can be built up over time with use. Whatever amount of willpower you have, with use, the willpower pool size can be increased over time. Willpower has been tested in young children and subsequent follow-ups have demonstrated that willpower is a better predictor of SAT scores and success in life than I.Q. tests. Ok, maybe most of us are not surprised at this, but now it is demonstrable.  Multiple tasking can drain our willpower pool. And therein lies the mystery of Terrell Owen’s success. His focus early on was on becoming the best wide receiver possible, even though his raw talent in this area was not readily there. 

It is probably fair to say that had Terrell Owens not lived his life with essentially a single focus—to be the best wide receiver possible, to be somebody instead of a nobody—that if he had multi-tasked his life, no such success would have been achieved as his willpower reservoir would have been drained. To achieve this focus Owens essentially created a bubble around his life and kept other people and other aspects of life at bay. He didn’t really bother or interfere with others, he just ignored them, kept them at bay, and concentrated on his life’s goal. Most of us use up our willpower reserve on many aspects of our lives. Not T.O. Football was his entire life. Had Terrell been a student in my class at the University, I would hardly have known he existed at all. He wouldn’t have come for help or advice with course work or any other part of his life. What Terrell had, compared to other students with similar backgrounds, was an olympic size willpower which was being centered on one aspect of his life. 

According to Professor Chang, those young children with the strongest willpower not only had the most success in life but were also well liked by their peers. Again this fits in with Terrell Owens. By far and wide his teammates and coaches liked him despite his ‘uniqueness’. When T.O. ran up and down the sidelines, while the defense was on the field, his teammates were not irritated when he might keep yelling “I am going to love me some me” or “Who can make a big play, I can, I can.” To them, that was just vintage T.O. and part of his self concentration. To the media, some fans and some players on other teams it was simply infuriating to them. Imagine if T.O. had been the first player to jump into the stands after a touchdown. The league would have gone bananas. If many of T.O.’s antics were childish, well perhaps he was simply having the childhood he never had. All his life he wanted so desperately to be a somebody instead of a nobody, and with his self developed talent and his created T.O. persona, all the cameras and attention in the media was a dream come true. With such a strong willpower dominating his life, it is not surprising that he can be brought to tears easily. Early on, in interviews, some loved to mention Terrell’s grandmother just to watch him tear up (she was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease).

Somewhere in all this is a lesson for those youngsters unlucky enough to be raised in the kind of ghettoes which our society creates. When 43% of Americans don’t make enough money to be eligible to pay any federal income taxes, these kind of communities are all over the place. Saving all your willpower for a narrow goal helps achieve success in that goal, but it comes with a cost. Other aspects of Terrell Owen’s life have suffered substantially. He has lost much of his money earned at football thru bad business decisions and child support payments. He has few social skills for strong relationships and remains single. Then again, his goal was to be somebody instead of a nobody, and the persona of T.O. which he created achieved that, and it has carried over after football. Terrell is no longer young enough to play football, but he still gets attention from all sorts of people who use his name recognition to help promote various causes. For someone like me, it has never been his football play which attracted my interest, but the means by which Terrell Owens got to the top of the heap. If more of my students, from the same kind of background as Terrell Owens, could have generated more of the kind of focus and willpower of a T.O., then greater success for them would have been achieved. Like most diversity in life, the right way to do things gets complicated. It is necessary to remember that T.O. had a brother and a sister, both raised by the same grandmother. The magic didn’t work for them. And of course we need be cognizant that it worked for Terrell Owens in a very targeted way, and he paid significantly in other aspects of life, to which he gave little, if any, focus. 

For one like myself who likes to write musings, the number of issues in life available to think a lot about are endless. Each day I try to learn more about something before the day ends. “What is the point?” could be legitimately asked. There probably is no real point except, as a hobby, it can be engaged in at any age, it costs no money, and for me, it brings contentment. That is, of course, about all anyone can hope to gain from life. In the end, no matter what roads we all take, we all end up 6 feet under, or our ashes scattered to the wind. What does matter is the amazing progress of the evolutionary process (the laws which govern this process created by God), and all we get, which is gift enough, is a chance, by chance, to play a bit role in the process for a “little gleam of time between two eternities”. That to me is reality. All of us, including T.O., deal with this reality or pay the emotional consequences. 

A Musing about God—A Personal View

A Musing about God—A Personal View

I reckon anyone’s view of God is, by any logical basis, an exercise in hopeless fantasy, a reach beyond human comprehension, filled with assumptions perceived via dimly lit and biased visions. 

It took years and decades for me to even arrive at this point. Like most young people, insecure about life with so much to learn, I desperately wanted to have a personal relationship with God—someOne Who would protect me from life’s land mines and answer my prayers, as needed, to ensure I achieved success and contentment in life. Like most youngsters it never bothered me that I was simply believing in the religion I inherited. 

Slowly, but surely, all of my inherited beliefs about God began to spring many perplexing leaks, while reality began to change my perceptions of God. It just seems we really need to believe something about God, based on what we can really know, not some inherited stuff written down by certain humans centuries ago. If organized religions of most any ilk are the last word about God, then God is some kind of mean-spirited, unfair idiot. And that seems an unbelievable stretch. We would hardly expect God to be sloppy about truth, and certainly not outdated.

So following is where I ended up, although where I ended up makes little difference to anything, including my own fate. Humans, through the entire existence of our species, have always tried to create a God in our own image—One with Whom we could have personal communication, One Who will forgive any of our transgressions if we follow certain rituals, and pay homage to Him in prescribed ways. In most religions God seems to be some sort of angry God Whom we better find ways to placate, or that is it for us. Once we become confident God is on ‘our side’ the heathens better watch out, for we now are part of the ‘army’ of God, ready to do God’s will, including to kill others, as the situation might demand, or as our emotional allegiance to our perceived God becomes a risk to others who are not mirror images of ourselves. 

No matter which scripture, written by humans centuries ago, we inherited by birth or via marriage, there are endless phrases which are clearly nonsensical, and these nonsensical aspects are just ignored. Religious purists are at least logical in their belief that to ignore any ‘words’ from God would make all the other ‘words’ suspect. Why would God ever ‘write’ instructions to us which prove false over time? And why would God’s distribution scheme be via inheritance or marriage as the means of distribution? Many statements in the Christian Bible, or any other religion’s bible, are simply historical nonsense. While there are hundreds of examples, let’s here just mention two. Are we really to believe that if a person has sex with an animal, both the person and the animal must be killed? Huh?  Or if children do not obey their parents they should be stoned? Double Huh? And so it goes. Among the good stuff buried in all ancient scriptures are some outrageous stuff too. About the only thing we can conclude from these ‘holy scriptures’ is that over time civilizations—in a general way—have really become more civilized and knowledgeable over time, requiring even the purists to ignore some of the craziest stuff in their scripture. 

Around 90% of Americans agree there is a God. I am among that number. After that it gets a bit dicey. Believing in God, and attending church are not that closely allied, as once in the past. This is a bit tricky in that most of human history took place in times when it was dangerous to one’s health not to attend church and participate in the rituals. Even Americans had times when ‘witches’ were burned at the stake after trials which were simply farcical. It bothered me that ‘our Father which art in Heaven’ would really burn anyone at stake if they broke a rule. Or that animals or other humans should ever be killed to satisfy some angry God. What human father would ever do that to one of his own ‘children’? Something was out of kilter.

God can be a logically determined observation. Wherever there is a gift, there must be a gift giver. The universe, our planet, our natural resources, our varied life forms are all gifts, all of which we all are well aware. The gift giver of all these gifts is then designated as God. There is little else to go on about the nature of God at all. Humans have the ability to study the past and learn more and more about the ‘laws’ of nature. The more me learn about the evolutionary process over millions of years, the more astonishing the whole process becomes. We certainly know enough now about the evolutionary process to know a lot about the laws which govern this process. 

Even though as individuals we keenly want to be able to manipulate the process to our own personal advantage, and live in ways which will personally exempt us from tragedies to our own selves, family, friends, and nation—this simply never appears to happen. 77% of Americans believe in prayers, that God can, and does, intervene sometimes on behalf of the person who prays. However, there is no evidence at all that this ever happens. If it does, it has to be very rare. For example, for diseases that can kill, or in battlefield situations, or in terms of tragedies like child rape, or difficult dying processes, or death from communicable diseases, and so on, there is no statistical basis to claim any particular religious group has a greater chance of survival from, or avoidance of, these situations. So exactly what dangers has any particular religious sect provided protection to for their followers? 

We look around us all our life and see a lot of tragic things happen to good people and even some really good things happen to ‘bad’ people. Why we wonder, does God allow such tragic things to happen, and especially to good people? Organized religion comes up with the strange answer that “God operates in mysterious ways”. And then quickly holds out the carrot that everything will be fine in a Heaven where only the good people go. Of course the good people are going to be the those who inherited or married into the proper religious sect. But what about those not fortunate enough to have inherited or married into the right religious sect? Here the tap-dance begins and everything gets hazy, usually with some vague possibility that God will let in some who ‘don’t know better’. Really, so if you don’t know better you can get to Heaven by default. So why would anyone really want to know better?

The history of organized religions is not a very uplifting history. For centuries humans imagined an angry God whose anger had to be placated with all kinds of human and animal sacrifices. And any imagined ‘heathens’ would be killed in the most savage and drawn out painful ways. All of this illustrates more about human capability for cruelty to certain humans and other forms of life than it ever tells us about God. 

While the existence of our environment dictates there has to be a Creator of all that we see before us, it tells us nothing about the Creator except this Creator has a level of intelligence far above human intelligence. All we can do is search for evidence as to how all this came about. Religious scripture is virtually useless, and often just plain ignorant on this topic. We now know the earth is not flat, that the earth has been around for millions of years, that the complexity of life has increased over these millions of years, that the different species all have unique genetic traits, and that there is considerable variation amongst the individuals which comprise any given species. If God created each species then why didn’t he just create perfect species in which all individual members of a species were perfect too? Why would it not be better if all humans were of the same physical and mental status and perfect to boot?  

What is there that is constant in this evolutionary process? Not much. Time is certainly constant. Time stays, We go. Diversity is certainly a constant. Environmental diversity is certainly a constant. And change over time is certainly a constant. Nothing is static about the process, and not even during any lifetime of individual members of any species. None of us are the same during our own lifetime. Once we were just an egg and a sperm, then we became a fertilized egg, then we became an embryo, then we became a baby, then passed through a long formative stage. If we got through that then we had a productive stage of life, and we if got through that, then we had a terminational phase of life. The constant here is that we will die. Birth itself is not a good omen for any eternal life. It is totally an evidentially baseless and self serving belief that we will go to any Heaven after death. Humans don’t stop there of course, all organized religions portray humans as created after the image of God, that we have been given by God domination over all other species and our environment, and God, via our prayers to Him, will often intercede on our behalf to help us over hurdles or avoid catastrophes. These self serving beliefs no doubt do serve to give many of us the strength to carry on in difficult times. 

There is a great difference between self serving beliefs and reality. If religious people go to heaven after death, then why are strongly religious people, or the organized religious sects, the most emotional at funerals?  They don’t want the person to go to Heaven? Sometimes at a religious service a minister or priest of some sort will ask the congregation to rejoice, that what lies before them is just a shell, and the deceased has gone to Heaven. I wonder how that minister or priest knows this? I have never been to a church funeral in which the minister or priest says: Let us weep, for this person has gone to Hell.”  It also seems strange that organized religion is the strongest force against adults being able to say they have had enough and wish to be put to sleep and end their life without any more suffering. Now that is certainly strange. I kind of feel, “if he/she has had enough, let them go to Heaven right now if that is what they want.” We may say there is a Heaven, but few people really act that way about dying. Most of us, to varying degrees, are petrified of dying. 

We too often have more real empathy for our pets than humans. It is common to put our pets down rather than let them suffer anymore. I know I do, and am proud that I do. I simply do not want them to pointlessly suffer, when death is coming, sooner rather than later. Yet with some humans we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions, just to keep them medically alive for another few months or years. I will never forget when I was in a hospital and the guy in the other bed, a minister, had suffered a massive stroke which left him totally paralyzed except to move his eyes. He would reflexly choke on his own spit and I was always calling for the nurses to clear his throat to stop the violent gagging. His eyes projected sheer terror. And yet members of the congregation would come by and say things like, “You are not going to die, God is not through with you yet.”  Now what kind of God are they worshipping who would have any motive to keep him suffering?  I made the nurses move me, I was not going to watch this disgusting spectacle of needless human suffering. 

So why then would God permit any human suffering? And sometimes the suffering is ghastly by anyone’s standards.  Why would God not create a perfect world for all species and be done with it?

Viewed through our own eyes this seems such a perfect idea. We need, it seems, to step back a bit and view the world as it really is, and not judge it in terms of just how we, as individuals, fare in it. 

No one, who has taken the time to remotely digest what humans have learned about the evolutionary process——a process that has been evolving for millions of years—can do other than admire such a complex and astonishing process. Everything makes more sense when we realize that we, collectively or individually, are not the focus of this process. We are simply part of it.  

It is no injustice, and certainly no tragedy, to be part of something amazing. God’s created process runs itself by the laws God established for it to run itself. What this process has created over millions of years is amazing to all of us, even with our limited comprehension. We cannot envision, with even the remotest accuracy, where this process will lead or if it will ever end. Look, we can’t even envision something coming from nothing. And yet where did God come from? Something came from nothing and we are simply too limited in our comprehension abilities to understand how that can be. If we can’t understand a beginning, then it is no surprise we can’t comprehend something not ending. For all practical purposes, beginning and ending is something that relates realistically to our own lives. Yet even here it gets a bit dicey. All living cells came from previous living cells except, I reckon, the first living cell. In essence, the basic genetic units of life are constantly being reshuffled, at random, to generate new and different species and variants of the same species. In one sense our lives all can be traced back to that original living cell. When humans argue over just exactly when their life began it is an ignorant argument. With the scientific knowledge now known, thanks to the efforts of previous humans and some current humans, it becomes a real stretch to claim that God Himself directs a particular sperm to a particular egg after, of course, God has personally arranged for two persons to have sexual intercourse. For so many people, it is so important for them to believe that everything that happens relative to their lives, God was the decider.  That is their pacifier——“God wills it”.

If God micromanages everyone’s life then God is really a bastard. He is constantly playing favorites. He lets so many horrible things happen to so many people and other species. Why doesn’t God intervene? And why doesn’t he let all of us live forever? This existing evolutionary process is a self directed process—it operates on the laws God established to govern the process, not addressing specific individuals in any species of the process. The truth is that all of our lives depend on luck, our environment, our genes, diversity, and change. We, are, in a scientific sense, a part of all that has come before us. We and an earthworm share a common history. We (all species) are in this process together, like it or not. If God has favorites in this evolutionary process he isn’t tipping his hand. Maybe His personal favorite is the first original living cell. Of course the truth is that we have no idea how God thinks or feels about anything. His evolutionary process is responsible for our lives and the lives of every other living thing and our environment—and all that should be enough for our gratitude. For all we know there are many Gods, or God is dead, or God spends most of His time with sex, or God views our limited intelligence so puerile as to be nothing more than a nuisance in the total evolutionary process.

There are many important aspects of God which are simply past the reach of human comprehension. Where did God come from?  How can something—anything—come from nothing? At what point is mental activity in any organism properly considered thinking? When a bird migrates a thousand miles every year to the same spot, is that thinking?  When a parrot repeats a human conversation word for word from the past, is that thinking? Thinking simply doesn’t have a neat clear cut definition. None of us even think alike. On what basis then are we to remotely understand how God thinks? Yet all the humans who wrote all the scriptures in the world claim not only to know how God thinks, but exactly how God wants us to behave. Some of the most basic tenets of Christianity, one of the more advanced organized religions, is based on some wild notions. Like God had to sacrifice His only Son in order save us all from our sins. Jesus died on the cross to save the rest of us from our sins. Well, not really, some of us are purported still going to Hell. Jesus of course was the product of a Virgin Birth. He just looked human, but really was the Son of God. So there is God, His Son Jesus, and the Holy Ghost. God must let His Son Jesus die on the cross in order to save humans from their sins——except Jesus doesn’t really die, but rises immediately from death and is back being a non human. Imagine if some human father announced that his son has temporarily become a dog, a perfect pet if there ever was one, and that in order to save all dogs, his now dog son must be sacrificed, after which his son’s stint as a dog will be over and he will return to human form, and forever more pet dogs will be saved and go to Heaven except for those who sin and will go to dog Hell. Huh? 

Organized religions are self serving in most every aspect. We are the one species whose members have a personal relationship with God. We are the one species whose members have specific behavior guidelines passed down to us from God via inheritance or marriage. Those who do not receive these behavior guidelines—well, such is the spin of the wheel, except organized religion believes God micro manages all life on earth, so God must be responsible for so many humans being burdened with the wrong scripture. What kind of Heavenly Father would do that? IF God really micro manages life on this planet then God is responsible for all the tragedies which abound today and through all of history. This would make God pretty sadistic. Did God really, and deliberately, create Hitler? I thought the Jews were the chosen tribe by God to be His chosen people? The Holocaust was a God created event? God could have intervened and prevented it and didn’t, or God had no power to prevent it? 

These are not trivial questions. Exactly what kind of God are we worshipping? For that matter, what makes us think God even expects us to worship Him? We are genetically superior, or at least more complicated than warthogs. Do we expect warthogs to worship us or else we will torture them in hell?

While we cannot answer these questions with facts via the scientific method, we can at least use logic and our increasing scientific knowledge of the evolutionary process, to guard against pure self serving nonsense about God. When I was young I perceived my own inherited religion as the pathway to an ethical life, and partnership with God. I read the Bible, went to Sunday School, attended the Sunday Morning Church service, participated in youth fellowship, was baptized, attended a Billy Graham revival, prayed a lot—the whole nine yards. But as time went on, despite my efforts to ignore any disturbing notions about the whole package, I began to sense I was following an ethical pathway with braces on my brain. The whole church thing seemed to be 90% a social gathering. Nothing wrong with that except it had little to do with serious ethics.  Almost all the dialogue was rote niceness to those of a similar inherited religion. I don’t recall a single meaningful conversation with the pastor, while the amateur Sunday school teachers were pleasant enough, but not genuinely prepared to interpret scripture. The sermons were endless pablum geared not to offend anyone in the congregation. Frankly, almost all clergy are boring, shallow thinkers—just like most of humanity. It was a revelation to me when, as a college instructor, students would come in sometimes with a personal problem and I might suggest they talk to their clergy. Almost without exception the response would be incredulousness that I would even think clergy would be the solution. Most clergy as are useless to society as tits on a witch. A few are really ethical and of endless help to the least fortunate in our society.

As time passed and I began to have interactions with others outside my own religious sect, ‘goodness’ seemed to be something apart from a particular religious sect. Back in my early days my religious sect was the one right religion, my country was always right, and God was going to protect me from life’s land mines. There was no sudden point I can point to where I found this whole religious sect business more a source of endless social turmoil than any road to peace and prosperity for all. 

I guess my first puzzlement was why was I given by birth the ‘right’ religious scripture and so many millions of others given the ‘wrong’ religious scripture. It seems that too often too much deep belief in our own inherited religious scripture leads us to falsely assume an exalted concept of self that is really delusional. The very same people who feel the strongest that God is on their side and is helping them out in life, are the very ones who run around seriously claiming their successes in life are because they earned them. With the passage of time I began to meet all sorts of people, one way or another, who seemed to be really ‘good’ people yet had so little going for them. “Why”, I wondered, would God give them a life with so few of the many things others have, and take for granted? What kind of God would do that?  Practically all the important advantages when young were given to us, not earned. It is hard to be precise here, but I can remember praying that I would win a track race or get a good grade after studying hard, and be perplexed why God would pay any attention to this kind of stuff? I was just inherently faster than many others running or had some academic skills which were better than others and in neither case did I earn these advantages.  

More and more it seemed any serious ethical discussions took place outside of any church setting.

What did all the rituals, the singing hymns, the church social activities, the shallow and rigid bible studies have to do with ethics?  When young, while other groups were fighting for rights that others already had, I was feeling that if the disadvantaged didn’t like it here, they could leave. There was no war my country engaged in that I didn’t reflexly support.  It took me and Barry Goldwater years before we, along with so many others, realized the Vietnam War was a disgraceful slaughter of peaceful innocent victims. Back then I was with those who felt we should simply bomb these people into oblivion until they let us decide what form of government they could have. We killed a good 2 million Vietnamese, comparable in numbers to the number of Jews killed by Hitler. Why is one so horrible and one so justifiable?  No other event did more to make me pause and question exactly in what kind of ethics was I becoming cocooned.  

The Vietnam War, my limited social life, and my sudden professional responsibilities to so many young people, entrapped by disadvantages in life that I never had when young—all of this forced me to rethink the very nature of real ethics. Organized religion gradually became part of the problem, not  part of a solution. My views of organized religion as a pathway to peace and prosperity for all mankind, nature, and all other species were sadly, and irreparably shattered.  All these years I had been like the blind man who picked up his hammer and saw. I saw and felt what I wanted to see with blinders well placed to protect me from reality. In my lifetime, religious conflicts, ethnic conflicts and political conflicts have raged across the globe, each succeeding conflict as bad or worse than the one before. Any real ethics was disintegrating right before my eyes. Minus a few serious personal blows, my own life seemed immune to the kind of crippling blows so many less fortunate were taking on the chin right and left—incessantly, until they lost hope and the energy to fight on, settling for a life situation well below their potential. As Wordsworth wrote: 

“For I have learned

      To look on nature, not as in the hour

      Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes                    

      The still, sad music of humanity”

"Blowin' In The Wind"

(originally by Bob Dylan)

How many roads must a man walk down

Before you call him a man?

And how many seas must the white dove sail

Before she sleeps in the sand?

And how many years must the cannonballs fly

Before they're forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind

The answer is blowin' in the wind

And how many times can a man look up

Before he can see the sky?

And how many ears must one man have

Before he can hear people cry?

And how many deaths will it take 'til he knows that

Too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind

The answer is blowin' in the wind

And how many years can a mountain exist

Before it falls to the sea?

And how many years must some people exist

Before they're allowed to be free?

And how many times can a man turn his head

Pretending he just doesn't see?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind

The answer is blowin' in the wind

The above song was probably the one which essentially forced me to abandon organized religion as a means to ethical solutions. What could be more pitiful or astounding than to see major organized religions assault each other, not simply to just kill them, but to do so in the cruelest of possible ways. I reckon watching vicariously Muslims kill Christians, Christians kill Muslims, Jews kill Arabs, Arabs kill Jews, Muslims kill Hindus, Hindus kill Muslims, and so on is depressing enough——but it doesn’t even stop there. We have, or had, Protestants killing Catholics in Ireland, Sunnis killing Shiites, Northern Baptists feuding with Southern Baptists, Fundamentalist Christians vs liberal Christians, right wing Catholics killing left wing Catholics in South America, and of course Rwanda where Hutus kill Tutsi based only on what identification card, issued originally by a European country, the person is carrying. Then add all the ethnic conflicts and we get a rather clear picture of just what organized religion really accomplishes. All in all, anyone sane would opt out. 

But opt out to what? It isn’t enough to declare ourself a member of no group, we need declare ourself for some form of ethics to be part of the human race. Humans are the only species with a well developed ethical trait. It turns out that people are opting out of organized religion in vast numbers. In the U.S. 22.8% of adults do not have a religious affiliation. It was 16% in 2007. If this number is less in some countries in which religion is part of government, the number opting out is less simply because the personal consequences of opting out can be severe.  43% of Americans seldom or never go to church. 

Ethics is not a human trait which originates via organized religious scripture. Going to church does not make one ethical anymore than going to the garage makes one a car. Often enough going to Church is used as a cover or some perceived protection from all of the unethical behavior done outside of church. The most extreme example here is the mafia hit man who goes to mass three times a week. 

There is ample evidence that the human species has a genetically inherited sense of ethics. Like many genetic traits there is potential which needs to be developed. We are genetically capable of hitting a pitched ball but we need to practice to become good at it, and how good we can ever become is genetically limited. Our potential varies here like it does in so many inherited traits. Why is there so much individual variation in human potentials? The answer here is well documented. Diversity is needed for evolutionary progress. The silliest assumption some make is to claim God can do anything, there is no limit to what God can do, or how he can achieve something. The reality is simply this: there is very little we can really “know” about God. As far as we can calculate there are over 8 million different species in this world. The human genome contains some 19,000 known genes. 

While most, if not all, other species contain fewer known genes, we need consider what micromanaging the evolutionary process would entail. There are around 7 billion people on our earth and almost all of them are genetically distinct. Just the math involved in God sitting at some sort of work bench creating each member of every species to a particular genetic code would be simply astounding. Now add to this the question of just what would a perfect human be? Or the perfect dog be? And what would be the point of having each member of each species be a perfect species specimen? The absurdity of living in such a world is evident. Everything would be pointless in this best of all possible worlds. Of course the math here is pointless too. We have no way to remotely understand how God thinks, whether God has any limitations, how God came to exist, what God looks like or even looks like anything, whether God has assistant Gods or has any sexual feelings, and the unanswerable questions go on and on. 

Why is it even sane to pretend to have answers to unanswerable questions and come up with answers that are endlessly self serving?  This is essentially what organized religion does. That over time people are now abandoning this sort of useless and harmful practice is a good thing.

Our job is to understand, as best we can, the nature of our own ethical genetic component. If ethics is an inherited human genetic trait then there is an identifiable commonality—a basis for developing this inherited trait. Lincoln, whose understanding of human nature has always, to me, seemed the standard to seek, said this: “That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true…….When any church will inscribe over its alter, as it’s sole qualification for membership, the Savior’s condensed statement of the substance of both law and Gospel, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and they neighbor as thyself’, that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul.” Several of the founding fathers of our country were not church goers and Jefferson had little use for clergy of any sort. But that was a long time ago, when the separation between church and state was firm and non negotiable. 

To me, the commonality behind our human genetic ethical trait is the Golden Rule. No one ever claims the Golden Rule is not an ethical principle. It is a reasoned out ethical principle which hardly requires a college degree to understand or to apply in daily practice. There are no rituals involved in this ethical principle, no praying, no baptism, no clergy, no ornate temples of worship, no clergy wrapped in caste-like costumes, no human scriptures designated as bibles, no tithing, no ceremonies, no endless social events. At most there would be discussion centers where anyone could, and would, be expected to lead a discussion on how the Golden Rule relates to current problems of any sort. When it comes to the Golden Rule just about everyone is qualified to express and judge how the Golden Rule relates to situations. Few, if any situations can’t be dealt with via the Golden Rule. Gay marriage? Well, if we expect the right to choose who we marry, then I guess everyone else then has the right to choose who they marry, if they are of age. It’s a no-brainer. If we expect, when old, to receive cost of living increases in our social security income, then I guess those in minimum wage jobs should see the minimum wage rise with the cost of living. They too, need to be able to afford to live in a modest way. Should prayers be allowed in public meetings or schools?  If we don’t want to be trapped into listening about religious practices we are not interested in, and have no bearing on the purpose of the meeting or work/school place, then we have no business trying to force our own religious beliefs down anyone’s throat just because we are in the majority. 

The Golden Rule doesn’t care about majorities. Being a member of a majority in no way exempts anyone from the Golden Rule. If we want our own children to have good schools, then we are obligated to make good schools available to every child via collective financial avenues. Never mind the selfish notion that the rich pay for their schools and the poor pay for theirs. That hardly fits the Golden Rule unless we can come up with a valid reason why, if we were a child in a poor environment, we would not wish to have a good school. Same with health care, if good health care is important to us, then good health care is important to others. If we do not wish ourselves and our offspring to suffer the dire consequences of species overpopulation, then everyone collectively needs to be required by society to engage in responsible reproduction. The good of the whole invariably trumps the good of any one of us. And so it goes, on and on, with each situation being based on the Golden Rule. 

The Golden Rule does not exempt anyone from their obligations to participate. No one can say, “well, I don’t feel like working for a living, but I want good schools, good health care, etc.  They are obligated to work, of course on a job for which they are suited, and society is obligated to provide an opportunity for them to work at job level for which they are qualified. The role of government, a very important role, is to level the playing field as much as possible so the maximum number of citizens can achieve some contentment in life—be productive members of society. 

The Golden Rule doesn’t imply people are not punished for misbehavior. Of course if we steal from someone we have broken the Golden Rule and need to be punished. And so on. The Golden Rule comes in only to determine appropriate behavior. Inappropriate behavior brings punishment. Wars between nations would be less likely, in part because religious conflict by different religious sects would be nonexistent. If one nation invades another nation, then it is of course the right of the invaded country to defend itself. But if a nation declares war on another country the Golden Rule would dictate that everyone share in the sacrifices required. No more mercenary armies, the draft would return, and be across the board. The expense of the war would be shared by everyone and the war would not be fought on borrowed money, except for such short term loans which would be obligated to be paid back quickly by the very ones who supported the war to begin. 

To shorten this treatise requires me to somehow cut all this short without more extensive examples. 

But we need remember that any ethical system requires reward and punishment. Organized religion tends to hold out some sort of Heaven or Hell as the reward/punishment system. The Golden Rule makes no mention of any Heaven or Hell. If such places exist they are beyond human comprehension. There simply is no creditable evidence for Heaven or Hell, so any belief in this area is simply faith based. The Golden Rule comes with a reward/punishment component that takes place right now, here on earth, in our own lifetimes. The Golden Rule has two balanced components—our own needs and the needs of the less fortunate. For us to achieve personal contentment, both sides of the equation need be met—our own needs and the needs of the less fortunate. Our own needs includes the needs of ourselves, our family, community, and our country. The other side of the equation includes the needs of the least fortunate, minorities, those different from ourselves, the handicapped, and so on. When the Golden Rule is the driving force for any human civilization there is no one starving to death, no one with poor health care, no child in a poor school system, no one working at less than a living wage, no one dying from curable diseases and conditions, and so on. Everyone gets some contentment, not to the same degree, but contentment throughout society is maximized for the greatest number of citizens. In every ‘happiness poll, the countries at the top are the ones whose political policies are generated by the Golden Rule. 

If the above reasoned out nature of God and ethics is so reasonable, why do religious sects exist?

Inherited religious sects personalize our relationship with God, elevates our personal status in life, includes forgiveness so we don’t really have to be so serious about ethics, and promises life after death. 

It is hard to accept our own insignificance in the big picture, to develop tolerance for diversity, to share our own excess wealth with the least fortunate (we prefer to spend it all on ourselves or our offspring), and to accept our own mortality. My profession brought me in constant contact with the least fortunate and the most fortunate (those with money, power, titles, control over others, personal attractiveness, most skilled at athletics or academic ability, social acceptability, etc) but none of these accomplished

goals generated contentment with few exceptions. Most of the time these people are driven, addicted, intolerant, harried, angry, disingenuous, tense, extremely self-serving neurotic tensed-up front runners in the ‘rat-race”. Enough is never enough for them. Contentment is elusive. We all need a lot of things to obtain reasonable contentment in our lives but if we cannot understand when enough is enough, contentment will be absent and replaced by compulsive behaviors. Addictions (compulsive behaviors) never lead to contentment. The Golden Rule does, and this rule is available to maximize contentment for the greatest number of citizens. 

I always end any musing on this kind of subject matter by quoting my favorite passage whose author I cannot seem to locate. It kind of serves as the mantra for any life being lived via the Golden Rule.

“There is a way of life, a way of thinking, of behaving towards other men and your fellow creatures, towards all living things, towards the whole earth and the sky and the sun that is based on love, on compassion, on respect, on cherishing everything there is around you because it is wonderful, unique, it’s natural and good and it evolved that way by itself, it’s got to be cherished and if we think like that, and live that kind of life, we can all have our freedom, we can all have our happiness, we can all feel the sun and smell the grass and smell the flowers and look upon each other with appreciation.” (Unknown) 

  

   

U.S. Demonstrations/Riots——Causes and Significance

U.S. Demonstrations/Riots——Causes and Significance

Some musings I am eager to write—the subject matter is often challenging, intriguing, and worth thinking about. This subject is not such a subject. It is rife with sadness, anger, misunderstandings, miscommunication between groups, and a cultural albatross around our country’s neck. 

I grew up in the 60’s. Naive as hell. Oblivious to racial discrimination. The town I lived in was like 25% black and it may as well have been 100% white. There was no seething anger amongst anyone I grew up with about blacks at all. A few mild jokes rarely. I don’t recall ever having any personal confrontation with a black person at all my entire time growing up. Actually, I don’t recall any meaningful conversation with a black at all until I went out for sports my senior year in high school. 

As far as the Black Panthers and hippie stuff, “if they did’t like it here, they could leave”. It wasn’t until I started teaching in Universities that I came face to face with the realities facing so many ‘less fortunate’ individuals, not just blacks, but certainly a high proportion of blacks. There is nothing like personal contact with those different from oneself, yet worthy decent individuals just trying to make something of themselves in an admiral way. These encounters tend to jolt one into reality. 

It takes time to realize how much our own successes are luck and good fortune. We learn to be a lot more humble about our own achievements if we take the time to reflect on our many unearned advantages in life. The truth is we did not earn our parents, we inherited them. We didn’t earn our looks, our unique personality, our place of birth, the schools we attended, our personal health, our availability to good health care, our athletic talents, and on and on it goes. Many times we just happened to be at the right place, at the right time, with the right people on our side. The actuality is, it would be hard for a lot of people not to be a ‘success’ in life with the cards dealt to them. Conversely, it would be hard to be a success with the cards a lot of people are dealt in life. 

It doesn’t help much for us to focus just on turmoils, such as these demonstrations against police brutality.  All sides of the issue can find enough individual culprits or heroes to rage against, or for. Will Rodgers (I think) once stated something to the effect that it is hard to find an innocent person, and if you took a shot randomly and shot someone, 8 out of 10 times they deserved to be shot for something.”  

When all is said and done, with of course more said than done, every society has a collective responsibility to maximize contentment amongst it’s various constituents. When it fails to do this, that society implodes and has done so throughout history. Great civilizations with various forms of governance have risen up in history and collapsed over time for basically two reasons. The foreign empire over which they manipulated control gets too expensive to sustain, and the disparity at home between the rich and the poor gets too lopsided; then, when push comes to shove, the ‘have-nots’, with nothing to lose, always win over the ‘have’s’ with so much to protect. Like it or not, this is exactly where we are today in American society. For the smaller few it is the best of all possible worlds; for the larger many, it is the worst of all possible worlds. Worst may not be the best word, but their world certainly isn’t any bed of roses. 

This is where America is today. Add the new wrinkle of global human overpopulation with the subsequent dire consequences bearing down on countries across the globe, and we are like deer frozen in the head lights of an oncoming car. None of us can individually control any of these major aspects of life today on our planet, and the natural tendency is for every group, of every ilk, to start circling the wagons, and vainly try to ward off those perceived as threatening to their own personal status in life.

The human species can sustain itself and endure under the most difficult situations. Not individually in many cases, but collectively as a species. Of course we are all dead in the long run, or at my age, in the short run. Our species survived the cave-man era, the primitive hunter tribal phase, serfdom, slavery, women as inferiors, Kings, dictators, insane demagogues, and now we have the Koch Brothers, Palin, Jerry Fauldwell, some characters named Cruz, Cheney, Putin, Ayatollahs of various derangements, a Korean Madman, etc. 

Species survival is different from individual success. The price for evolutionary progress comes with a heavy price for most individuals of any species. Everywhere we look someone is getting the short end of the stick, and even those who get the longer end too often get not enough to brag about. Admirable ethics abounds too, but is easily overlooked for the overabundance of sad situations. At this stage of life I opt to remove myself personally from any direct involvement in these endless depressing predicaments. My productive years sufficed for that.

When it comes to the misbehaviors of police and the senseless street rioting, the trees invariably become the focus rather than the forest in which these trees constitute the whole. That is to say, it is always government which is obligated to create environments in which all constituents receive justice, a level playing field for personal development, and reasonable opportunities to gain some contentment in their life. Of course individual differences and environmental circumstances make fairness in achieving contentment for everyone impossible. A good friend sent me the following as an example of the Golden Rule: “I don’t care if you’re black, white, straight, bisexual, gay, lesbian, short, tall, fat, skinny, rich or poor. If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you. Simple as that.”  This all good except it is not the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule has no “if” in it. We are obligated, by the real Golden Rule, to do the best we can, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Period. Let’s put it this way: “Treat others as you would have them treat you, even those who treat you unfairly. You show fairness to others not because they are ethical, but because you are.”  No society functions well in which individuals run around meting out punishment to their perceived enemies. That is some sort of variant of the wild west. The frontier is gone, there is no place to pack up and run to anymore, any places where you can easily live off the land in some kind of isolated self created nirvana. Those who think less government is best, and a good solution to societal strife, are invariably those who either are in a position to  pile up endless wealth for themselves and genetic relations, or find that their misery is caused by heathens of various sorts, or ethnic groups of varied sorts, or cultures of varied sorts, or sexual orientations of various sorts, or politics of various sorts, or economic status and so on. A sort of ‘if I am not doing well, it is because of these others—that these others who I have so little tolerance for—exist. 

Every year various ‘happiness polls are conducted across the globe to see in which countries the greatest percentage of citizens are contented with their lives.  And every year it is the same countries, almost all of which are countries like Denmark, Sweden, and others in which their governments do the most to give every citizen the basics to achieve their potential in life. That is to say, every child has a decent school to attend with teachers of similar quality. Every citizen has guaranteed health care. Every employee gets 6 weeks vacation. College education is free if you can pass the entrance exams. Everyone is eligible to a decent pension. To Americans these are the long established welfare states in which people don’t earn their blessings, they are just handed them. And it all comes with a steep cost. The tax rates in such societies hover around 40%. It is much different in America. First of all, 43% of United States citizens pay no Federal Tax at all. They are simply too poor to qualify to pay any tax. The middle class pays around 20% but it varies all over the place. The wealthy vary the most, and some of the wealthiest pay little or no taxes. Depending on the poll, the United States ranks anywhere from 15 to 104 on this world happiness index.  Americans remain steadfastly amazed how the citizens of such countries can be happy when their government takes 40% of their earnings. “Socialism is never going to happen in America” is the ingrained mantra, and this sentiment is second only to the American “wild west” mentality that murder rates will go down only when all the decent people are armed, not just in their homes, but everywhere they go. While the legal right to parade around with guns of all types is mostly in place, the consequences of this are yet to be fully realized. Today somewhere between a third and one half of Americans own guns. "Americans are 20 times as likely to die from gun violence as citizens of other civilized countries. Why? Because other civilized countries rein in guns."  Critics of statements like this claim the disparity is for other reasons than our gun ownership.  That could partly be true. 

It would seem not surprising that in countries where no citizen has to worry about good schooling, affording college if they can pass entrance exams, get 6 weeks vacation, have minimum wages, a job with a living wage, decent pensions, and so on tend to be a happier citizenry. Americans, on the other hand, have low taxes but struggle with all the aforementioned concerns, and the battle to achieve these basic needs can be exhausting, and often out of reach.  

The requisite rambling above so far leads into just what these police demonstrations and riots are really all about. Demonstrations, riots, and terroristic actions, are becoming more and more commonplace across the globe. What even 50 years ago was unthinkable behavior, today is commonplace.  Behind all of this unrest, this anger, this intolerance, this indifference to the plight of others, are some basic circumstances new to our own species. Sadly, so far, we have not the ’smartness’ to effectively address these issues, and the time to effectively fend ourselves off from the dire consequences, may already have expired. These issues did not arrive over night, but took decades to evolve, and it would take decades to correct. We probably don’t have decades to correct it—and this means Mother Nature will make the necessary evolutionary corrections. These kind of corrections are often brutal, can last for hundreds of thousands of years, and few, if any, species will be spared the resulting turmoil. Sure, things have always worked out in the long run, and life on our planet rebounds with new and better life forms leading the way to higher levels of life on the planet. The long run for life on our planet is, from any historical perspective, going to be even better. For the short run, well—turn out the lights, the party’s over, this hand is over, and the cards will be reshuffled for a new hand in a new version of the same evolutionary game. 

These new circumstances behind all the turmoil erupting all over the globe are human overpopulation, the subsequent inadequacy of our natural resources to support this overpopulation, and the approaching climate changes resulting from too many human activities. Even today, there are not enough natural resources available for all humans to live a lifestyle the affluent now live. As the competition increases for the natural resources to sustain a ‘good life’ increases, the tolerance for diversity will become more and more strained, and desperate acts (including irrational beliefs and blame) will proliferate. The problems we face today are not really all that much about form of government, ’true’ religion or ethnicity at all.  These latter factors just become targets for blame. An amazing percentage of people blame all the real troubles facing our species on certain ethnic groups, certain religions, certain forms of government, and certain cultures. As more and more people sink lower and lower on the economic ladder across the globe, the anger gets directed at those who still have good health care, good wages, good pensions, decent homes, etc. Instead of the goal being to include more people to have a more affluent life, the goal becomes to bring down those still possessing affluence, down to a lower level of affluence so many are now experiencing. 

It is really hard to imagine how our American society can essentially accept having 40% of our population make so little money that they don’t even qualify to pay taxes. Then to top that off, those making huge incomes, and wanting even more wealth, are determined to do just that even though it can only be done off the backs of the middle class, forcing more of them into poverty. Of course this can’t continue very much longer, but it still proceeds, and at a pace which exceeds that of any other industrialized nation. 

We were all amazed that communism in the Soviet Union could collapse overnight. We didn’t see that coming, and we can’t see our own, now ineffectual status of democracy, heading to the same fate, and just as quickly. These riots over the police are more riots over the way so many people are living today. Who in their right mind would want to be a policeman in charge of keeping millions of people satisfied with being poor, with no jobs, or jobs without a living wage, poor schools, inadequate health care, no personal security, and so on. And it just gets worse. We too often call these angry mobs of poor people names like thugs and thieves and animals. We respond to their unrest by jailing them right and left until 25% of the people across the globe in jail are in American jails. Then we are told that to protect ourselves from all these degenerate poor we need to arm ourselves, and once everyone is packing guns, we will all be safe—you know like in Iraq and Afghanistan, Somalia, South America, etc. We in America have still not accepted the historical fact that violence begets violence. We have enough bombs, missiles, and drones to obliterate most any country. Were it not for the fact that a few countries have the capability to do much the same to us, maybe the right wingers would do just that to other countries——obliterate them. We did a pretty good job obliterating society in Iraq, and if the right wingers had their way we would still be there obliterating. With all our military might, we haven’t had success with military ventures, outside of Granada and the Balkans, since the Korean War well over 50 years ago. We have managed to topple several governments in South American via support for rebels, much like Putin is operating in Ukraine, but the people who live there never prosper from the violence. Yes, violence begets violence. On a smaller scale it is like parents who think they can make their son or daughter marry the right person, or make young people dislike certain music, or make young people dress a certain way, etc.

We need to get real. If every policeman behaved perfectly these masses of angry people would be just as angry over their situation in life. So many Americans are living without hope, with no light at the end of the tunnel, with a life little more than quiet desperation, that their anger will always be there just for that reason. We are really asking police to do what the government wants them to do, and that is to keep these people ‘down on the farm’. One might ask, well why don’t citizens, in a democracy, force the government to create more level playing fields? There are two answers here: greed and a broken democracy. Only somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of eligible voters vote. If all the people for whom the playing fields are not level were to vote, the playing fields would be made more level. Hell, if the 40% so poor they don’t make enough to pay taxes voted, that would turn the tide. The answer most of them give is not so irrational: “Why should I bother to vote, it never makes an difference in my life” The answer there lies in just who the candidates tend to be. It takes millions or billions of dollars to compete successfully for office. Money controls who wins elections with rare exceptions. When just one wealthy person can easily contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to promote political candidates, where do the poor find that kind of money to launch a candidate for their interests?  Amazingly, for the 2-5% of our citizens who own 90% of the wealth, to control the government, a lot of voting citizens have to vote against their own economic interests. Interestingly enough, the wealthy do this by sophisticated manipulation of social and religious prejudices. This weakness of human nature has been exploited for centuries. Get those desperately fighting for a bigger piece of the economic pie to focus their anger on others in the same boat who are different from themselves. Of course life would be better for them if it wasn’t for the immigrants, blacks, inferior cultures, gays, religious heathens, and all sorts of ‘misfits’ to their own mirror image. And to make matters worse, if any of these ‘misfits’ manage to get over all the unfair hurdles and become successful, that is the ultimate proof that if these ‘misfits’ were not in existence, success would be there for others instead. What is more of a Laurel and Hardy show than some ‘tea party’ enthusiast living in a trailer park railing on about the ‘thugs’ in a black ghetto. Religion is rarely more important to any group anywhere than the poor. This is understandable. Seeing no light at the end of the tunnel for their own efforts and daydreams, they desperately need to feel God will be the route to contentment and success, if not now, then in Heaven.

What is even more puzzling: with so many of our citizens living lives of quiet desperation, 40% of whom don’t even make enough money to be eligible to pay taxes, plus the many others mostly trapped in environments with poor schools, poor or non existent health care, little personal security, trapped in decrepit homes with bars on the windows and doors ,with no play area for children outside the home——why aren’t these millions of citizens all rising up everywhere, constantly, to demand changes for their situation? In other words, the puzzle is not why a few demonstrate and take over the streets, but why more do not?

For most of history religion was often the opiate of the poor. God would save them and make things better if only they prayed more, harder, and with endless patience. If God would not make things better for them in this world, then the poor would be rewarded in Heaven. Today, religion is fading fast, and the internet is replacing religion are the opiate of the poor. Even the poorest can be entertained all day via electronic gadgets. Trapped inside a dilapidated home, endless social conversations can be had with people close and far away. There are endless movies and games available to play all day. The affluent have their rat race, and the poor have their entertainment gadgets. In earlier years the poor were used to physically build our country. Today we use illegal immigrants for much of this slave labor and mostly the poor and young to work on jobs with non living wages. They can just live at home with their parents, work 2 or more jobs, live in group living situations, or get involved with illegal enterprises. The 50 year War on Drugs was essentially a job market for young entrepreneurs in ghetto urban or rural areas. Jails became, for many, like safe havens between the more dangerous adventures outside of prison. 

Well, so what? The poor are gated off out of sight, self amused with electronic gadgets of all sorts. There is one glitch in this method of controlling the huge number of poor in our country. These same gadgets allow more and more of these people living lives of quiet desperation, to become organized and stirred up emotionally about their predicament. Just as preachers of various sort get religious purists stirred up about all the heathens abounding around, these various internet groups can get the frustrated poor all stirred up about the social and economic trap in which they find themselves. Essentially then, there now exists a delicate balance between riot and settling for 24 hr gadget amusement. The bigger question remains. What kind of country wants to have 90% of it’s wealth owned by 2-5 percent of it’s citizens and the rest numbed into submission by addiction to internet devices? It is simply hard to define this kind of civilization as progress. 

This kind of delicate balance between riot and gadget amusement will not stay balanced for much longer. Obama originally got elected because he gave so many of the poor and middle class hope for a bigger share of the economic pie. But Obama found out quickly, that aside from marginal help for some of the middle class, there was no way a President could do much for the poor. Congress and the Supreme Court are controlled by the wealthy, through lobbyists and campaign control over elected officials. As long a money controls elections, with the help of voter indifference, the wealthy will rule the country. To top it off, these wealthy characters are not the brightest knife in the drawer——not because they are not smart, since the ones that actually earned their wealth, not inherited it, are usually pretty smart. But that is irrelevant since wealth has become an addiction for them, and addictions by nature become excessive and self destructive. Abstractly, the wealthy really can understand that if they grab too much of our country’s wealth, everything implodes and they lose their wealth big time.

The near future is likely to tip the balance in favor of widespread riots. First, Obama will be gone and that restraining factor removed. Second, the economy is likely to collapse big time. Third, climate change will start to run up astronomical costs as the predicted extremes in weather continue to increase. Water shortages will soon be devastating to most of the south and south west, as will the extreme summer temperatures. Riots will not be old fashioned riots in which the citizens are defenseless against the police or national guard. Citizens are well armed today and the internet provides all groups with means to communicate round the clock. The police or army can’t be everywhere at once. Our military force can no more defeat it’s own citizens than it could raggedy assed Vietnamese or Iraqis.  None of all this will be limited to this country. The problems are global. There is no place to run. It will not be a slow drawn out revolution. When these kind of riots occur, like they have in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria, to give a few examples, the streets become ruled by thugs. Humanitarian statesmen will be no where to be found, just dead or in hiding.

The short term looks ghastly. For the long term there is no reason to be gloomy. First, those of us alive today will not be alive in the future. Second, Mother Nature bats last, always has for millions of years. Evolutionary corrections, of varied sorts, and sometimes lasting for millions of years, sort things out and progress resumes with new life forms, new kinds of environments, and improved more civilized communities of life on the planet. It is regrettable, for those of us alive today, that our human species, with the brain power to prevent all this, simply cannot control human population growth, and discipline ourselves enough to ensure the least fortunate are given enough level paying fields, and enough support from the more fortunate, to allow the less fortunate to achieve some contentment in their lives. 

The Impact of the internet and all the associated gadgets is pervasive across the world. It also explains why so many know so little about politics or world events or for that matter anything about those whose activities produce notable contributions to society. These less fortunate citizens across the globe, including America—growing in numbers at an exponential rate—have turned out the real world and live in an internet generated world of movies, chat rooms, games, recreational drug induced emotional states, and fact-less beliefs (both religious and otherwise). Never before in history has any species been so possessed with non reality as part of their lives. What all this leads to is beyond comprehension. Frankly, at my age, it is not something over which to worry. For every individual the end comes, the lights go out, and the party’s over. 

Related Quotations:

“Advance or decadence are the only choices offered to man- kind. The pure conservative is fighting against the essence of the universe.” Alfred North Whitehead (British mathematician, philosopher) 

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” Aldous Huxley (English Writer) 

“None is so blind as he who will not see.” Unknown 

“Real intelligence consists not so much in knowing how to do what you have learned to do, but in knowing how to behave in circumstances for which no prior experience has prepared you.” Sydney Harris (Essayist and Drama Critic) 

“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)

“The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts; To return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, ‘I was wrong’.” Sydney Harris (essayist and drama Critic) 

“Care is not weakness. Care to us is the very essence, the greatest demonstration of strength. That’s what makes us democratic socialists. That’s what makes us so categorically different from them. We believe that strength without care is savage, and brutal, and selfish. It’s the strength of the jungle. We believe that strength, with care, is compassion; the practical action that is needed to help people lift themselves to their full stature, their full potential. The strength to care. Not the strength of the jungle but the strength of humanity.” Neil Kinnock. (Welsh politician)

“The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.” Dean Acheson (United States Secretary of State) 

“The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us, and therefore in public life that man is the best representative of each of us who seeks to do good to each by doing good to all; in other words, whose endeavor it is not to represent any special class and promote merely that class’s selfish interests, but to represent all true and honest men of all sections and all classes and work for their interests by working for our common country.” Teddy Roosevelt. (American President) 

“We keep countless men from being good citizens by the conditions of life with which we surround them.” Teddy Roosevelt (American President) 

“We now communicate with everyone, and say absolutely nothing. We have reconstructed the Tower of Babel. and it is a television’s antenna (and lots of other gadgets). A thousand voices producing a daily parody of democracy, in which everyone’s opinion is afforded equal weight, regardless of substance or merit. Indeed, it can even be argued that opinions of real weight tend to sink with barely a trace in television’s ocean of banalities.” Ted Koppel (American broadcast journalist) 

“Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class (or family).” Plato (Greek philosopher) 

“Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabit- ants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws. ‘You speak of-- ‘ said Egremont, hesitantly, ‘THE RICH AND THE POOR’.” Benjamin Disraeli (British statesman) 

“The majestic egalitarianism of the law, which forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” Anatole France (French writer) 

“I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro, bearing slavery’s scar,
I am the Red man, driven from the land, 

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--

And finding only the same old stupid plan, 

Of dog eat dog, or might crush the weak.” Langston Hughes (American poet) 

“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it can- not save the few who are rich.” John F. Kennedy. (American President) 

“In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been so often and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn the government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole.” Teddy Roosevelt (American President) 

“The graveyards are full of people the world could not do with- out.” Elbert Hubbard (American author, editor, and printer) 

“HOW MANY TIMES CAN A MAN TURN HIS HEAD, AND PRETEND THAT HE JUST DOESN’T SEE?” 

“Difference is of the essence of humanity. Difference is an accident of birth and it should therefore never be the source of hatred or conflict. The answer to difference is to respect it. Therein lies a most fundamental principle of peace: respect for diversity. John Hume (Irish politician) 

“We would rather be ruined than changed We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment And let our illusions die.” Wystan Hugh Auden (British born American poet)