Scary Long Term Eventualities

Scary Long Term Eventualities

Let’s start with this premise: The most serious problems facing the human species today are not national, but global in nature and cannot be solved by individual nations. Added to this hurdle are the number of such global problems coming at us from several directions. Just considering our own country, the population is irrevocably split on these global problems. There is no consensus, and the nature of the global problems are so complex that most of us can hardly claim to have the expertise to be on the right side of what needs to be done. Finally, most of these huge global problems have taken many decades to develop and would take many decades to turn around at a huge cost and sacrifice. Thus, it is very possible that it may already be too late for some of these global problems. Is this really scary?  I think so.

Below I list some of these global problems, and interestingly enough, none of these global problems are the hot button issues which will decide any U.S. elections. Most people are more worked up about who can marry who, or which religious practices should be the law of the land, or which of us are to get huge tax breaks and which of us should be forced to sacrifice to pay off huge national/state debts. No one seems to think everyone must sacrifice according to their ability to sacrifice. The amount of anger and feelings of vengeance is palpable among the citizens of most countries across the globe. The planet is saturated with caldrons of simmering anger and hatred of some toward others. This is truly a unique, dangerous, and brand new situation never before faced by the evolutionary process. There is no logical reason to fear Mother Nature will strike out this time with any correction, but it does beg the question of whether it will really take a home-run type evolutionary correction—and some of those types of corrections took hundreds of thousands or even millions of years duration.

1. Human Overpopulation. 

This is behind a lot of the other global problems. There is still no serious plan for responsible reproduction. Many apparently believe that God has not only given us dominion over other species, but has given our species an exemption to the consequences of overpopulation. It is hard to imagine on what logical basis they make these claims.

2. Climate Change.

To what extent this is happening, or to what degree, and how fast, is not something which most of us have any scientific background to pass judgement. The best we can possibly do is let those scientists which study the matter professionally determine our policy. Climate scientists are pretty united on climate change, but few of us are willing to listen, let alone sacrifice to prevent climate change. If human activities are the basis for generating dramatic climate change, then it has taken centuries for this to build up and would take centuries to undo. For most, if the price of gas can be afforded today, then their focus is on what gas guzzler should they buy. If we have land enough to live on today, then how many acres of rain forests can be torn down is of little import to the unenlightened. 

3. Species extinction.

Apparently extinction is part of having dominion over other species. We are God’s favorite species.  All the other species which have been generated by God’s laws which govern the evolutionary process are expendable. And so are the natural resources, which are unlimited and there for the taking, at least by the strongest amongst us. Not to worry our little heads, or so these kind of people tell us. Yet the same people who refuse to worry about the human activities listed here will, in the next breath, say they are ‘family value’ people and want their offspring to have a good life. In the midst of so much scientific knowledge vast numbers of people use faith-based notions as their political/religious mantra. 

4. Terrorism. 

Even though acts of terrorism are growing exponentially across the globe, in frequency and extent of the mass killings, many still think if we are just loaded up with the best and most destructive military hardware, we will be safe. Never mind that since Korea, the only invasion successful with all our military might has been Granada and maybe the Balkans. Otherwise, even though we kill or displace millions and leave endless rubble behind, we eventually tire of it all, declare victory and leave behind a destroyed nation with endless local thugs in charge of their own reign of terror. Right now, instead of bombs and tanks we are using armed drones to seek out individual targets, and send a missile right up an enemy leader’s ass. Now that is a neat offensive weapon, but with time others will gain the knowledge and capability to have their own drones. We will then have all sorts of tough-ass Trumpite-like leaders leading all kinds of angry groups who will be sitting around planning exactly who should be on the end of tomorrow’s drone kills. Cecil the lion as sport and trophy hunts will be replaced by killing leaders of other countries. How the progression here is going to be stopped does not seem to be seriously on anyone’s mind.  Any of us, if we were to put our mind to it, could kill a whole bunch of people, including most ‘important’ people. These new military gadgets have amazing accuracy and can be controlled from behind a distant computer screen. Then there are chemicals and biological organisms that exist or can be created which simply need be released into the air. Whee! A terrorist dream gift bag.

5. Wages. 

Without global minimum living wages there is no way workers across the globe can earn enough on which to live.  Without global minimum wages some people will be forced to work at slave labor wages. When so many people need two or more jobs to survive, then clearly there will not be enough jobs for everyone. And with computers and machines taking over so many work-related tasks, there is no need for everyone to work 30 hours, let alone 80 hours. There is no logical reasons why all workers can’t have 6 weeks vacation. But all of this can only be effectuated globally. Individual nations cannot solve any of the problems being listed here. The few, with most of the wealth, think their trickle-down will support the minions, while reality dictates that a healthy economy for everyone requires the minions to have ample money to spend to maintain a robust economy for everyone. 

6. Religion

Religion and ethics are two separate entities. If we want ethics and peace then the Golden Rule will rule the day everywhere. If we want discord, hate, and endless terrorism/wars, then ardent religious sectarians fit the bill perfectly.

7. Healthy Communities and Nations

Only when every form of government, whatever that form may be, ensures that there is a level playing field for all it’s citizens, can that community remain vibrant, safe, and harmonious. That is to say all citizens, especially children, are entitled to have good schools (same amount of government money spent on each child), good health care, good pensions, decent vacation times, livable wages, and the whole array of basic rights. Taxes, social security, minimum wages, pensions, and all other safety met measures will rise in value with the cost of living. 

8. Wars.

Even when necessary, wars need be paid for up front, not fought on borrowed money. The draft need be reinstated, no more using mercenaries to fight wars. The expense of any war will be paid up front on a sliding scale dependent on the financial ability to contribute to the expense of the war. All this would surely curtail a lot of ego trip wars. 

9. Human Aggressiveness

Organized religious sects, in theory, promote kindness, fairness, prosperity for all, justice for all, and peace. Sadly though, combining the aggressive nature of humans with an inherited or adopted God makes the aggressiveness magnified with the belief that the aggressions being committed are the will of an inherited or by marriage God. 

We have trouble seeing others see us in the same way we often see them. Dan Rather has written eloquently enough about his feelings as he anchored the news desk during 9/11. “I got mad. Whoever did this must pay! My knees began to shake…..I was having a visceral reaction to the scene unfolding before me….Such are the aftershocks that have continued and will continue to follow the earthquake that was September 11. We Rathers, as one little family, and we as a nation, were united in anger, fear, grief, and determination….Not a day passes that I don’t still think about September 11.”  

We all can still feel the fear and anger about what was happening before our eyes. Yet every time our own smart bombs, missiles, and drones take out citizens of another country via some sort of invasion why do we think those citizens who witness the destruction, not of one or two buildings, but sometimes whole communities or multiple buildings, or unavoidable innocent people at the wrong place at the wrong time—why would we not expect them to feel the same way Dan Rather and the rest of Americans felt seeing our own citizens and families perish in such a violent way? Our enemies kill a few thousand of us and we kill or make refugees of millions as military ‘peacekeepers’ (Bush’s words for American combat soldiers). In the last analysis this has little to do with politics, or religion. or ethnicity but more to the point the loss of life and property, not on a battlefield by armed soldiers, but by sophisticated weapons of mass destruction. One thing is for sure. Every time we kill an ‘enemy’  we have made enemies of their friends, spouses, offspring, until we have literally hordes of people looking for vengeance to make us suffer. If they don’t have smart bombs or missiles they have home-made bombs for suicide bombing or land mines, or sniper fire, etc. Violence perpetuates violence, with religious faith the most degrading and violent violence imaginable. Killing is not sufficient, it must be a ghastly death and these kind of deaths have been committed by every major religious sect. Still each religion is absolutely convinced that the horrors are all committed by the heathens, not themselves as the worshipper of the ‘true’ God. In our own country many people sincerely believe that if we all arm ourselves, we will all be safe. Logically, this is sheer lunacy. Some even suggest church goers all pack guns. A half brained idiot could take out 20 before anyone could get their guns out. I reckon if I want to shoot someone in their home I could just wait until they pass by a window. I really don’t think I would bang down their door to find out just what is awaiting me behind the door. 

Does anyone really believe that the average citizen of Iraq or Afghanistan or Bolivia etc. really are dyed in the wool socialists, communists, or evil people? More often then not they are simple illiterate people living off the land for a meager existence. They understand real well that if they want to live, they must cooperate with whatever band of foreign soldiers or homegrown thugs control their area at any particular time. Our soldiers, living in so called green zones except when venturing out to the killing fields, get real frustrated that the locals do not show any sincere cooperation. The answer is simple, they don’t live in any ‘green zone’.   

There are perhaps more areas to list. But any need for the above to be complete is moot. There are enough areas listed above to indicate what is scary about the future. Of course none of us can predict the future. But that doesn’t mean we ought not to plan for a future. Few of us, when young, took the attitude that we would just live day to day and have no future plans. And those who did so, probably never got very far. 

Nothing in past evolutionary history can equate with current times. When Mother Nature took dramatic corrective measures in the past, it was never due to the activity of a specific species. 

Our species has become the most dangerous, albeit the smartest, species yet. But our smartness clearly comes with blind spots, greed, and an aggressive self serving nature. Perhaps in the distant future, in evolutionary years, not human years, a ‘new’ species will still be smart, absent the greed and aggressive self serving nature. Funny, how you and I have achieved this already. Sometimes, though, I am not sure about you. 

Goodbye Football

I Saw It Coming

Some obvious things we conveniently pretend we don’t see, or what we do see, we see as temporary, or we are too deeply involved in our attachment to let go.  Sadly, with time, much of what we value so much gets sullied, out of reach, or disappears for varied and emotionally wrenching reasons. Like it or not, this sequence is a part of our lives. We learn to accept it, live with it, replace it as best we can, and move on. Otherwise we pay the heavy price for hanging on to an aspect of our life that simply cannot, any longer, be to us what it once was.  

In the midst of preparing a lifestyle plan for my next ten years, if there is a next ten years, I listed the things I like to do, those things which I don’t like to do, and those things which I can no longer physically or mentally do very well. Many sports I let go in the past because my actually playing them at all became a fact of age. Some sports like baseball, are fun to play but too slow to watch. Some sports, like soccer, are too low scoring for someone like myself with little patience. A sport like hockey I have little history with personally, so hard to become any serious fan. Football I was never physically built to play, but it was a good sport to watch, with a perfect pace, complexity, and varied skills. This is why football is currently the most watched sport in the U.S.  

For reasons not correctable or simply not corrected, closely following football is no longer something which is remotely a satisfying experience for me. What has personally tipped the issue is the injury rate and seriousness. All the other faults inherent in the sport I resigned myself to, but it is not even the regular season yet and it seems every day a new player, often a key player, goes down with a season ending injury or a many month rehab. Medically we know exactly what long term effects many players will face, including life span, mental problems, and mobility problems. If I were built to play football, I would not play. If a parent, I would not allow my kids to play. As a physiologist I am well aware the human body is not built to sustain constant blows by players who are faster, bigger, better trained, better fed, and far stronger than in the past. There is just so much protection that can be given against these kind of herculean blows. We all are amazed how dogs, in a relatively short period of time, have been bred to exhibit certain innate characteristics. Athletes, for ages, have always been better athletes physically from one generation to the next. Records really are meant to be broken. Today, in football, it is not just records which are being broken right and left, but bodies themselves. As almost always, enough finally becomes enough. We have passed that point in football. The price of playing most positions in football have simply crossed any reasonable line. 

Even if I cared less about the injuries, what is the sense of getting all emotionally worked up for a team just to watch the players fall by the wayside with every game? It is rare today for any team to end up the season with a roster that remotely resembles the team which gathered in training camp. All the vigorous debate as to which franchise has assembled the best teams means less and less. Who will be left on the team physically able to play means every bit as much.

Then add the spectacle of 32 wealthy owners in total control of the NFL for their own financial gain, with virtually no regulation by government, no limit on how much they can use a monopoly to exploit the players, the fans, the cities in which they play, the taxpayers in general, or provide justice in behavior cases. Many of these owners never even earned their wealth, they just inherited it. Some earned their wealth by means not exactly admirable. Some are just clowns of the first degree. Others are used car salesmen of the worst kind, and some are kindly knowledgeable ethical gentleman, but rarely. After all you can’t be an owner just by having the money to purchase a franchise, you have to be voted in. Anyone this cabal of characters would admit into their private club is automatically suspect. Why are their images never sullied unless they do something really bad like murder someone? No media sportscaster would ever dream of singing anything but praise of an owner sitting in their skybox waving to the camera. Every one of these TV outlets depend on the huge revenue from football and no network would ever get another contract to broadcast the games if they criticized any owners. They can smear a President of our Country any which way, but they would never dream of trashing the owner of an NFL football team. These owner characters are even essentially protected from bad press by any of the major media outlets. 

When football owners and the Player’s Union are at the bargaining table it is a very unusual sort of negotiation. The only thing that counts is what percentage of the huge profits will go to the owners and what percentage of the huge profits will go to the players. The bottom line for cost does not exist, and neither does the limit. It is interesting that we live at an age now where, if workers still have decent pensions or salaries or health benefits and so on, many politicians want to strip them of any right to bargain for these things in order for the government to save money. No one in Congress ever questions why football owners and players can have no limit to their salaries, or why cities need pay for stadiums, or why the NFL can pit one city against another to see where the team plays, or why when football players misbehave, the misbehavior is often tried in a ‘court’  by the Commissioner of Football who is appointed by the owners. And why are football contracts only binding to the player and not management? And on and on it goes. A legalized mafia. Of course the financial greed will implode the whole charade at some point, when is the only question. “When” is the kind of question we have to ask about a lot of  major problems coming at us. 

If one ever listens to those endless hours of football call-in post game and pre game shows, or listens to the media commentators argue so loudly and forcefully who will win the game, you would think those who project the winner the most often would be able to do so with a bit more than 60% of the time. Even without crippling injuries, there are so many uncontrollable variables which occur during a football game that if the teams are somewhat close, it will be most likely these variables which will determine the outcome of the game. By what line of logic does it make sense for anyone to get so worked up by who will win the game? What uncontrollable factors occur when, and how often, will seal the outcome in most cases. Oh well, it will iron itself out over a best of seven series. Except in football, for obvious reasons, there is only that one game, there can be no best of seven. 

There are 32 teams in the NFL. No matter what team you root for, only one team can win the Super Bowl. That means, for 31 out of 32 teams, there is going to be a painful ‘Waterloo’ sooner or later.

At social events, sports is often the most hotly debated of conversations and women today are much more apt to be into it than earlier times. Since facts are not the points of contention, but opinions, the emotions behind the opinions are a sight to behold. Not really a pleasant sight either. As we all know there are more horses asses than horses; in sport debates we notice this right away, and of course we are so grateful, with our own astute opinions, that we are not one of them. I know I am grateful (smile).

My dad got it right. He watched sports, but not with baited breath for any team. He never seemed to highly anticipate any game, turned the game on only if he happened to feel like it or someone else wanted to watch that game. If it got past his bed time he would simply turn the game off, he never seemed angry about whatever was happening, never talked much about a game after it was over, never engaged in any pre game predicting or useless analyzing of what was going to happen. He liked to watch baseball the best, I think because it was on most every day and gave him something to watch which was less filled with rapid endless tension compared to sports like football and basketball. If anyone wanted to watch something else he didn’t care. He was that way with food too. If there was an extra pork chop he would always feign no interest. Only if no one else took it, he might then take it. If I forgot to take the garbage out for garbage collection he would never say a word about it. He didn’t have to, my mother would. The point I learned from his is to just roll with the punches of aging, amuse oneself, and just get out of the way. Otherwise there will be endless things to fuss about. 

To care about a football game outside of entertainment for the moment takes a lot of time and thought. I am done with that. Maybe I will watch a game sometimes, just for amusement, a break from any serious thinking about anything. Whichever team wins means absolutely nothing to my life or well being. I wish any of my remaining favorite players and coaches well, but I am not going to adopt any new favorites. As my father might say “The Hell with it”. Somebody will win and somebody will lose, the wheel of fortune will keep spinning around, and where she will stop nobody knows. It will take an effort, but from now on, I am not going to pretend that I am a somebody who does know. The days of peeling myself off the ceiling over some totally unpredictable sudden turn of events in a football game are over for me. That is exactly often the outcome, and the entertainment will be watching those who think a game will not end that way peel themselves off the ceiling. Dumb ‘mother———er’s’ Did they really think all the uncontrollable factors would be inoperable for the game?  Besides, I miss T.O. out there at the end of the game in the huddle telling the quarterback “Just gimme the ball, I can make a big play, gimme the ball.” As Steve Young said “Say what you want about T.O. but when the game is on, and you need a critical play, there is no one better to have on your team than T.O.” Willpower, which was his forte, often outmaneuvered the wheel of fortune, left the the little pointer suspended on the tip of the spoke, unable to flip to the next intended groove.  

The longer we live, the more good-byes.  Goodbye football. 

What If? (Number 1)

What If? (Number 1)

What if :

all organized religions did not exist and ethics in the world was governed by the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

What if:

All children had good schools with good teachers, good health care, safe neighborhoods……that’s called a level playing field with the same amount of tax money being spent on all children.

What if: 

the minimum wage level, which was sufficient back in the 50’s for a single person to support a family with a used car and a decent place to live, had risen automatically with the cost of living.  (It would be $21 today).

What if:  

child support payments were the same for all children, not $40,000/month for some and $0/per month for others. Whatever is a reasonable cost to raise a child, shouldn’t this be the same for all children being raised by a single parent?

What if: 

A global tax revenue was used to ensure all humans were treated for curable diseases. Why should any child die in a civilized world because they don’t have access to a vaccination, drugs, or an  operation?

What if 

there were global living minimum wages?  Sounds like an economic stimulus better than waiting for some trickle down. Until there is a global minimum wage there will always be workers forced to work for slave labor wages and thereby prevent workers elsewhere from making a living wage. 

What if,;

to start a war, every citizen over 21 had to either be in a draft pool or pay a tax surcharge to cover the costs of the war, including the elderly? Might be a few less wars and no more wars on borrowed money. 

What if: 

sport monopolies concentrated on sports and let the court system handle infractions for behaviors off the field…..

What if:

National sport monopolies were owned by cities and licensed only to play in a particular city. No more blackmailing to leave if taxpayers won’t foot the bill for a stadium. 

What if:

National Sport monopolies  were required to set up a reasonable salary schedule based on the athlete’s past year performance and once this reasonable salary schedule was set up salaries then only went up with the cost of living? Why should any monopoly have ‘the sky is the limit’ for their own salaries? It would end the farce of owners and the player’s union debating only how much of the income each side gets. 

What if:

National sport monopolies were required to sell a certain percentage of tickets (4 per winner) at a reasonable price via a lottery so all economic level fans could afford to go to a game if they won tickets from the fan lottery. Probably the poorest of fans might like to have a chance to go to a game once in a while. These are, after all, national sports. 

What if:

National sport monopolies were themselves bound to any contract with players, not just the player bound….perhaps with a salary schedule this would not be such a problem

What if:

All sport monopoly arbitrations were conducted by a neutral party with no ties to either management or the players union….

What if :

All sport monopolies had a Commissioner appointed by the President with no ties to either management or the players union? 

What if:

Once a reasonable and effective income tax level for all levels of income is established, taxes increase automatically with the cost of living. No more opportunity for politicians to win elections based on lowering taxes. 

What if:

Every adult had the right to control his/her own dying process via procedures which protected this right from abuses. 

What if:

all campaign ads were abolished on media, and party chosen candidates just given X number of debates to be covered on all media outlets at the Presidential and Congressional level. Get the garbage off the air as a public service. Local candidates would just get one free policies statement to local residents. 

What if:

there were addiction centers all over the country for those with addictions of any sort. No more making addictions a police/jail game. If a crime is committed the person is tried for the crime, period. 

What if: 

all citizens were guaranteed a job of some sort at their level of capability (up to a point). Failure to perform the job satisfactorily deprives a citizen of any further government benefits. 

What if: 

we went back to what worked in the past, for all levels of income, by a progressive income tax up to 90% and inheritance taxes which blocked massive transfers of wealth to offspring. 

What if: 

all young people past the age of 21 were expected to earn wealth on their own? That seems a better fit for the American Way. It always seems a tad strange that a very wealthy person who earned their wealth would brag about getting their wealth the old fashioned way—“I earned it” and then deprive his offspring of the right to brag the same way. 

What if:

All judges who meet certain criteria who would qualify them to be a Supreme Court Judge had their names put in a hat, and a name drawn out whenever there was a vacancy. Why would we want politicians in Congress to control who gets on the Supreme Court?

What if:

All judges on the Supreme Court had a mandatory retirement age? Why would we want to run the risk of some judge deciding cases who is dead from the neck up, or just naturally age demented, or just living in some ages old cultural past.  

What if:

Every worker was guaranteed 6 weeks vacation as in some countries already. Modern science has made the need for everyone to work so much obsolete. By allowing some to do this, out of greed, it leaves many without work. Not good.

What if:

There were global laws to enforce responsible reproduction? Let people who want more than two children adopt children from those who broke the law and paid a steep tax for having done so. Of course such adoptions would have to be regulated to avoid monkey business.

What if:

terrorists were not given any publicity for their acts and anyone who gives them such publicity be tossed in jail for inciting terrorism.

What if:

One week out of the six weeks paid vacation were by law spent on cleaning up national parks and other such environmental wonders? 

What if:

All tax shelters were simply eliminated? The whole purpose of these laws is criminal. 

What if:

 the farce called boxing were eliminated as a medical absurdity. In what other sport does the top contender get to choose who and when their next opponent will be” “Congratulations Green Bay for winning the Super Bowl. Now which team, and when do you expect to play next. Do you have any idea when the next Superbowl will be?” Any sport where the primary objective is to produce brain damage, enough for a knock out sometimes. 

What if:

The national debt was paid off on an installment plan with every citizen paying their fair share based on some sort of progressive payment plan with the wealthy, those with the most of our wealth, paying a higher percentage than those with the least amount of our national wealth. This would stop politicians from playing the endless game of protecting their base from paying off the debt and sticking it to the political base of another political party. This ‘certain’ people or groups are going to pay the piper gets a bit tiresome. Everyone should have to pay the piper here and every generation should pay it’s own way. 

  

Food for thought

Food for thought:

"I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is."  (Catholic Nun)

“Don’t speak to me about your religion; first show it to me in how you treat other people.

Don't tell me how much you love your God; show me in how much you love all His children.

Don't preach to me your passion for your faith; teach me through your compassion for your neighbors.

In the end, I'm not as interested in what you have to tell or sell as in how you choose to live and give.  (Unknown)”

I like the above two quotes BUT only in the context of responsible reproduction. Protection of humanity from human overpopulation trumps any one individual’s right to put all inhabitants of this planet in danger from the unavoidable consequences of global human overpopulation. Failure of governments everywhere to even address the consequences of human overpopulation makes the first two quotes an oxymoronic senseless dribble. When any species overpopulates its natural resources it makes little sense to talk about obligations to adequately nourish all the members of that species. This inability for humans to accept the consequences of human overpopulation is already behind much of the misery and violence increasing most everywhere at an exponential rate. The quandary is obvious: The first two quotes only work if, at the same time, we are not nurturing human overpopulation. Thus, the first two humane principles work only if the third principle in this paragraph is in place. “How many times must a man look up, and pretend that he just doesn’t see?”   

Rape and It’s Implications

Rape and It’s Implications

Most anything to do with sex is beyond reasoned conclusions. Clearly the physical aspect of rape, within reason, is not of notable consequences. I am not here referring to any rape which involves mutilation or permanent physical damage of any sort. The number of women who have come forward about Bill Cosby is approaching 40 and none of them were so discombobulated by the experience that it stopped their life from continuing. 

Some women are so mentally and emotionally affected by the experience that they are psychologically damaged the rest of their life. In this musing I am referring to forced regular vaginal sex. When it goes far beyond that the whole matter is of another hue. Then there is date rape. I would never consent to being on a jury for that sort of thing. Unless one is present, how can consent be determined?  The most personable or charming of the two probably is believed. I could never vote to punish anyone about anything on pure belief. I often wonder how the jury members feel when many years after they convicted someone of rape, the person is released after DNA tests prove them not guilty. That how women react to rape varies all over is clear enough, but in the court room how does a judge or jury know to what trauma the female really went through? When there is a lot of money at stake lawyers know how to milk the emotions in their favor. 

The notion that someone would want to force sex on someone else is alien to my own sensibilities and sense of justice. Then there is the ‘come on’ aspect of rape. This applies clearly more to date rape, when the line gets rather gray as how much intended or unintended entrapment was involved. We all know females, who, when they claim rape, we tend to question it right away based on their behavior in social situations. And we also know both males and females who would go to any length to get even with a mate (or even strangers) who spurned them or, in their minds, wronged them in some perceived significant way. In something as emotional as love (or sexual attraction), revenge can end up a motive for a lot of things. And so can winning monetary damages be the reason for false or trumped up claims about sexual experiences. 

There are men and women who love being promiscuous so if having sex with someone other than their partner is being personally violated, they sure love being violated. There are many women with bodies sexy enough, who make a decent living having sex with strangers, even strangers who are not sexually attractive. It is always interesting that whenever a community attempts to clamp down on prostitution, in part claiming these prostitutes are being used and abused, the prostitutes are furious. They don’t act saved at all. Many apparently feel “Give me a decent paying job and you can shut me down, but otherwise fuck-off”. 

Prostitution is not rape of course, but it is sex with people who are not attractive to the prostitute. Forced sex and sex for money are both sex acts not based on any mutual sense of sexual attraction. It is not logically clear why prostitution is illegal between adults of age. In some cases, if a person is not attractive enough to attract consensual sex, and sex is pleasurable activity, it is not clear we shouldn’t be happy that someone is willing to have sex with the unattractive, even though it is for money. At least they are making someone happy. Considering all the different kinds of sex acts, sex for money doesn’t seem half as over the top as some of the kinkier sex acts. A lot of marriages are, in reality, sex for money or life style. This is simply prostitution at a much more complicated, yet legal, level. 

Exactly what percentage of sex acts in any community on a given night are actually acts which both partners are doing because they both can’t wait to get started is unknown.  Maybe it should not be so surprising that studies have shown the greatest orgasms are often via masturbation—sarcastically a kind of sex with someone you love. Every aspect of this musing is really about the mental aspects of sex. If, for example, we have a foot fetish, how would we ever put in words exactly why we orgasm over someone’s foot, or being tied up, or anal sex, etc. How does one even successfully explain to a child who does not yet have any sexual preferences at all, just why normal vaginal sex is so exciting? How can a straight person be expected to understand the sexual excitement between same sex partners? For that matter, how can a straight couple who find their sexual pleasure via vaginal sex ever understand why another straight sexual couple finds pleasure in anal sex or oral sex or whatever else this particular couple have no desire to engage in? 

The point here is that nothing about sex, including response to rape, can be neatly reasoned out. Stating that rape is not usually about sex at all, but anger, is really a cop out. Anger may be involved sometimes, but I reckon there are times when the culprit simply wants sex with a particular person and really doesn’t care if she willingly goes along. Everything about sex is simply all over the place—that is the point behind everything in this musing. All attempts to eradicate certain sexual behaviors throughout history have always been colossal failures. The behaviors just go underground. When the Catholic church tells its members that certain members can’t have sex, or members can’t use birth control devices, or they can’t abort an unwanted fetus, or they can’t divorce, or have gay sex it is not clear where from history the church could ever find a basis for success with all these regulations. The percentage of Catholics who engage in any of these activities is not much different from any other religious group. 

Rape is not the only kind of sexual activity we mostly prefer not to talk about. It is rare for us to talk about our private sexual encounters in any descriptive way. Statistically, oral sex is not that uncommon, but how often does anyone talk about their oral sex experiences to anyone? Sex is obviously an important and valued life activity for most, and yet, like with rape, we simply don’t like to chat specifically about our own sexual activity in any detail. No one, at a social dinner, who, for example, enjoys oral sex, would ever comment that their steak on their plate is as tasty as their wife’s pussy. And if they did, we would either laugh about it once a week for eternity, or loose our appetite at the dinner table. I once looked up on google to see if their was a sexual fetish for armpits. There is. Try steering a discussion with others in this direction, or any other fetish, or even what you really do in bed that is pretty vanilla. Talking about rape is difficult, but so is specific talk about any of our specific sexual consensual activities. Considering that most of us are not exactly configured to be a porn star, and those who are can become sexually attractive sex act performers on screen for us in movies, TV shows, magazines, the internet, porno clips, etc.—well—it is rather amazing how much sex goes on between the vast majority, who for various reasons (looks, age, personality, etc) are unattractive and yet actually do engage in sex. Perhaps imagination drives these engagements. Dim lighting probably helps it along. 

Rape is no trivial thing. Nothing above is meant to imply it is. The only real point is that rape, like all other aspects of sex, is very individualized in nature, in the affect on the victim, in trying to address the appropriate penalty for a specific case, and trying to even talk about it. Like it or not, almost all sex is shrouded in embarrassment. We all know sex is an important and obligatory part of most lives, and yet no couple at the family breakfast table or social dinner of any sort, ever talks about the details of their sex in bed the night before. When is the last time a clergy person in the pulpit ever talked about any specific type of sex in detail. If some types of sexual activity between consensual adults are sinful, shouldn’t this be something which can verbally be explained? Good luck with that. The congregation would almost unanimously find the whole sermon disgusting and at least inappropriate. The only time specific sex acts seem appropriate to verbally talk about is in standup comedy and movies for comedic effects. That always generates huge laughs. Except rape, that is never funny, and it shouldn’t be, since that act is nonconsensual. 

Another thing about rape is this. Many things we are forced to do in life are nonconsensual. We deal with it. Some can deal with rape and move on. But others cannot, and therein lies the crux of the situation. Disease, accidents, loss of a job, losing a mate, improper parenting, poor environments in life, senseless wars which kill young people, and so on, on and on, are events in our life from which we may never recover. Rape is included here too. With rape we can go to trial and seek compensation. For most of these other traumatic events, we need recover on our own. Life is always intriguing and at best, just good theatre. In some cases I reckon it sometimes depends on who rapes us. Was it the guy who we have always had a crush on, or the creepy pervert across the street who is always staring at us. When straight males express fears a gay person may ‘come on’ to them it seems maybe they need get counseling from women, some of whom, spend a lifetime fending off unwanted advances. 

Is there such a thing as a false rape claim for financial gain? Do some people jump on the bandwagon and claim a priest molested them when young in order to get some financial compensation? Do some marry for money? Sex for money—is that rape? That certainly isn’t what most mean when we use the term consensual sex. After all, it isn’t about love or sex at all, just money or a lifestyle. If an old guy rapes a younger gal against her wishes that is certainly rape. If an older guy can get the same gal to marry him for lifestyle or money that is not rape. Sex is never a topic that lends itself to rational thinking. It is simply hopeless.  Why would the courts want to get involved with any married couples who engage in consensual sex outside of their marriage? If the marriage vows have been broken then simply dissolve the marriage or the couple work through it. What about the ‘groupies’ who shadow celebrities hoping for sex and subsequent huge sums for child support? Giving rational thought to all this sex stuff is like jumping into a giant quagmire of quicksand.  

Sex, including rape, are simply topics which remain beyond reason, beyond logic, beyond predictability, with deviations from the norm so common that using the term normal becomes oxymoronic. If we can survive love, sex, and our own personal peculiarities regarding all of this, we can simply attribute this survival to luck. It is theatre, not reasoned out activity. In animals, hormones drive sexual activity in specific directions and their sexual activity is quite predictable. In humans, the cerebral cortex is heavily involved and the consequences are clear enough—hang on to your hats, it will be a bumpy ride, not that too many people wear hats during sex. My mother used to buy a gaudy hat for each Easter. I forgot to ask her if she wore the hat during sex. Come to think of it I don’t recall asking either parent much about their sex life. Sometimes, even I, know enough to keep my mouth shut. With sex, it is all out there, circus like, being driven by God knows what unpredictable forces. It settles the question—God does have a sense of humor. Of course this humor has nothing to do with rape. Rape is never humorous. 

Is This Going To Be High Noon for American Democracy: Trump vs Sanders?

Is This Going To Be High Noon for American Democracy: Trump vs Sanders?

The first two URL clips below  can only be interpreted two ways:  Either the stats are way off, and therefore Maher is a liar, or if the stats are right, what is going to happen to our society?  As far as I can tell the stats are ok, and if so, when will something collapse, how fast, in what way? I don’t know how long these URL’s remain operative, so depending on when you read this they may or may not still work.

At first I have been amazed nothing much is happening even though 43% of our adult citizens don’t make enough money to be eligible to pay any income tax. Wow. In the past, such a widespread degree of poverty would have generated riots all over. Why do these people remain so calm about their fate? Some claim they these leeches earned their fate, let them burn at the stake metaphorically speaking. But the Trumphites of our country have one big thing going for them. In the past, these poor had little to do but sit at home and fume. They couldn’t afford to go anywhere, they couldn’t afford to entertain themselves, so they felt the full force of being poor. Today, if they can afford some food, and with food stamps they can, there awaits a full day of entertainment  on internet type gadgets—the endless phone chats, chat rooms, computer games, movies, sports, pornography, chances to comment on endless articles, video clips, and computer friends with similar gripes about life to communicate with adnauseam. Where religion used to be the opiate of the poor, the internet has replaced it. Still with all this increased means of communication comes the ability, at some point, for all these 43% of our citizens to coordinate roving riots wherever the police are not—-and the police cannot be everywhere

Throughout history only once has the wealthy class been toppled without bloodshed (when bloodshed occurs the Have Not’s with nothing to lose always win over the Have’s with so much to protect). Teddy Roosevelt is the only one I can think of who saved the rich and benefitted the rest of society via steep progressive income taxes and steep inheritance taxes. For roughly 50 years now we have been sold the notion that the wealth from the wealthy trickles down on others. And for 50 years this had not happened at all. The ideal American way is to ‘earn’ your accumulated wealth, not inherit it. The real American way to to create a level playing field for all citizens and let the varied talents play out the game with the Golden Rule as the ethical basis of American culture.  

The third URL will only amuse those who really feel the top 5% of the population really have an absurd amount of our country’s wealth. After all 90% is pretty high.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SASkrBbIBJs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCnovN35pVE

I guess this last URL you have to copy and paste to view. 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bill-maher-unloads-sick-culture-164917888.html

Long Term Chronic Pain Management: the Realities of Heroin

Long Term Chronic Pain Management: the Realities of Heroin. 

Few medical conditions have been handled as poorly as long term chronic pain. For starters, we often fail to clearly define pain, or it’s causes, or how to treat it. We all know pain is unpleasant. Depending on the level, the pain may become insufferable. Pain always hurts—no hurting, no pain. Pain can be physical in origin or mental in origin. Either way the result is unpleasant. There are regions in the brain which originate the sensations of pleasure, and regions in the brain which originate the sensations of pain. The ‘feeling’ about pain is one thing, the perception of it is another. 

Physical pain mostly originates when body cells are damaged, and these cells release chemicals which stimulate pain nerve endings, thus sending messages to the brain. Different areas of the body have different concentrations of pain nerve endings. The brain itself has no pain nerve endings. So our brain can’t hurt, although the membrane around the brain has pain nerve endings and brain swelling can activate them. A patient can be fully awake as electrodes stimulate different areas of the brain and this helps identify which brain regions do what, but no matter what part of the brain is stimulated the person never feels pain in the brain itself. 

Ok, so what activates the pleasure and pain centers of the brain? Physical pain can be caused by damage to body cells as mentioned. These damage cells release chemicals which activate the sensory pain receptors. Then it gets a bit tricky. There are two pathways of physical pain to the brain. One pathway ends in the cerebral cortex and tells us the nature of the pain, the level of the pain, where the pain is coming from (at least sometimes, unless it is referred pain which will be explained later on). This is called the perception of pain and is fairly uniform from person to person. For example, the temperature at which everyone labels the temperature painful is fairly uniform. What differs is how different people feel about the same perception of pain. There is a wide range in how different people react to the same perception of pain. The second pathway of physical pain to the brain goes to subcortical levels of the brain and determines how we feel about the pain. Some people, to the same degree of pain, will scream bloody murder, and others react much less forcefully. 

Physical pain is a valuable sensation in that it tells us we need do something to correct what is damaging our body cells. Morphine/heroin both reduce pain via the same receptors in the brain and  both block the receptors that generate how we feel about pain, that second pathway to the brain. This is why these drugs are useful. We tell the doctor about pain, the doctor gives us some morphine, and the next day will ask us how we feel. We will reply that the pain is still there but it doesn’t ‘bother’ us as much.  A drug that blocks the perception of pain would be useless in a medical situation. Doctors need to know if the pain is still there. It is necessary to understand that the body can produce it’s own endogenous opiates, and these endogenous opiates act on the same receptors as morphine and heroin (the body converts heroin to morphine). So morphine/heroin are not ‘unnatural’ compounds to our body. 

For many decades the government/politicians misrepresented morphine/heroin as extremely dangerous drugs, and drugs which, once used, we could become automatically very addicted to, and could even kill us. Of all the major recreational drugs of abuse, heroin is the least toxic to the body. For decades, patients in hospitals were only allowed certain levels of morphine to relieve pain because otherwise, it was claimed, patients would become hopelessly addicted to morphine/heroin after release from the hospital. 

At this point it is necessary to understand that there is physical and emotional pain. If we become emotionally upset, the same subcortical centers which determine how we feel about pain, become activated. Once again our feelings to, in this case emotional pain, produce unpleasant feelings about our emotional situation. If we are admitted to the hospital because of physical pain, and the condition causing the physical pain is medically corrected, then we no longer feel any need to take morphine/heroin. These drugs alleviate how we feel about pain, and if the physical pain is gone, the need for morphine is gone too. It has only been recently when hospital patients, with reluctant permission from the government, are permitted to press a button whenever they need more relief via morphine from pain. 

If morphine/heroine only relieved physical pain the government would never have distorted the information given to the public about these drugs. The catch is that these drugs also relieve emotional pain. That is to say, if there are things going on in our lives which create unpleasant emotional feelings and we take heroin/morphine, the unpleasant feelings won’t go away BUT they won’t BOTHER us as much. At first this sounds like a wonderful drug to take if we are emotionally and hopelessly dealing with a life situation which is emotionally unpleasant for us day after day. THE PROBLEM IS, heroin/morphine will not of course correct our life situation which is causing the emotional distress. These drugs don’t cure anything, physical or emotional in nature. 

The next concept needed to digest here relates to exactly why people take morphine/heroin for pain and the consequences for using these drugs. Recreational drug use is always about changing our mental state in ways which are desirable for a particular situation. The situation could be social event, a celebratory event, or an undesirable situation in which we feel uncomfortable or stressed about. In many cases of recreational drug use it is more about how we use the drug rather than if we ever use it at all. If taking morphine/heroin is the only way to get relief from pain——physical or emotional—it is self evident that a person is going to be reluctant to stop taking morphine/heroin. We can call this addiction but only if we understand it is not a mindless addiction. Everyone wants relief from pain. Good luck with trying to change anyone’s mind on this point. 

We often make the mistake of thinking recreational drug abuse is only bad if it is toxic and can lead to serious medical conditions. This explains why the government has, and continues to insist heroin is very toxic to the body. Ironically, huge numbers of people die from medical conditions related to alcohol and nicotine use, but these drugs are legal. We hardly know anyone, probably no one, who died from medical conditions caused by marijuana, and this drug has been the main illegal drug which had driven the ‘Drug Wars’ the last 50 or so years.  Logically this is rather weird. And obviously, morphine/heroine, which are not very toxic at all to the body, are also illegal. 

The reality is this: the use of a drug can be quite non-toxic and still be abused. Recreational drugs are taken for differing reasons. We may take a drug to reduce our inhibitions in a social setting. We may take a drug to increase the intensity of pleasure, we may take a drug because it calms us down, we may take a drug because it will keep us alert or give us more endurance for a task, and we may make take a drug to reduce our feelings about a life situation. Another reality, this one political, is that people tend to want recreational drugs that they use to be legal, and any different drugs used by others to be illegal. That is precisely why recreational drugs used by any minority tend to be illegal, and the drugs used by the majority tend to be legal. This true world-wide.  

Drug abuse should never be classified as a criminal act and treated as a problem to be solved by the police and the prison system. Drug abuse is a medical condition, and as such, should be treated as a medical problem. Right now drug abuse tends to get medical attention for the affluent, and prison terms for the non-affluent. 48% of those in American prisons are there for drug offenses. It costs 30-40 thousand dollars a year to incarcerate a person. This incarceration does nothing, in almost all cases, to solve a drug problem at all, but just virtually ensures, that when a prisoner does get released, their chances for useful employment are then far less than before they went in. That also means their chances of committing crimes or returning to drug use for  emotional relief sky rockets. So a large percentage of released prisoners will be back in jail for crimes or drug use again. There are 2, 266,800 people in American jails. So roughly 1,133,400 people are in jail for drugs. If we multiply this by the $35,000 a year cost per inmate, this comes to a really really large number. Providing medical addiction centers throughout the country would be a much more effective way to deal with drug abuse. Unfortunately, the vast number of us want these abusers punished, not treated. Unless, of course, it is a member of our own family—then suddenly it becomes a sad situation in need of medical attention. 

Heroin use has always been a favored drug for those trapped into the worst situational environments. Everyone knows many of those living in our numerous and expanding ‘ghettoes’ turn to heroin for relief from emotional pain. It is hard not to have emotional pain living in a ghetto. Thus, many drift to heroin for relief. They get relief alright, from the emotional pain, but no relief at all from the cause of the pain. The only thing changed is now they don’t care so much that they have no job, no treatment for their health problems, no satisfactory family life, no hope much for the future and so on. And of course we get really angry at them, furious that they don’t care much about anything that we care so much about. We depend on the police to stop any access of these people to heroin. But of course, and we all really know this, the heroin industry just goes underground. Gangs are formed as a means of income for young people who otherwise have no income. Unemployment rates in these ghettoes can be as high as 60-80 percent. Many young people perceive their option as one of having no income, or go sell heroin and marijuana. Many choose to sell drugs, adopt a gang as family, get arrested, and sometimes receive mandatory 10 year sentences. What they learn in jail for ten years is how to be good at some criminal activity when they get out. After all, who is eager to hire anyone who has been in jail for ten years?  Their income choices are quite narrowed. 

Clearly, the only solution for those using heroin is to find a way that will enable them to feel better about their lives. The real problem is that our society has already missed the boat to do this.  I am impressed by a Catholic nun who made the following comment: "I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is."

Therein lies the crux of the issue. When we deprive children of good schools, good teachers, safe environments, good health care, and job opportunities from the teenage years on, we have essentially groomed excellent candidates for heroin use. They, like all young people, want to feel good about their lives. And if they can’t, heroin in always out there, offering them a chance to at least not care so much about the realities of their lives. 

During the Vietnam War, for the soldiers trapped on the front line of a war in which no one really knows who the enemy is, and no enemy soldiers are in uniform, the stress can be unbearable. So many of them turned to heroin for relief. The dangers were still there but they cared less about the dangers. According to our government, who decades ago, during the Nixon administration, banned any research money to be spent on research about any of the illegal recreational drugs—according to what the government preached, these soldiers would be hopelessly addicted to heroin. As it turned out, once these soldiers returned home, only 3% of them continued heroin use. Why would they continue? The emotional pain from being on the front line of battle was gone, and thus, so was the need for any more heroin. Those who continued to use heroin probably had home environments which were stressful and thus their heroin use continued.

Allowing politicians to dictate how recreational drug abuse is approached is a huge mistake. Politicians have used recreational drug abuse as a political tool for election. Getting tough on drug abuse has always been simplistic political issue: put these abusers in jail, the more time in jail the better. Politicians like to use the word zero tolerance. Unless of course the abuser is in their own family. Only then it is considered a tragic situation in need of medical help. 

Unfortunately for heroin abuse, it is more than medical help that is needed. To reduce heroin abuse actually requires all children to receive good health care, good schools, good teachers, safe environments, and all citizens to have opportunities to work at a job for livable wages. In Sweden, there is little heroin use for probably two reason: first, there are state funded heroin clinics available. Second, in Sweden, the government has established good schools for every child, good health care for all citizens, free college for those who can pass admission tests, workers are mandated 6 weeks vacation, and in general, all the things many Americans worry about are taken care of by government. The trade off is a high 56% tax rate in Sweden. Americans find this outrageous. Our tax rates are lower now than any time since the 70’s. On the other hand, any poll of citizen happiness indexes in countries around the world always finds Sweden among the top countries. While they don’t have as much left over after taxes, all the significant things Americans worry about are simply not there to be worried about. And thus, perhaps it is no surprise that heroin use is very low in Sweden. Happy, contented people don’t use heroin. They have no reason to. 

The American government continues to promote heroin as a very toxic drug that kills many users from overdose. They conveniently ignore the fact that it is rare for heroin to kill anyone unless they take alcohol along with heroin, in which case breathing can be inhibited and one can die from respiratory failure. When these kind of deaths occur the police will tell the media the person died from a heroin overdose, when in reality the person died from a heroin/alcohol combination intake, which can be fatal. 

To comprehend the difficulty to treat a typical heroin addict we just have to visualize a typical heroin addict from one of our urban, suburban, or rural drug war ravaged communities. It will likely be a young male, in their twenties, poorly educated, significant health problems, poor diet, unstable or nonexistent family situation, no legitimate job, unable to support a family or any fathered children, no material wealth, not high on the attractiveness scale, no pleasant personality, not the sharpest knife in the drawer intellectually, and no realistic plans for the future. For a social life they hang out, or maybe play computer games all day. They use heroin because heroin helps them not be bothered by the realities of their life. It lessens the pain of their reality. After all, they watch TV and know how other people live, and their life is nothing like that. If all you can do is preach to them about not using heroin and how dangerous a drug it is, there is little chance they will ever stop. It would be like telling a person in love with person X, that they need stop loving that person because that person is not good for them. Love is not an emotion that someone gives up because someone else tells them to. Heroin is not something a person gives up because someone tells them it is better to feel the pain of their life existence than to have that pain lessened. 

Thus, to really break the heroin habit one needs to find a way to improve that person’s actual life. In Sweden, the usual problems that exist to drive a person to heroin do not exist. With all sorts of neglect during their formative years in the areas already listed, how do we go back and erase all of this past history? Many of the kind of jobs which existed 70 years ago no longer exist. It is now past the point where they could ever be successful in college, their past employment record often includes a stint in prison, or is nonexistent, or a series of failures, and so who is going to hire the person? Abuse of heroin is often a situation where the seeds for abuse originated years past.  The reality is that the government would not spend the money to create a level playing field for them during their formative years, and so now the the government would need to create jobs for them, provide health care for them, and give them a safe environment in which to live. Then their need for using heroin would no longer exist. We, as a society, are simply not going now to foot a bill today we should have footed years ago. It is not in our culture as the good nun explained to us earlier in this treatise. No, we would rather spend $35,000 dollars a year to keep them in jail, which I guess makes them the biggest welfare queens of all by public insistence. Actually that is probably not true, the real wealthy have more tax breaks, tax shelters, tax deductions, tax deferments, bankruptcy escape from huge debts, tax havens, legal protections from jail, etc. than any other segment of society.

What about those affluent people who are heroin addicts?  I reckon it goes back to the old saying that ‘all that glitters is not gold’. Some people who take the ‘rat race’ very serious and over-extend themselves to maintain a title, income, power, reputation, or ‘success’ find the stress too much and this too can create a lot of emotional pain. So the person takes heroin to reduce the degree to which all these other ‘false goals’ have created unpleasant pressures.  Anyone who has been around top administrators close up is well aware they are rarely any ‘tip toe through the tulips” “zippedy do da day” pictures of happiness. Enough is never enough in their lifestyle, and their whole life becomes endless compulsive behaviors, not the least of which is looking over their shoulders to see who is gaining.” Well, there is always heroin. 

It is well to remember that it is not always toxicity to the body as the only reason to refrain from using a drug. For most people, to solve their life problems they need to work through them, not take a drug which simply makes them care less about their problems. That is not a solution. 

Finally there are those who take a drug to reduce tensions in their lives, calm them down a bit.There are two problems here. All drugs have side effects and sometimes the side affects can be too dangerous to justify any good they might also do. Second, any drug which calms us down is also likely to decrease our ‘get up and go’ or the extent to which we are willing to go to be competitive. This is a charge often leveled at marijuana.  We take marijuana to mellow out, be less feisty about things, to just roll with the punches more. This gets a bit more tricky. Maybe we do need to mellow out, and maybe we need not mellow out but reach down and even give a greater effort to achieve a particular goal. There are probably two general groups of people—those who need to mellow out, and those who need to jack themselves up a bit and push harder. Using marijuana takes a good judgment call. 

This has been short, at least for how my treatises can often go, but the goal here was to provide basic perceptions which enable one to view drug abuse in the big picture. Without this big picture, any opinions on drug abuse is useless, about as good as most politicians understand drug abuse.

Some might wonder, well what drug am I on perpetually?  Actually none. However, perhaps my body is different in that my body is producing it’s own endogenous duplicates of cocaine, marijuana, LSD, and who knows what else. Smile. One thing is for sure. There are times when my body needs to step up production of endogenous opiates. Especially when around some people—the annoying type. Then maybe I would be less of a loner. Smile. 

Addendum: I avoided the issue of long term intractable pain which can make life miserable for those so afflicted. It has been 18 years since I have had a responsibility to teach the science behind drug abuse. These cases of intractable physical pain were an enigma back then and remain so today, perhaps to a lesser degree, but it is an area which I have not kept abreast. I do know that attempts are made to teach people to live with the pain. I don’t feel qualified to pass judgement on this. Is there a clear cut toxic level of morphine/heroin which can kill you? Of course there is, almost any substance needed by the body can kill you at some point including oxygen, glucose, water, and on it goes. We also need remember that while morphine/heroin can reduce how much pain ‘bothers’ us, it is not a ‘cure’ for the cause of the pain. In some cases, the opiates will not be able to reduce the feelings about the pain enough to do the trick. These are real tragedies in life and not unique to the kinds of pain talked about here. Some people have a ringing in their ears—tinnitus—which science cannot eradicate and they end up ‘learning’ to live with it. Some people are quadriplegic, and they have to ‘learn’ to live with it. Some people are born very ugly and they have to ‘learn’ to live with it. I look back at an older age and wonder how certain ugly girls could find the will to come to school everyday. Certainly morphine/heroin  would be no solution. Remember, heroin/morphine are not selective in what you care less about. People in abject poverty who become heroin addicts die, on the average, a lot earlier in life because they don’t take care of their health either. They don’t ‘give a shit’ about taking care of their health either. Intractable pain is just another life instance in which there are no magic bullets. 

Most musings I write these days are matters of opinion, not scientific fact. This musing is scientific in nature, but there are aspects of it which are still opinion and I avoided these aspects of the subject. Anyone 18 years away from a science subject need be aware of where to draw the line between fact and opinion. Am fairly confident I have done that with this topic.       

    

Elections and Democracy

Elections and Democracy

Few of the important issues of this strange venture called human life have easy answers. Democracy, or so it seemed for some time, seemed the ultimate answer to responsible government.  The people choose the solutions, what could be better than that?  The clearest weakness of democracy is prejudice against this group or that group. Often the Supreme Court has to protect minorities.  But, over time, people have slowly, and sometimes rapidly, as in the case of gay marriage, let others have rights they long have had. When this country started out with this democracy thing, it was pretty much landowning white protestant males who had all the rights and level playing fields. Over time, more and more groups got the same rights including blacks, Jews, women, children, handicapped, gays, Catholics, and so on. Religious prejudices hang the toughest as might be expected if these groups all feel God is on their side. Even if they all read the same scripture, splits can occur and this intra-squad religious ‘war’ can be more vicious than any other  war (i.e. Ireland and the Middle East). The irony of religion in history is that organizations created to bring peace, prosperity, and good will to others can end up doing just the opposite. It just seems so inane and dolt-headed. 

But over time some very insidious developments have impacted greatly on any successful democracy. One is the current infusion of massive amounts of money into campaigns. It coast 2.8 million to elect Lincoln, 300 million to elect Reagan over Carter, and 1.5 billion to elect Obama over McCain, and 2.6 billion dollars to elect Obama in 2012. All of these figures are in 2012 dollars. This means that the highly professional ‘brain washing’ is not only intense, but goes on forever, at least two years of campaigning with dozens of debates and millions of TV ads, almost all of which are purposely distorted to prey on the emotional aspect of human nature. 

If all of the above is not bad enough, many of the issues today are so complicated and technical that almost all voters are in over their heads, unable to properly assess many issues. Trade issues, climate issues, environmental protection issues, tax issues, work related issues, foreign policy issues, economic issues of all sorts, and so on, require an expertise that hardly any of us, or Congressmen possess on most of these issues. Thus, we are asking people to vote on issues which they have no personal knowledge base to lean on. Most people can’t even come up with the name of a Vice President or where most countries are on a map—and that is not a criticism of them at all. Their interests are elsewhere, and they may be a perfect citizen. More and more people are busy, very busy, with their social life via internet gadgets. For some it is with a handful of people day after day, hour after hour, and for others it is with hundreds of people in very superficial ways. And little of it is about any substantive topics that would ever help them cast intelligent votes in an election. We are lucky if even half the people eligible to vote do so. When a third of those eligible to vote actually vote and it is a close election, that means the winner is elected with about 17% of the eligible voters. Democracy? I think not. 

Today’s elections are less enlightening than they are grotesquely expensive and slick manipulation of our emotional state regarding ‘hot button’ issues. If one is against gun control than that is the issue which will drive your vote. If one is against gay marriage then that is the issue which will drive your vote. And so it goes, issues which are least important for the future become the issues which determine how many of us vote. On the issues which are really important for the future most of us couldn’t talk for 5 minutes on such topics. Especially today, most people have very little down time in which they must create their own thoughts and think about ‘deep’ subjects. There is more stress in most people’s lives today, rich or poor, than 70 years ago. Even though we suffer information overload, or maybe better stated amusement overload, we are busy surviving from day to day, and have no time or inclination to give any strenuous thought to any ‘deep’ ‘esoteric’ issues. 

In the past it was mostly a question of which independent country would do the most right things and advance as a civilization. Today, the most important issues are global. And therein lies a big problem. The far reaching problems can no longer be solved by individual countries. For example, without global minimum wages how can the wages of workers across the globe ever rise to ensure all workers get a living wage?  How can responsible human reproduction ever be achieved to reduce overpopulation without serious global enforcement?  How can the environment, including climate, be protected without global cooperation? And these kind of questions can go on and on. Our communities today are those with whom we contact via the internet. Local, state, and even national communities are not real to us anymore compared to yesteryears. 

Thus, the real question in terms of government these days is really what kind of global governance can be achieved to attack all these problems which are now global, not nation problems. The answer, right now, is blowing in the wind. Times are a changin’ and serious problems for humanity and all species/natural resources are bearing down on us with huge potential repercussions. Throughout the billions of years evolutionary progress, nothing like the present has ever existed. All bets are off, but Mother Nature bats last and yet another major correctional phase seems inevitable. These evolutionary correctional phases can last hundreds of thousands of years or even millions of years before progress commences again. And so far, progress always eventually regains control albeit often with a new cast of species to advance the process. 

If democracy is failing and becoming incapable of solving major global problems, what is the alternative? Maybe down the road some alternative might be envisioned, but right now neither the shadow or George Gobel’s ‘little birdie’ knows, let alone any of us. The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.