Big League ‘Welfare Queens’

Big League ‘Welfare Queens’

Back in the Reagan years I felt strongly that ‘us’ taxpayers were supporting a huge cabal of lazy, shiftless, irresponsible—often criminal leeches dependent on the more meritorious citizens of our society, which of course included myself. Certainly these kind of leeches do exist but, with a bit more life experience behind me, I realize some of the biggest welfare queens are not from that cabal of  lazy, shiftless, irresponsible, often criminal citizens living in our poverty ghettoes.  I may not be the among the biggest ‘welfare queens’ but I  have gotten more for nothing, unearned welfare than those getting food stamps, unemployment checks, etc in our poverty ghettoes. Then again I am a hard working responsible citizen who deserves any welfare I get. But it gets confusing—welfare is something for nothing. Since I have always earned a decent amount why would I need something for nothing?

Something for nothing—unearned income— has grown to mammoth amounts of money in the last 50 or so years. Naturally, so has our debt at every level. Something for nothing is not always unwarranted unless we have no ethical nature. We don’t encourage birth and then leave the resulting child on their own unless we are hard core ‘right to lifer’s’ —their concern stops after childbirth.

If I total all the unearned, something for nothing welfare I personally have gotten in my life it is a bit staggering. For the first 18 years of my life I was on genetic welfare and the spin of the wheel of luck. I never earned my place to live, the era in which I lived, the schools I attended, my health care, the food I ate, my secure environment in which to live my formative years, my physical characteristics, who my parents were, and so on. I did quite well, am sure some did better, and many a lot worse. 

After my formative years, the early productive years were a tad rough but even then I began to receive unearned somethings for nothing. I got a draft deferment during the Vietnam War because I was in graduate school. That was a nice unearned gift from the government since even though I was, for sometime, a rabid supporter of that war, it was ok by me to let others do the killing. That was a huge embarrassment later on for both me and my political sage Barry Goldwater. I guess we both matured with age. We killed Vietnamese like flies. We lost and I am not aware Vietnam has been any security threat to us. What 35,000 American Soldiers died for would be hard to justify. 

I accidentally ended up teaching in a State University. That turned out, over the years, to be accidentally brilliant. The pay itself was modest but decent, job security great, vacation time great, pensions great, health insurance great, and so on. This all came as part of the job, a pleasant form of earned income. When much of this began to evaporate for others in private industry, including some salaries, health care benefits, and pensions, I was protected by the courts. I really didn’t earn this select protection but gobbled up all this unearned special protection like a pig at a trough. 

I am of course now retired with a decent pension, but roughly half of my income comes from financial speculation, mostly in stocks. There is nothing inherently wrong with shuffling papers around for speculative purposes, but let’s just be real here and admit that the government taxing me less, substantially less, for that earned income compared to the earned the income some other worker earns from pushing a wheelbarrow around all day—well, that’s government welfare directed specifically at people like me. And yes, the day this ‘welfare’ is taken away from me I will no doubt squeal like a pig too. 

Even though relatively healthy for my age, I have had some expensive medical procedures performed, albeit the expense was not always matched by the seriousness of the problem. Everything is expensive in medical care these days, in part because there are so many available options to treat medical problems.  Gone are the days when most people had their heart attack or stroke, etc. and simply died. For me, this is more government welfare since I am sure I never paid enough in health insurance over the years to pay for it all. This alone amounts to a healthy sum of money.

I reckon that one of my biggest ‘something for nothing’ gifts has been no expensive hobbies. Of course this gift didn’t come from the ‘government’, but still it is an unearned genetic gift. I certainly did not earn this part of my nature. Having no expensive hobbies I can well afford to maintain a charitable gift fund (FANAFI), and give yearly grants to charitable organizations of my choice. But the government helps me out here too. I don’t pay a lot in taxes, under 10% because these grants are deductible expenses. That’s nice, but it also means I don’t have to pay my share of taxes to maintain roads, military preparedness, deal with national disasters, etc. Other taxpayer’s will have to make up the difference. Thank you all.

I, like so many other citizens, have always been annoyed that my tax money was being used so often to pay those who were leeches on society. My hard self-earned money was being welfared out to useless unproductive citizens, especially those in huge urban, rural, or suburban ghettoes. Reality often annoys me and never more so than the following: For my first 18 years I was a welfare recipient dependent upon my parents. They were able to be generous enough. Then in my productive years the government helped me out a lot as depicted above. I retired at 56, pretty young, but quite legal enough to do, and let the government pay me a decent pension for the rest of my life. I have already lived 19 more years on that pension, a gift from the government. Let’s say I live to be 86 years old. That’s 18 plus 30 which is 48 years as a ‘welfare queen’ of some sort. In fact I am getting back far more than I ever put in. I suppose I am a nice enough guy, decent citizen, and personally I kind of admire myself just as much as others admire themselves. I certainly am not ghetto trash. Not even trailer park trash, not even illegal immigrant trash, etc. Most of them can’t even remotely match me as a ‘welfare queen’, not by hundred’s of thousand’s of dollars.  

And guess what, lest everyone hate me——I am no where near one of the biggest welfare queens. We have huge genetic cabals in this country who live off inheritances. Welfare is welfare. Inheritance is an unearned gift. It is a form of welfare. Then there are the Trumps of this world. They inherit a lot of money. We all know the more money you have to start with, the easier it is to amass even more money via all kinds of government tax loopholes, tax credits, tax shelters and so on. So one can attract investors to build some luxurious building, squirrel a lot of that money away so the government can’t touch it, then declare bankruptcy and leave contractors and investors holding the bag. You make a small fortune and others lose a small fortune. It all evens out but that is welfare. A really evil kind of welfare. It is not really earned money at all. When 2-5 percent of citizens own 90 percent of the wealth in this country they certainly never earned this right to accomplish this. 

Even Bill Gates, who is genuinely a nice guy and willingly gives back millions of his financial wealth to good causes, earned that vast wealth by a capitalistic system with no limits. Capitalism is a great system but not when it has no limits. In a just capitalistic society, excess wealth earned by any individual, through steep progressive tax rates or upon death, goes back into the society from which it was extracted so that it levels the playing field for a new generation to compete for that wealth. In a just society all children have a level playing field, with good schools, good teachers, good health care, a safe neighborhood, and opportunities for employment when of age. Society is responsible for all this. We have failed miserably at this and are now paying a tremendous cost when the young of these gated off ghettoes grow up and behave in manners which are anti-social and irresponsible. Everyone knows you can’t screw up the formative years of children and expect them to become responsible productive members of society. Nevertheless, for the most part, we blame the victims and exonerate our own personal selves by proudly making it clear that we, personally, have never done a thing to hurt any of them. Probably true in most cases, in fact most of us have never even been in any of these ghettoes ourselves. But collectively, we have all failed them. Society as a whole, and whatever government represents that society, is responsible for what kind of communities exist under it’s domain. But mostly we manage to blame the victims—disgusting creatures who should know better.

By chance I learned a lot about the environment which exists in our urban ghettoes since many students at the University where I taught came from such ghetto environments. I was not in direct contact with the incorrigible, damaged beyond repair, youth of such an environment. It is probably simply too late to undo what their formative years did to their mindset. Young people need healthy safe civilized direction in their formative years. There are many families of some ilk who, although living in an urban ghetto, understand the value of education and have strong ethical values. Their children were often the most honest, dependable, cooperative, industrious students to be found anywhere. Usually the parents or parent or guardian who raised them were of of similar traits. 

But the minute these students step outside their ‘home’ there are few, if any, level playing fields. The schools are overcrowded and ill equipped. The teachers are not very good (the best teachers rarely race to teach in such schools). The family, including the kids, had little or no health care. They lived in an apartment with bars on the windows and doors. They had no safe place to play. Money to feed the family or to pay the rent was almost always in crisis mode. These kids showed up to a University far behind those kids from more affluent schools. It is impossible not to admire their determination to escape the ghetto via education. But they had to work a 40 hr a wk job, despite any student loan, to help their families survive. Since unemployment rate in their neighborhood would be around 60-70%, this job would often require a 40-60 minute ride each way on public transportation to work. Sometimes they had ongoing medical or dental problems which needed attention but they had no money for such purposes. The parent or parents often were working two jobs, and still were paid so little that surviving became a monumental task. They came from high schools where their behavior and personalities were so appreciated by their teachers that they would get good grades on that basis alone. Their academic skills needed to catch up to students from more affluent communities, and yet the best years to develop these skills had already passed. Only with amazing effort, and stress, and external help from others can they ever hope to graduate and then, almost invariably, they barely are able to do so. These young people have potential talent to be highly successful, but no way can they catch up and then reach their potential in four years with all the responsibilities they have on their shoulders. So with little other choice they become mailmen, bus drivers, technicians of some sort, etc. and settle for at least something better than living in an urban ghetto. I suppose that is success of some sort, but nothing like the success they would have been able to achieve had they not lived in one of our ghettoes. Even sadder, they are a small percentage of the young people who grew up in such a ghetto. The other young people, far more numerous, will reproduce and create even bigger ghettoes, and the band marches on. These admirable parents and students are labeled ‘welfare queens’—lazy shiftless, irresponsible dregs of society. If we could just stop food stamps, rent subsidies, medical handouts, unemployment benefits, and keep minimum wages down, then magically these ghettoes will disappear and everything will be better. This absurdity is often the economic plan of many politicians to reduce the national or state debt. Brilliant. 

There is no question but that huge amounts of something for nothing is given to vast numbers of citizens in our society. Oddly and unfairly enough, this something for nothing given to the affluent far exceeds the amount given to the poorest in our worst ghetto areas. In an ideal society all children would be given a level playing field for education, health care, safe neighborhoods, job opportunities, and have volunteer grandparents, uncles, aunts, and mentors where needed. No child born in a difficult situation should be left to fend for him/her self. That is not something for nothing at all—rather it is a collective responsibility for all in society as a means for their society to survive over time. Almost all major societies in history have collapsed because of extreme income inequality and/or an empire too vast and too expensive to maintain.

If many of us want to see a clear picture of a big-league welfare queen we just need look in the mirror. I know, in my case it couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.     

Tidbits #3

Tidbits #3

Most of us probably think we are essentially the sum total of all the cells which make up our body. Disassemble us cell by cell and the pile of cells added together constitute our real self. That’s a lot of cells to count, about 10 trillion of our own genetic cells. HOWEVER, there are 100 trillion cells in the pile which are microbes of one sort or another. SO, our body consists only of 10% of cells which are our own cells. We worry more about the microbes on the door handle than we ever do about those microbes inside our body which constitute 90% of our cells. Based on body weight all these microbes inside us weigh about 3 lbs. We have yet to scratch the surface as to how all these microbes influence our body function. Next time you hug a loved one you might want to remember that 90% of the cells you have your arms wrapped around are microbes. What is so sexy about that?

Food for thought: A 33 year old British man legally changed his name to Bacon Double Cheeseburger. That ought to slow down any process of getting credit, not to mention how many employers or potential mates or health insurance companies will be impressed by his name. I suppose if one is into oral sex that might be a real turn on. 

Useful guide for prepared entrees: 600 0r less calories; 5 grams or more fiber; 500 mg or less sodium; 0 grams trans fat; 5 grams or less saturated fat; 0 grams sugar. 

Errol “the Rocket” Jones has run tens of thousands of miles on the 365 mile long Bay Area Ridge Trail. He is 66 now and is still out on the trail nearly every day. But he hasn’t completed a 100-miler in four years.  But he hopes to this year. He says it makes him feel complete. To me, in his facial pic he looks more like 86 years old, not 66—not an ounce of fat anywhere. On the other hand, at age 96 he will look just like he did at 66. 

There are two late teen identical female twins who like to do and share everything together. I think it might be in Australia, but not sure. They live at home with their mom and share a room with their common boyfriend. Should they be eligible to marry? I mean, genetically there are really only two gene sets involved. Hey, stop the earth, I want to get off—am feeling dizzy from it all. I don’t get rattled about marriages anymore. Any tendency to look at most marriages more closely just generates endless perplexity about any sanctity of marriage. I figure to each their own—and they probably deserve it. 

Perfect Love

 Perfect Love

If 100 people who I know were to tell me they were writing a musing on Perfect Love, at least 99 of them I would declare unqualified. Of course that doesn’t stop me, not known as the last of the great Casanovas. Everyone has thoughts on Love. I reckon to define any Perfect Love we need first define the term love. Already we have a problem here. Love is a feeling. Not much chance of defining a ‘feeling’ very accurately. Feelings have no fixed boundaries, no clearly definable elements, and are always subjective. For example, the human thresholds for labeling something painful can be rather accurately measured and the threshold is quite narrow. The problem is that people react to the same amount of pain differently. Their feelings about the pain kick in. Some will simply indicate that at the threshold level the stimulus is painful; others will start to get emotional about the pain, and how emotional varies from person to person. 

Love seems to be an extension of liking someone. Where does liking someone and loving someone separate? Beats me. People use the word love in a lot of situations. In fact, it is used so much that the meaning of love often gets lost. Then there is the relationship between love and sex. If we can love someone and not desire to have sex with them, it just seems we need two different kinds of words here. One love involves a desire to have sex with someone; another love exists without any desire for sex. If someone saves us from being run-over by a car we tell them we love them and always will. Wait a minute, now we love someone we hardly even know, forever no less. But how can you not love some one who just saved your life?  I guess gratitude is different from love. In sports the word love gets thrown around a lot. In the armed services too. In politics too. “I hate Terrell Owens’ or “I love Terrell Owens” doesn’t do much to firm up a neat definition of love. How can one person ‘hate’ and another person ‘love’ the same individual? No wonder it is so hard to define love. Is this an objective logical decision—to hate or love Terrell Owens?

To make matters even more confusing, the easiest way to be loved is to die. Seems rather late to me, but at the funeral everyone is full of love for the deceased, or at least pretends to be. Or maybe, for most people, there is something within in them that can be loved.  Like if you are on a debate stage with Trump and he doesn’t trash your personality or looks, maybe that is a reason to love him?

Perhaps it is best here to just shy away from the periphery of love and just concentrate on the word love as it applies to strong attractive feelings between two individuals. Now, should love be reserved for the person with whom we are most attracted to or can we love several others at the same time? What are the characteristics which make others love us, or us them?  Physical attractiveness is a strong component of intense love. We may be assisting a group of younger people advance with their lives, and profess to ‘love’ all in the class. If the most physically attractive among them suddenly, at some point, when they are pleased about something, gives us a vigorous kiss right on our lips, we are not likely to be offended. If some sorry ass disheveled unattractive member of the group does the same thing, we are horrified.  Why?  I thought we loved them both. 

Another huge hurdle for us here is the fact that “love” is not a stable feeling.  It changes over time. In most marriages the operative word for “love” has to be redefined over time. Each person in a marriage changes over time, so of course how to ‘love’ them must change too. Sometimes it doesn’t, and the marriage ends after often a long drawn out debate over whose fault it was for the failure.  It seems we simply get more mired down here the further along we proceed with trying to define the Perfect Love. 

For practically everyone, the Perfect Love is simply out of reach. That’s because for practically all of us, we don’t have the personal qualities to attract this person who we could generate any perfect ‘love’ for them. We can’t practice our perfect love on those who prefer not to engage us in such an adventure. That’s a downer. We are out of the running to achieve the ‘perfect love’ before the attempt to do so even starts. Most guys know enough not to make a fool out of ourselves by asking the Prom Queen to the dance. Most gals know enough not to even make any flirtatious moves on the Prom King. You know, who wants to be publicly embarrassed. “I can’t believe he/she really thought she/him would be interested in them”. God have mercy on such naivety. So all of us sort of have to assess where we are on the dating ladder and see if someone in our range of attractive-ness can generate within us some form of ‘love’ toward them. Based on this we can assume those marriages between the most attractive potential partners will last longer than those forced to settle for less. Makes sense, yes. Is it true? No.

People who are highly attractable as mates usually have more divorces. Of course they do, finding another attractive mate is no problem at all. They don’t have to go to bars or internet dating sites or church events to meet new potential mates. Wherever they go potential mates are always right up in their face. Some experienced with varied sexual partners claim that the most physically attractive are less exciting in bed simply because they have to make so little effort to attract other people. In other words some people have to work hard and long to end up in bed for sex with someone and others simply have to smile at the nearest person of interest to them. And yet despite all of the above lengthy discourse, we use the same word love to define the relationship. 

After 7 paragraphs it is clear defining the “Perfect Love” is hopeless. Those who claim to have found it are simply successful at being realists. They have settled in, accepted what they have, and have no interest in chasing after a new lover. They probably didn’t enjoy the chase before, they don’t wish to repeat it, and ‘enough is enough’. Maybe ‘love’ doesn’t even drive most marriages. Some sort of ‘roommates’ with kids may be a more apt description of the relationship. Some married couples are rarely apart; others rarely do anything together. Which is the better marriage?  Beats me. Whatever works, works. Maybe we should define love as a relationship that works, and leave out any description of the feelings involved.

Perhaps we can at least separate initial love from lasting love. That is, youthful love vs mature love. It doesn’t seem they are the same at all. Sex plays a bigger role in youthful love. Well, probably most of the time. And what about those who marry for money, social position, a certain lifestyle, etc. What are we to think of the ‘gold diggers’?  I suspect that some people care far move about a lifestyle then they do about an intense romantic sexual affair. Some people find sex way overrated and we haven’t even mentioned the various types of sexual activities. Some couples actually live some kind of open marriage. Jackie Kennedy didn’t really care about Jack’s extramarital affairs so long as he kept them under the table. Apparently it reduced the amount of sex she would be expected to engage in. Some women or men can never forgive a sexual affair by their spouse. Others work through it with less fuss. Divorce court must be a most bewildering endeavor. 

Love expressed is not always sincere. There are often other ulterior motives. These can end up sad affairs and the hurt generated may never go away. So who is to blame?  A middle aged OJ Simpson, who really thinks an 18 year old girl finds him the most lovable person out there, or the girl who values a lifestyle more than a romantic sexual affair? In this case someone ended up dead. Both played a dangerous game. 

Love is one of the most unpredictable ventures of human life. Strangely, with animals, the hormones kick in, sexual behavior proceeds in a very predictable manner, a ’slam, bam, thank you ma’am’ and it’s over. Not so for humans: “Everybody’s journey is individual. You don’t know with whom you’re going to fall in love.....if you fall in love with the wrong color, wrong religion, wrong sex---you fall in love.” James Baldwin (American novelist, poet, social critic). If we assume this is basically the reality of love, then defining love is beyond human capability. 

According to Professor Sam Wang at Princeton University, getting married makes us happier, on the average, for about 2 years, then that person’s happiness level goes back to where it was. That’s a tad weird. Marriage is a temporary measure to improve one’s happiness? The goal, I guess, should be to marry every two years. Maybe that gal in Kentucky who was on her fourth marriage and objected to gay marriage because it destroyed the sanctity of marriage, was brighter than we thought. The sanctity of marriage depends on a new marriage every two years. Huh?  But aside from this, it tells us there is a period of time, the first two years of marriage, in which love is more ’special’ than at any other time. I am sure there are exceptions. But this means, if we want to retain that ‘perfect love’ feeling towards someone—lose them during the first two years of marriage, via death or any social norms which force a separation before it can start to fade. Then, every time we think of that person we will cherish the memory maximally—the best of love feelings will never go away. There had been no time for changes of varied ilk to impact on our love feelings toward them. Well, that certainly sounds like great memories to have. Yes and No. Yes, for obvious reasons, but no since this means any new amour has impossible standards to meet. We will never, for any length of time, be able to retain such warm feelings toward any new love compared to those we had for the ‘perfect love’ lost during the prime two year period. With the ‘perfect’ mate gone, attaching on to someone ‘less perfect’ will feel at least uncomfortable and unfair to the new mate. 

It seems, in the matter of love, we can only roll with the punches and hunches. Few things are ever in flux like our state of love. Is putting such emphasis on marriage permanence really the best idea? Maybe there is no best answer since every ‘love match’ is unique, not governed by any general rules at all. We can’t even come up with any general rules which apply to the best interests of any children involved in a divorce. There are so many variables involved considering each parent, each child, differing environments, financial matters, etc. that every case is different. Marriage itself is changing, and not just with gays marrying. Marriages tend to occur later, they end in divorce more often, and the amount of stress involved is more than some can handle. Nothing new with the latter. 

Love may be a powerful human experience, but also a very stressful experience. Courtship is stressful, having kids is stressful, and resulting divorce can be stressful, and readapting to changes in each spouse over time—both physical and mental—can be very stressful. I thought marriage was to generate eternal bliss.  Many marriages, I have no idea what percentage, may well hang together solely because what one has in hand may be better than what will end up with in hand if the marriage is dissolved. And it seems marriage fits some like a glove and others like a strait jacket. 

Love may not be all that it is cracked up to be, but the absence of love can lead to serious depression. Love, it seems, needs to come from somewhere. Even pets know that. Especially pets know that. But since love cannot be precisely defined, or controlled, or learned, it is more a crap shoot than anything else. Even whether it is more important that your mate love you or you love them gets tricky. Some people marry A rather than B because A loves them more. Another will marry person B because they love person B more than person A. Maybe the alternative is to hate everyone and be done with it all. Smile. 

Can we trust our own feelings in matters of love? Maybe some can. Probably some can’t. How do we separate feelings of love from feelings about sex? Can love be sustained when feelings about types or frequency of sex vary? Can a marriage be successful in the absence of sex (apart from having children)? Are marriages of convenience always a mistake?  My own impression, which means little here, is that there is nothing better than a good marriage, nothing worse than having gone through a bitter divorce, and being single is somewhere in between. I wouldn’t want to even hazard a guess as to what constitutes a good marriage. What we cannot understand is our own feelings when it comes to love, let alone understand anyone else’s feelings about love. On the few instances when someone might try to go into depth about why they love someone, we often feel “will you shut up already, enough is enough, if you love them, that is good enough for me. Now stifle yourself”.  How many parents have said something similar to “What is “that” you have been hanging around lately? Are you blind or retarded? You are better than that. Now just come to your senses right now before you end up with painful regrets.” They may just as well talk to every third person they meet on the street in terms of affecting anything in that situation. Remember, “if you fall in love with the wrong color, wrong religion, wrong sex---you fall in love.”  Probably can throw in the town idiot here. On the other hand, if diversity is a key player in evolution, than who is going to mate up with who, I reckon, requires some arbitrariness to enhance the genetic pool. We sometimes wonder “Who the hell parented this kid?” And I suspect there were times when my parents wondered, “What the hell did we do to deserve this kid”? Perfect love, like perfect health, or perfect happiness, and maybe Heaven, are all areas for daydreams. But that’s ok, daydreams help keep reality under control. Churchill had it all under control. When someone remarked that “if I were married to you, I would offer you a glass of poison”, Churchill responded: “And if I were your husband I would drink it.” 

It is hard to think about the essence of, or definition of, or the consequences of, love without considering the term in relation to religion. Religion is often promoted as a social means to bring peace, love, fairness, compassion, and judicial judgement upon human societies. Yet religions have been one of the most—if not the most—divisive, destructive and brutal forces in human history. When viewing history through the lens of our evolutionary process, religion just doesn’t fit in as an evolving improvement over life on this planet. I suppose we are a lot less ignorant about our world than in the past; that we, for the most part, no longer burn witches at the stake, or disembowel people in a public square, or sacrifice animals or other humans on altars, and so on, but the number of people murdered, made homeless, discriminated against, used as slave laborers, and subjected to all sorts of injustices—for religious reasons——is still an overwhelming problem across the globe even today. In the more civilized nations across the world organized religion is in retreat. A smaller percentage of most members of any religion today are religious ‘purists’ obsessed with perceived ‘heathens’ all around them. Modern means of communication have forced more and more people into meaningful contact with diverse others. Thus, many artificial barriers are falling, not fast enough for any knock out punch, but fast enough to stir up intense anger amongst the remaining ‘faithful’.  While more individuals are gravitating to the universal ethical principle of the “Golden Rule”, this just drives the remaining religious purists into a desperate last stand state of mind hell bent on destroying all these despicable heathens via any means, and the more barbaric, the better. 

While all religions preach some sort of ‘love’, in practice love is hard to find, especially among the most faithful purists. Among the purists of any religion love is not very evident—judgement of each other and a seriousness at genocidal cleansing is what stands out. They have a weird sort of advantage in their attack on others—they genuinely believe God is on their side and that God wants them to punish all the heathens, preferably in the harshest and most cruel way possible. They are going to strike the fear of God into the hearts of others one way or another. Are there exceptions to this bleak picture? Of course, there will always be true believers of every religion who practice the Golden Rule every chance they get. It is noteworthy, albeit rather weird, that anyone who practices the Golden Rule seems to qualify for Heaven in practically every organized religion. What reason is there to love someone because of their religion?  We love someone because of their behavior and looks and maybe other things, but not because of their religion. Imagine falling in love with someone and at some point they tell you they believe the earth is flat. Huh? Despite such an absurdity, on what basis would you fall out of love with them? Or at some point they inform you they are Buddhist? It does no harm to believe a lot of ‘nonsense’ as long as it does not change the way we relate to others. 

In a very practical way, love is not comfortable in any purist religious setting. Neither is a lot of laughter. I think, if the Ayatollah ever laughed he would fracture his face. These are generalizations that perhaps beg some exceptions, but in general this seems to have merit. Despite all the energetic preaching, organized religions have a track record, a long track record, of barbarity and hate, and it is not a pretty picture. 

Well this tractate is finished, for no better reason than it is too long, as usual, and is coming to no conclusion at any rate. Perfect Love is undefinable. I have always thought about the  comment a Supreme Court Justice made about pornography, “I can’t define pornography, but I know it when I see it.”  I started here to think the same way about perfect love, but caught myself——I wouldn’t know it if I did see it.  Love, yes—but not perfect love.  A particular level of love has no permanence, whatever constitutes a state of love is changing all the time. When we have a fond memory of a love affair we think of particular moments in time, not just any old moment and get the same feeling. I suspect most every one is leery of love and frightened by it precisely because we know whatever feelings we have will change over time, and we have no idea in what ways. 

“Life’s a bitch and then you die.” (Don Carpenter ?).  I think there is a caveat here——so I would add—not if you have a sense of humor and adopt the Golden Rule as the basis of your ethics. After all, God’s evolutionary process was not designed to please us. It is when we start to believe we are important to the process that depression/frustration sets in. Whatever love is, love when we can. It is good for our mental state. Of course the love must be expressed appropriately for the situation, or the subsequent commotion blow everything up. 

“It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all”. This sounds right but also sounds like a thesis on it would need to be tested for any real credence. 

“Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.” Carl Gustav Jung (Swiss psychologist, psychiatrist). This statement is directed at the love of diversity in a political sense. Somehow it seems to fit in with parenting also. There are so many different forms and applications of love that starting anything on this topic is going nowheres. 

Let me put it all in perspective to escape here:

“What is an individual man? An atom, almost invisible without a magnifying glass---a mere speck upon the surface of the immense universe; not a second in time, compared to immeasurable, never-beginning, and never ending eternity; a drop of water in the great deep, which evaporates and is borne off by the winds; a grain of sand, which is soon gathered to the dust from which it sprung” Henry Clay (American lawyer, politician, orator).  Considering our relative insignificance to the evolutionary process, it is hard to consider our inability to define ‘Perfect Love’ a meaningful failure. Maybe we think too much. Not that I have ever been guilty of making a mountain out of a mole hill. Sometimes I sits and thinks. Sometimes I just sits. Many, probably like me best when I just sits.

From henceforth perhaps I will sign correspondence: Yours, with imperfect love, RSJ 

Gratitude as a Rewarding Human Social Trait

Gratitude as a Rewarding Human Social Trait

Gratitude should have been the 5th rewarding Trait in a recent Musing naming 4 others. Of course some people have more things to be grateful for than others. Some of the least fortunate would have a hard time finding things for which to be grateful. That ’s understood, but given this clarification, whatever gratitude we do have, should be worn on our sleeve.  Why? Because it not only makes us a better person, but it enables us to be more contented in life. It only makes sense to highlight our gratitude for many things, because these are the things which we didn’t have to work hard to obtain—these are the things given to us. People like to be around those who express a lot of gratitude for good fortune of any sort. Certainly this beats being around those who are always complaining about the things they were not given in life. 

Some have chided me for using my gratitude for so many things in life as a basis for contentment in my terminational years. This tendency will vary. How much we employ gratitude as a path to contentment depends a lot, I suspect, on the kind of people we ended up around in life during our formative and productive years. I spent most of my productive years surrounded by a lot of college students who grew up in urban ‘economic ghettoes’. So many of the problems they faced in their lives were situations which I never faced. Had I spent my productive life surrounded by a different clientele I suspect I would have gravitated toward an attitude of “I achieved success the old fashioned way, I earned it.” Perspective is everything. Let’s admit——we like to feel we are important, we like to feel God is on our side giving us daily guidance, forgiveness, whatever—and we like to feel as if we engineered our successes. In my case, the more I came to understand the evolutionary process the less important I could make myself to the process, the more I came to envision God as the author of the rules which govern the process, and the less convinced I became that God ever alters any of the rules which govern the process to personally make things break my way, or anyone else’s way. That left me with no option but to deal with such realities. While I certainly would like to be more important, more special, be more talented, get a better hand in life, and have more permanence—in the end, like everyone else, I have to deal with the, by chance, situation of my life. 

Gratitude is a precious human component. Probably one the the biggest breaks I have gotten in life is to have had progress on any front come slowly with incremental increases. Getting too much, too fast, too often, is bad for our mental health. When things come too easy, too fast we invariably suffer from some form of ego mania and get suckered into ‘more is better’. Compulsive behaviors often follow, and soon we become trapped into a never ending unrewarding rat race. Happiness is ever more fleeting, our frustrations never so unending, victims in our wake never so more numerous—while we spend most days looking over our shoulder to see who is gaining. If we ourselves are on the road to nowhere, of what importance is it who is gaining?  We either learn to smell the roses along the way, keep things in perspective, learn when enough is enough about most everything, and assist others en-route, or we end up in our terminational years all in a drivel about our approaching return to nothingness. Our biggest luck came when a particular sperm got to a specific egg by chance. We all won the lottery, many years ago, yet have no recollection of it, and few would ever say they wish they had not won.We don’t refuse to play games because we might lose but want to play because we might win. Gratitude is a wonderful reward for so many things unearned, and a contributing factor to personal contentment, especially in later years. Those who are satisfied with less are far more contented in life than those who achieve more and still want more.

Gratitude is a two way street. What goes around needs to come around, so to speak. I can still hear Eugene Watson, a World History teacher of mine in high school, constantly talking about FANAFI (Find A Need And Fill It). Few things in life have impressed me in life more than having someone with no relation to me, in any real personal way, step to the plate, and either protect me in a situation, or push me forward in a situation. I would always wonder, “Why did they do that?”. People who circle their wagons around family, a particular race, a particular religion, a particular nation, or any other particular group, are separating themselves from potential supporters in a time of need. Granted, it is normal to be a group person. For whatever the reasons, I never was. That freed me, I guess, to befriend just about anyone in need at the time. Still, there are many people who are group persons who never hesitate to assist those outside their group. They seem real heroes to me. Lincoln, for example, though he knew the likely consequences to him personally, engineered the end of slavery for a constituency for whom he had no close connections. 

This is for certain: if we are going to be living life on the edge of risk or on the forefront of change, we better have a power base for protection. That power base cannot be those for whom we cannot protect in return. I once was saved from catastrophe by a lot of good people, but some of them subsequently lost their jobs for protecting me. Not good. Not acceptable. Not tolerable. It still haunts me. Another principle which applies here is this: most of the time, never fight for change which personally will benefit ourselves financially or otherwise. Let others fight that kind of battle and we just selfishly share in the reward. But fight instead for change which will help others, especially those least able to fight on their own. When we need their help they will be there, a case of what goes around comes around. Finally, never work for anyone whose support in a crisis cannot be depended on. Preferably it should be your immediate boss, but sometimes someone else higher up the chain will do. Once all the pieces are in place we can then do the ‘right’ thing without fear. It is best to have a small army of protection. 

For most ‘strangers’ who we assist, it is like two ships passing in the night, brief communication, and then both ships sail on. You never see that ship again. But that is ok, in fact rather admirable. Most of those who came out of the ‘blue’ to help me I never saw much again over time. Sometimes, late at night I think of them and wonder what ever became of them? It is funny, that some people we owe so much to, we never see again after a bit. Why did we never stay in touch?  Hard to say, but this seems to be common. 

Gratitude probably plays a more major role in our terminational years simply because by then peace of mind and contentment drive our lives more so than in the productive years. Either enough was enough, or if not, will never be.  It seems gratitude has a life of it’s own. It provides satisfaction when we feel gratitude and it provides satisfaction when we act in such a way to receive gratitude. The least likely someone was to expect help from us, the more sincere and deep the gratitude given to us. When someone would ask why I was wasting my time ‘on this’, my reply would be something to the effect that ‘nothing could be less of a waste to time to me than this ‘waste of time’. Never miss a chance to push someone forward who has potential but needs a push to get them into a position to develop their potential. I remember once the Chairperson of the Department calling me and saying: “Rumor has it you have appointed student X as a course assistant. Tell me this is not true. This person is out of control most of the time.”  My answer was that “maybe he needs to be in control to mature and settle down.”  Interestingly, the student was so afraid that he might do something to cause me to knock him off the little pedestal he was now on, that he was a pest  and had to learn to make his own decisions. Like so many others I have no idea what happened to a lot of him or hers. 

The above raises the interesting question: Do the best qualified always need to get the ‘plum’? Every time I pulled someone from back in the line to the front of the line this always bothered me. It seems we are blatantly doing a good deed at someone else’s expense. Should the student with the best schools, best teachers, best neighborhood, best family life, always get admitted to a college over a student who had none of these advantages? The answer seems to be why shouldn’t all children have good schools, good teachers, and a safe environment in their formative years? The discrepancy happens here because the affluent want their kids to have the advantage—level playing fields make it more difficult for their children to compete. I could run rather well, so I got an athletic scholarship to an expensive college. Now really, is college about education or about sports? 

Frankly, it is not clear to me why someone who shuffles paper around all day in an intellectual fashion should make so much more money than someone who pushes a wheelbarrow around all day. I have done both. I find both co-workers in such different worlds equally interesting. Another of my oddities I guess. I find people of all sorts and talents equally interesting. I probably laugh more with those toward the bottom than those at the top. This seems strange. Frankly, I have not known very many really ‘important’ people with titles and power who have been very happy campers. I remember a Vice-President of Academic Affairs calling me into his office, and looking very sad, explaining to me that he had been ordered by the President to have me back down on something. He went on that he tried telling my Department Chair to rein me in on the matter but she told him she wouldn’t and couldn’t if she tried. Many people say tenure is a bad thing. Frankly, it is about all that protects students from being ripped off to an even greater extent. So he spent an hour telling me why the money and title were not worth all the indignities suffered to keep his job. He ended up explaining that he would tell the President that I was informed that any papers crossing the Vice-President’s desk involving my promotion or any financial bonuses would not be signed. In University settings, faculty apply for promotions or financial bonuses by submitting volumes of supportive documents as to why they should get the promotion or bonus. I never applied for any of it.  Why? Every few years there would be a ‘salary equalization’ study and those Professors who salary was out of line with others, would be given a compensatory raise to get them up to par salary wise. Thus my salary rose with everyone else with maybe a two year lag. And, of course, those faculty least competent or diligent had the largest volumes submitted for promotions or bonuses. When someone has to write up volumes about how important and good they are, they probably aren’t either. 

I have no idea where I personally stand on any gratitude level scale. How can any of us evaluate that very well?  We are all different, our situations are different, our little worlds are all different and have been all our lives. At this age I keep it simple. There are always far more things every day I feel like doing without having to bother others, and there are few things or people annoying me. There is no need to look over my shoulder to see who is gaining. I am not in anyone’s way to anything. My little FANAFI Fund ensures I help others now in a way which does not involve my personal contact with the less fortunate. They collectively get more of my money than I do every year, but that’s kind of neat since why not? I reside in a nice little cubby hole, eat well, wander around to my heart’s content, read and write, and go gently down the stream to the Bay of the great unknown. People are very kind to me. No need to go upstream, I’ve been there—it was exciting and rewarding enough.  I don’t really know for sure when I will decide enough is enough of this adventure called life, but my goal is to have the good sense to pull the plug at the right time. If I can control my own dying process, well that’s my idea of the perfect finale, the final enough is enough.