Part 6: (conclusion—hang in there) Violence in America: Homegrown Terrorism

Part 6: (conclusion—hang in there) Violence in America: Homegrown Terrorism 

This whole topic has enough variables that it is necessary to review where we are at repeatedly. We now understand that chronic stress is not a good thing. We understand what body responses take place under chronic stress. We understand that these changes are best suited for the fight or flee acute situations in life, where our immediate life is at stake. Chronic stress is a whole another story. We understand that people vary genetically in their ability to handle stress. We now understand that our psychological state at the time plays a big role in just how the body will respond to a given amount of chronic stress.  We have identified the 5 major psychological states which help us reduce the body response to chronic stress. We have explained why children raised in our ghetto communities  are exposed to more stress, and have fewer psychological means at hand to reduce their response to these stresses. We understand the damages done to brain development during the formative years when chronic stress is not counterbalanced by enough of a psychological means to blunt the body response to this chronic stress. 

We might question why this problem is more acute today, since ghettoes have existed from the formation of our country. The answer may be in how much more violence takes place in our modern ghettoes, the frequency of it, and the influence of human overpopulation. When I was younger, the affluent did not spend much time in the ghetto section of town. It was mostly because we would not feel comfortable doing so, there was nothing in a ghetto which would attract us, and they were essentially two different communities. But if you did go into a ghetto you would not fear being shot or killed—maybe you might be robbed, or at most physically assaulted to the point you would learn not to return. And that was about it. The ghetto kids were in the same schools as the rest of us and no students ever had any fears about being shot and killed in school or out of school. No kids had these fears, poor or affluent. This is not to say that violent crimes never happened. But they were rare. One huge difference now is the media influence on us day after day, all day long. We now know exactly what is going on in affluent communities and ghetto communities, not just locally but everywhere in the country. The result of this is fear, considerable amount of fear. With substantial fear, comes consequent anger. The affluent and the poor have a lot of fear and the consequent anger towards each other. Of course the affluent still outnumber the poor, but the number of poor is rising percentage-wise at an alarming rate. There are some affluent citizens who are aware of the economic injustice existing for the poor and want to share some of their own wealth to level the playing fields (Bill Gates, et al.). Other affluent people turn to rigid family values mentalities in which they seek to circle the wagons and center their concerns solely on their own well being. They are responsible for their own well being and the poor are responsible for their own well being. The answer to all the violence now everywhere, for the family values crowd—globally in fact—is to respond with more violence, more jailings, reduced government subsidies of any sort—and these ghetto inhabitants will then learn a lesson or two and behave.

The trouble is that this has never worked historically. When chaos finally comes to such societies, the poor—with nothing to lose—always win over the Have’s, with so much to protect. We have this mistaken notion that if chaos breaks out, the police and national guard will protect us, shoot all the hooligans causing a disturbance. What no one seems to realize is that when the poor have the same gadgets for endless communication, and when the number of citizens having weapons of war in their possession rises exponentially, and when everyone can now legally shoot others who they feel their lives are threatened by—well, the fact is that the police/national guard cannot be everywhere and those trying to protect their property lose. This is historically how it goes when the distribution of wealth in any society has gotten out of hand. It is a numbers game, and a mobility game. The poor can wander in mobs all over the place. The affluent are stuck defending their homes and property. The poor have no need to defend their home and property. There is little there to defend. It is not like the affluent really want their raggedy property or cheap ass possessions.

Hopefully, enough background has been established for us to now relate all of this to the children of our urban, suburban, and rural ghetto communities. In the last 15 years science has moved considerable distance to better understand the anger, frustrations, and hopelessness behind so many violent acts, individual acts upon another, or random groups, and terrorists of varied sort against all of us who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Watching violence has become some sort of acceptable entertainment. Creating senseless violence has become some sort of sport. The goal of this sport, apparently, is to kill a record number of people, especially those least likely to be able to defend themselves such as kindergarten children, church goers, patrons in movie theaters, students at colleges, gays in gay nightclubs, and so on. Most of domestic terrorist acts have been genuinely homegrown angry, disturbed individuals. Recently, foreign terrorist organizations have joined in to play the game too—right here in America, albeit Americans have so far been able to thwart most of their evil plots.  

The majority of these domestic terrorists grew up in poor communities. It would be a little zany to suggest these individuals have defective genes more so than those in more affluent communities. If this were really the case we could just genetically test people for certain violent genes and then kill them before they kill others. There is ample scientific evidence that children raised in these ghetto communities grow up under chronic stress levels that can be up to tenfold that of children in affluent communities. These figures are on the average, and vary within the populations mentioned. We also know that we, as a society, have managed to make the use of senseless violence a common avenue of action for those ghetto youth frustrated, feeling hopeless, and angry. The kinds of mass killings carried out now almost on a daily/weekly basis were unthinkable 50 years ago.

This musing tries to understand why young people growing up in our poorer communities are now expressing themselves, in such large numbers, with all this violence. We know for example, that children growing up in our ghettoes  have, on the average, much higher levels of glucocorticoids than children who grow up in affluent neighborhoods. We have identified some of the reasons why chronic stress hormones are so often elevated. The elevation is not minor, and major elevations occur during a period when all the body systems are maturing. Far more people who live in ghettoes end up with major depression or suffer from chronic anxiety. There is a genetic component involved, but this component is spread out among both affluent and poor neighborhoods. Much is now known about the physiology of depression and anxiety. Like all medical disorders of the brain these are neurochemical disorders in the brain itself. We cannot just get up one morning and will ourselves out of depression or anxiety. To risk an overgeneralization, it will just be mentioned that depression tends to set in when a person feels they have little control over things in their life. This creates chronic stress, and the presence of chronically elevated glucocorticoid levels which will create havoc with certain neurotransmitters, and we end up with a cognitive distortion of life that results in learned helplessness. We don’t get the results we want from trying, so trying any further is hopeless and so your life becomes joyless. It is not the purpose of this musing to go any further into the physiology of depression or anxiety. Maybe in another musing. 

Back to children growing up in modern American ghettoes. When it comes to understanding the effect of chronic stress on a child during their formative years: we understand that genetics is involved, the current mental state of a child at the time of the stress is involved, and the particular environment of a particular child is involved. We know that the average level of glucocorticoids is higher in American ghetto children than in the children of more affluent communities. We know what chronic elevated glucocorticoid levels do to children in their formative years, including their health status, inhibitions on learning and memory development, their predisposition to many medical conditions of adulthood, and most germane to this topic of violence, is the impact on their emotional state. Thus, it seems self evident, with all this new scientific data on the table, that the only solution is to find ways to change their formative years environment. By adulthood the damage is done, with only limited means to rehabilitate a damaged product.

The latest studies have shown that given the same income, poor people in countries which have the greatest income inequality, have worse health. This goes back to something mentioned earlier in this musing; namely, all ghettoes are not the same in terms of the chronic stress generated. Sudanese refugees, having fled from a murderous rampage on their village and having eventually ended up in the United States, have very warm and positive recollections of their childhood in their very backward rural villages. People who are poor, and live off the land for a living, have much less stress, probably because they control their own destiny as farmers and herders. They are not reminded everyday, most of the day, how much better off others are in their, or other countries.  Our American ghettoes are a breed onto themselves.  If the number of children coming into adulthood in American ghettoes continues to increase exponentially, we are going to be facing a huge percentage of our citizens armed, frustrated, fearful, and angry. 

To really salvage children growing up in ghetto environments we can’t eliminate all the stress, but we can concentrate on giving them good schools, good teachers, good health care, good opportunities for employment as teenagers, and a safe environment. Naturally, a safe environment is generated by all of these things mentioned in the latter sentence. That is a start, then we need address the 5 psychological defenses a child needs to lessen the stress response. I am not the best person to be too specific here but these children (and of course all children) need outlets for their frustrations. Few people want to talk about government monitoring any child raising, but the government is us, collectively. If government is not allowed to monitor child raising in some form or fashion then exactly who is to ensure kids are not being permanently damaged by their formative environment?  Santa Claus? God himself? the Police? What could be a more important function of the government in any type of society than seeing to it that the field is more level for all children? While we cannot make everything equal for every child we could at least make a serious effort to ensure things are more equal. Perhaps every parent, when a child is born should be required to pass a test on child rearing or be sent to mandatory school for such a task. Parents need to understand what kind of outlets are best for a child’s frustration.  With few outlets for frustration, chronic stress surges. 

We need to be sure every child has sufficient social support. If they don’t, then voluntary uncles, aunts, grandparents, siblings etc, need to be found irregardless of whether a parent or parents want any help. People who have a need to parent more than two children of their own could petition to be a volunteer additional ‘parent’ for those kids most in need of assistance. Human overpopulation cannot continue. Period.  With little social support in a child’s life, chronic stress surges. 

We need to ensure that each child has predictable situations in their lives. This means the child understands if he/she does this or that the outcome is likely to be such and such. Of course no child has nothing but predictable situations, but their whole life cannot be filled with unpredictability. With little predictability in a child’s life, chronic stress surges. 

We need to ensure that every child has some control over their daily lives. It is a disaster for any child to feel he/she has no control over anything in their life. Lack of control over our lives, is a sure fire way to make frustration reign big time.  With total or little lack of control, chronic stress surges, and this ironically, applies to those affluent parents who seldom give their kids any freedom to control aspects of their own lives. Kids need some personal space.

Every child needs to gain the perception that over time things are getting better for them. When a child begins to lose all hope in their life, chronic stress surges.

We need to ensure that all teenagers have opportunities for meaningful employment. 

We need to identify what is a proper minimum wage for full time employment and then have this wage rise with the cost of living, just like social security. It is short-sighted to protect the buying power of the elderly and ignore the buying power of the young. 

When little or none of the above help is available to children in our ghetto areas, then why are we so shocked to see their behavior as adults be so abysmal when riots break out? Why are we screaming, “What is the matter with these people? They are behaving like animals. We give them food stamps, we give them breaks on taxes, we let them into hospital emergency rooms, we give them child support”, we find endless ways to ‘forgive’ large mortgage or tax debts, and so on. Unfortunately, for the adults in our ghettoes, it doesn’t really make much difference what we do with them now. The damage has long since been done. 

This musing needs to end, but there are some things to clean up here. First, there are some amazing parents who do an amazing job meeting the needs of their kids in a ghetto. I have met many such parents. Sometimes they succeed, and the child becomes a responsible productive citizen. Sometimes, no matter how good a parent they were, the child falls in with the wrong crowd and the results go sour. Sometimes, perhaps for genetic factors, a child in a ghetto environment can actually survive on their own. Not likely, but possible. I have seen that too, not often, but not real rare either. T.O. is a remarkable example. But it comes with downsides too. Spending all one’s willpower and self focus on one aspect of our lives leaves other aspects of our lives very vulnerable. We now understand that we have limited amount of willpower and self focus. 

Stopping violent behavior in America has distinct facets:

1. Using the best FBI procedures to identify potential mass killers, whether they be domestic or foreign.  We have done quite well here. 

2. Reducing the chronic stress levels of kids in our ghettoes 

3. Enabling kids in our American ghettoes to have better psychological defenses against chronic stress.

4. Providing meaningful employment for ghetto age teenagers. 

5. Providing good health care for all our citizens

6. Provide a small army of citizen volunteers to increase the social support of children in such need. 

We have this prevalent delusion in America that ISIS, Al-Queda, and assorted other foreign terrorist organizations are the main threat to our societal well being. While they are threats to us, they are not the main threat. Actually, these foreign terrorist organizations attack us because we tend to get too involved in their own domestic or religious conflicts. How much, and what kind of American involvement is best seems complicated and hazy. No clear answers surface. But whether it is the number of American citizens killed, or any likely ability to implode our society here at home, it is the growing number of potential homegrown terrorists who are the real threat to social and economic health in this country.  No foreign terrorist groups have any realistic chance to militarily conquer America. Any collapse is likely to be internal just as so many other historical ‘empires’ collapsed this way. The number of American citizens killed by foreign terrorist organizations, here or abroad, pales in comparison to those killed right here at home any given week—in most any of our major cities alone.  The number of Americans killed by foreign terrorists this past decade is roughly 24. The number of Americans killed by guns right here in America is 280,024. Even if we add the 50 killed in Orlando recently it does little to change the numbers. So far, the indication is that this person was an American citizen acting on his own. The following is startling, so startling to me that the reader better check my math. Our odds of being killed by guns is over 11,000 times greater that it will be done by some other American citizen than by any foreign terrorist action. 

Last 4th of July in Chicago alone, there were 82 shootings, and 16 deaths. Per year Chicago averages around 500 murders. In 2012 that was the most in the country. Stay away from Chicago. But wait. Murders per capita put Chicago in 21st place. Many cities, per capita are far more likely to get us murdered. Sleep with one eye open tonight. 

The question arises, which I don’t have the basis to answer: Is it cheaper to jail our homegrown hooligans in our American urban, suburban, and rural ghettoes, support many on welfare, spend medical costs on all the medical conditions (mental and physical) which originate from chronic stress, provide unemployment insurance, tax exemptions, etc—or spend our money on altering the environmental conditions which doom so many of the children growing up in these ghettoes?  45 million people in the United States live below the poverty line (14.5%).  22% of  all children in America live in poverty (38% of black children).  These kids are growing up with elevated glucocorticoid levels from chronic stress. Can our society survive the consequences of this?  Isn’t this the real smoking gun we need worry more about? In my wanderings about, as a frequent hobby of mine, I ride city buses and trains a lot. If I wandered a lot in rural ghettoes I am pretty sure I would see a lot too. These pictures from life’s other side are sad and disturbing, especially the kids. These are just little kids, trying to make sense of a world which is not only strange to them, but a world in which they often will not have the necessary psychological defenses or the genetic wear-with-all to cope with the chronic stress imposed on them. I observe them, helpless innocent enough kids, and wonder what it would be like to see them as teenagers or young adults? There is a good chance I would cross to the other side of the street. Science has given us the basis to understand this doesn’t have to be their fate. We are, in effect, generating our own demise by ignoring the plight of these children. This is a problem for all of society, and the affluent ignore these kids at the risk of the future for their own kids. 

Should all kids in America be tested for resting glucocorticoid levels as a measure to determine whether they are suffering from chronic stress?  The results would be predictable enough, but the question is what are we willing to do about it? For a start, allowing 2-5% of Americans to own 90% of the wealth in our country is simply unacceptable and disastrous. We need to take it away from them via tax levels on them that existed when Eisenhower was President. We cannot continue to let genetic cabals pass huge amounts of unearned wealth to their genetic offspring. The American way is for every individual to earn their own wealth. Wealth earned by an individual, upon death, should be mostly returned to the society from which it was earned so others have a chance to earn wealth too. All this huge amount of wealth being held by the top 2-5% of citizens could easily be used to help level the playing fields for all kids in all neighborhoods. The money exists aplenty but so far we are unable to tap into it. These top 2-5 percenters also use this money to control Congress and indirectly the Supreme  Court. They have a bit more trouble controlling Presidential elections. 

To conclude, we know what we need to do to greater ensure the vast number of kids growing up in our urban, suburban, and rural ghettoes turn out to be responsible productive citizens. Science has coughed up the answers. We know where the money is to provide the proper formative environment for all kids. Bernie Sanders sees the light and it will take a revolution for us to go after the real welfare queens in our society. Welfare means you live off of someone else’s sweat. These 2-5 percenters have created genetic cabals in which vast amounts of money get passed from those who earned wealth to those who simply inherit it. If we can just go back to the notion that the American way is for everyone to earn their wealth, then the government has enough income coming in to ensure that all kids have an opportunity to not only compete honestly to earn wealth of their own, but can actually live lives free from so much chronic stress and all the consequences that follow. It is logically amazing that major religions do not demand this. After all, what prophets ever preached that wealth should be passed on to offspring who are not part of the least fortunate in society? All prophets, to my knowledge, have always preached that it is the poor and least fortunate with whom we should share our excessive wealth. Period. Parents have an obligation to raise and support their children until they are adults. When it comes to money, that is where it ends. If a family cannot thrive as a family through their entire life with warmth and love, without receiving money through inheritance, then that family lacks any real love for each other. “Ok, mom and pop, thanks for the great job raising me in my formative years, but since I will not inherit your excess money, it’s been nice knowing you—I can’t be bothered with you anymore.” The relationship between parent and offspring as adults should have nothing to do with money. If any offspring stays close and supportive and on good terms with their parents in order to ensure an inheritance, that is disgusting and disingenuous to the pale. We need to take inheritance off the table, get money out of the picture, and then it becomes a healthy and ethical relationship right to the end. 

The days are past when individual nations can control their own destiny. Too many of the most crucial problems today are global. All aspects of life are now global. Even, his Lordship Donald Trump, can’t make America great again with his blustering maniacal ego.  Human overpopulation can only be controlled by global responsible reproduction. This reality is not even on the debating table.  Human activities are now altering our climate. The corrective measures needed are only now beginning to be tentatively addressed, and it is probably too little too late. The working class, across the globe, can only be salvaged when there are reasonable global minimum wages. Nothing like this is even in the works, thus the bottom level working class everywhere is being relegated to poor wages, little job security, and fewer and fewer benefits. People everywhere are beginning to get on each other’s nerves, global terrorism is surging, religious wars are heating up, family values is soaring as more and more genetic families are circling the wagons and seeing those outside their own genetic cabals as forces to be feared:

“Holy Mackerel Andy—there’s something fishy here’. “We’re getting really tired of bleeding. Someone stop the world, we want to get off.”  “All this damned nonsense can we stand twice or once, but sometimes always, by God, never.” “ We go from exasperation to a state of collapse, then we recover and go from prostration to Fury, so that our average state is one of being annoyed. (Quote by - Gustave Flaubert)

But on this topic of domestic violence, we can end the senseless domestic violence which is growing now at an exponential rate in our own country. We have the intellectual insight today, as a consequence of sound scientific studies, and rapid increase in neurobiological understandings, to curtail such violence. Much of recent progress is now at the molecular level, which enables us to get a more accurate picture of the science behind emotions, the formative years, and all aspects of human stress. What lags behind is the cultural will power to overcome human greed—an endemic personal/family/national/cultural/religious/political self-serving greed run amuck.

Here’s the Clunker: How much of what I have written in this musing is true or false? How much of it is good vs evil?  How much of it is a contest between the Devil and God? How much of it is right or wrong? These are all terms invented by humans to make sense of ‘their’ world. Neither I or anyone else invents anything. None of us, individually, are important to the future outside of chance. We come and go---only Time stays, and the environment changes according to the laws which govern environmental change. 

Whatever exists that is most useful at that point in time brings change. Progress is directional for sure, but not due to anything I, or anyone else invents. I like to say Lincoln did not engineer the demise of slavery. If he hadn’t, someone else would have. No one invented the internet. If Bill Gates had never existed all the advances in this area would have proceeded in due Time, when the environment was right. Whatever flavor of the day is most useful for the environment of the day is what will become the reality of that time. Evolutionary time is endless. There never is any rush. We are, at best, instruments of change/progress, not the inventor of change/progress. Let’s just be ridiculous here and say everything I have written comes to pass. It will have had nothing to do with me and I won’t be around to falsely claim it did. Searching for understanding is a hobby. Thinking I understand brings me contentment, changes my mental state to a more mellow state, and brings me closer to some sort of unexplainable acceptance of reality, whatever that might be. That’s the best I can do, and it took many years of a healthy retirement to even get there. When the requisite ‘rat race’ is over, then it seems, the best we can attain before, we too, make that required curtain call into an unknown eternity, is to have found some contentment in our lives.  All in all, life is good theatre—seeped too much in dimly understood tragic scenes. Whenever I see or read about an endangered species it is sad, another part of eternity lost; whenever I see good people meet unthinkable ends, part of my contentment in life gets dented; whenever in my wanderings I see the end products of young adults emerging from environmentally deprived formative years, eyes projecting anger or resigned hopelessness, it makes me ever so aware of the costs implicit in the evolutionary process.  Life evolves, annoyingly without us, with the requisite ‘no pain’ no gain. None of us were born self sufficient. We needed genetic luck, environmental luck, and the assistance of so many others along the way. In the end, none of us get out of this world alive. Good night Mrs. Calabash, whoever and wherever you are.        

Part 5: Violence in America: Homegrown Terrorism

Part 5: Violence in America: Homegrown Terrorism

At this point it is necessary to shift gears. Every child suffers some chronic stress irrespective of ghetto or not. Every child has a different make-up, and some children can handle x amount of stress better for genetic reasons. Now it is important to realize that the same stress may not produce the same amount of stress in another child, or even the same child at different situations in their lives. Thus, it is not like we can measure the amount of chronic stress and state what the consequent impact will be on a child (or adult). There are psychological forces at work which can affect how we respond to chronic stress.  

We understand, at this point, that acute stress which threatens our immediate survival, initiates changes in most body systems which best enable us to physically get out of danger. However, these same stress responses generated by our own mental activity, frequently over a long period of time, are harmful to our physiology, and can create all sorts of long term medical conditions. We also understand, at this point, that long term stress damage is maximally damaging during our formative years. It becomes absurd to say, that children raised in our urban, suburban, or rural ghettoes, once they become an adult, have the same chance to succeed as anyone else, depending on genetics. 

So what psychological forces can alter our physiological response to various stressors, including chronic stress. Keep these forces in mind when considering children being raised in modern day ‘ghettoes’. 

1. Outlets for frustration. 

2. Social support

3. Predictability—When we know a task is going to be difficult in advance we can prepare for it, and mentally the body stress responses will be less.

4. Sense of Control—If you are at the top of the control ladder you have lower levels of stress hormones in your blood. If you are ‘middle management’ level in the control ladder, you have much higher levels of stress hormones in your blood. Of course, you have high demands being placed on you and your job is at stake to carry out orders and succeed with them. At the bottom of the control ladder are those who have little responsibility, low expectations, and no control. They are bored, frustrated and no light at the end of the tunnel, which can lead to depression. Sometimes we just can’t win. 

5. The perception of whether things are getting better or worse—Chronic stress will generate less concentration of stress hormones in the blood when we see light at the end of the tunnel. We feel the stress of studying hard, but we also realize we are getting closer to having a successful career so we have less response to the stress. We work on a demanding job but can feel that we are on track to be promoted to a better job position. We try hard at a sport and we can see ourselves getting better and better. 

Of course the above 5 psychological forces which impact on just how the body will respond to a particular stress are not straightforward. There are always a multitude of factors to keep track of here. For example, if we are simply hell bent and obsessed on getting more control and desperately needing a high degree of predictability for the stresses in our lives, we just make things worse. In this case our chronic body stress responses will be more vigorous, not less. 

If we take these 5 factors and apply them to the lives of children being raised in our ghettoes, it becomes rather clear what these children are up against. How many outlets do they often have for frustration?  They can’t just dart out of the house and run around with their friends to work off frustration—it is too dangerous a community for them to do that. They are trapped. They are less likely to have a family pet, or a zillion toys and gadgets to go off and play with. They probably do have an electronic device, and maybe they can vicariously watch people behave in violent ways when they are angry.   If we are affluent there is far less tendency to see violence in the media as a reasonable alternative in our lives. For those kids in ghetto environments, they see all around them, in adults, that violence is a viable alternative. 

Ghetto kids, in general, have less social support. They probably, as children are not out engaging in too many appropriate social endeavors. The opportunity is less and the danger too great. They often live essentially trapped at home, sometimes with bars on the windows and doors. Even family gatherings are much more likely to be reeking with drama. Violence of some sort may be only moments away.  

Ghetto kids can seldom predict much of anything. Their parents have stresses too, and parental behavior also more unpredictable. They may move from neighborhood to neighborhood a lot, and have varied people supervising them at varied times. Early on they see death and disease and economic instability and so on. Each day these kids often wake up not sure what the day will bring rather than eagerly awaiting the pleasant choices for them to choose. 

If ghetto kids don’t have little sense of control, no one does. 

Ghetto kids are much less likely to perceive anything as getting better. 

Consequent to the absence of psychological factors to lessen the effects of stress, these ghetto kids are often filled with fear, frustration and anger. That is a terrible combination for chronic stress. They will suffer more harm from chronic stress, on the average, compared to children in more affluent communities.

Again, another caveat. There are good ghetto parents who kind of understand what their child needs and find ways to, at least partially, blunt all the dangers via the 5 principles above. 

Much of the science here is new. Much of what we are doing to these ghetto kids is becoming more and more obvious, as large numbers of them are now becoming adults in huge numbers. We still tend to blame them for their attitudes/behaviors, to seek ways to punish them; the more severely the better. But there are some signs that more people are now beginning to understand how futile all this punishing them as adults really is. More people are beginning to realize we need change the nature of the environment in our poor communities. Unfortunately, this requires the expense of ensuring all these kids have good schools, good teachers, good health care, good job opportunities, proper diets, a safe community to play in, and quality peers and mentors. These kids cannot be left so isolated from so much of the foregoing.  And even more daunting, were the proper changes to be made over night, it would be twenty years before we got results. Additionally, we have not become more sharing in our attitudes towards others but more ‘family value’ oriented—where our focus, interaction, and tolerance is more and more directed at, and limited to, our own family and extended family. It has become, everyone for themselves in many ways, and this just makes the situation worse. 

On the other hand, many more people have been given rights which earlier only some had. So the tendency is to feel, ‘we have given all these people more rights, and that is enough—or often, this is actually becomes the blame for them acting ‘out of place’.  As a Lincoln fan I can’t help thinking about how, in his day, all the different cultures, economic status groups, and racial groups were all far more in contact with each other in daily life. Which is not to say that slaves and many non slave children did not grow  up in terribly stressful circumstances. There were plenty of children damaged by their formative years back then. Perhaps this is not the best example. Part 6 (conclusion) will follow. 

Personal Appearance and Graduation Attendance

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/2f3e3937d9b2447896da3bcdf5fc36fd/louisiana-student-denied-graduation-still-gets-celebration

This struck me as mildly outrageous for several reasons:

If this is so important, and a rule is a rule, why would it be enforced only for the graduation ceremony? If somebody looks so outrageous they should, I would assume, be banned from attending school period. And what is the logic behind the rule anyway? In the absence of dictating what hair style is acceptable, then doesn’t it require pictures of acceptable hairstyles? And who selects the hairstyles? Invariably those from another generation. 

Well, some might say, ‘Some hairstyles represent hooliganism or gangs or wrong sexual orientation, or look threatening to others, or are just too different.” It reminded me of when the NBA outlawed head bands. When I was young I had a picture of Jesus Christ hanging in my bedroom. I know, no one knows what Christ looked like, but it didn’t stop people from selling pictures of Jesus. But when I saw the pic of this kid it reminded me of the picture of Jesus which used to hang in my bedroom, the long flowing hair, the far away look in his eyes—I mean he looked ‘prophet like’. But I guess ‘devil-like’ to others. 

When I was teaching it was somewhat of a problem to convince many blacks that to be a good student was not ‘acting white’. It was not unusual for a really good black student to say nothing in class for fear of ‘acting white’. Right, how crazy is that? So here is some black student, I mean not real black looking, more a mutt of some sort, but an honor student, scheduled, I suppose, to give some sort of valedictorian speech, and he is essentially told, “If you are going to look like you looked everyday in class and on athletic teams—at graduation, then you can’t be on the stage.” 

I probably would have had the same problem at that high school: “Look Reid, if you are going to look like you looked everyday in class, all dizzy eyed, plain assed, diminutive in stature, and a smart alecky grin, you cannot be on the stage. You need to first look like we want a honor student to look.” Wow, that would have been make-up big time, especially the honor’s student part.  

This begs the question; “Is there any hairstyle which is unacceptable”?  Of course, if it is worn when nude, or spells out an obscenity, or is clearly being done to ridicule a different culture, that sort of thing. Maybe that kid’s hair looks like a floor mop or something brought from Johnson and Johnson, but whatever it looks like to any particular person, we all have seen this hairstyle many times. In this day in age it is practically impossible to offend anyone with hairstyles. Being crazy different is almost becoming boring. 

I have a boyhood friend whose hair is mountain style I guess, and I suppose if his son were an honor student at high school graduation giving a valedictorian speech, he might be told “You can’t come to the graduation for your son looking like that. Suppose some press person takes a picture of your son with you?  Good point: the world would end for sure. 

Tidbits #4

Tidbits #4

Last year 75 million people in the world were displaced from their homes and left homeless. 

In Cuba, it is mandatory for any government vehicle to pick up anyone hitchhiking. That’s interesting. I guess if that were the rule in this country, then when a Presidential visit jams up the expressway getting the President to his local destination, I could just jump out in the street and hitchhike.

Cuba has one of the highest literacy rates in the world: 99.8%  That’s a surprise

John Lennon has all sorts of statues and parks named after him in Cuba. That seems strange

Coca Cola has only been legal in Cuba since 2015

Until 1997 tourists were forbidden to have any contact with tourists.  I know, what tourists?

70% of Cubans living in the U.S. live in Florida.  Poor things.

If a man or woman wants certain body parts enhanced surgically it is done for free in Cuba. I am not sure whether if one person wants another person’s body part enhanced it is free or not.

The last time it snowed in Cuba was 1857.  We can probably close the record books on this one.

When Katrina hit the U.S. Cuba offered cash and medical aid but the U.S. angrily refused the aid. that seems kind of childish. 

It is against the law to take a picture of any military person, installation, or  military vehicle in Cuba.

While Cubans are very poor, 92% of citizens own their own home. I suppose if a home is a dive it makes little difference whether one owns it or not.  The average monthly income is only $26. This hard for me to comprehend. We spend that much sometimes on one meal. 

Some of these tidbits seem a tad suspect to me, but there is a limit as to how much stuff I intend to look into. There are too many people I know personally whose lives are suspect and probably I need attend to that. Smile.

Part 4: Violence in America: Homegrown Terrorism

Part 4: Violence in America: Homegrown Terrorism

We are, at last, I guess, ready to list what specific kinds of damage can take place in children raised in modern day ghetto environments—environments which are much different today than in past ghettoes. The cost and effectiveness of preventing these damages is less when we level the playing fields more for these children during their formative years, than trying to undo the damage incurred after they have become adults. It is important to interpret the list below in the right vein. How much damage to a child, to what system of the body, consequent to chronic stress in childhood, depends on the frequency of the stress, the severity of the stress, and the genetic make-up of the child. Basically our body stress responses happen by increasing or decreasing the activity of other functions of the body. The formative years are crucial periods for growth and maturation of many aspects of mental and body functions. Here is the list, not really designed to be all-inclusive but most relevant to the topic at hand.

Immune system depression:

more common colds

more herpes virus re-activations

increased chance of auto-immune diseases such as MS, hyperthyroidism, rheumatoid arthritis,etc.

more susceptibility to many diseases or medical conditions

Inhibition of growth

Less blood to the digestive tract—less absorption of nutrients

Metabolic derangements——diabetes more likely

Learning and memory affected 

Increased glucocorticoid blood levels in adults (glucocorticoid increases are a major component of the body stress response). It is not good to have constant increased levels of glucocorticoids in the blood.

Altered reactions to pain—Pain is an interesting and intriguing topic. For a start we have physical pain and also mental pain. Neither one is very pleasant. Sensing pain is good in that it tells us something is wrong and we better find a way to correct the problem. There have been rare instances when someone is born with no functioning pain receptors. They could be standing with one leg in the camp fire and continue to tell a funny story. To say the least, their life is difficult. Yes, pain is good but not when it is chronic or when there is nothing we can do about it. It is important here to understand that our mindset can influence, not whether we feel pain, but how we feel about the pain. Acute massive pain, like that maybe received in an auto accident or battlefield, may be reduced by a feed-back mechanism in the CNS. This feedback mechanism involves beta endorphin, a chemical which is an endogenous opiate produced by our bodies, and works on the same receptors as morphine/ heroine.It has long been known that a soldier, hurt in his leg, knowing that this will not be fatal and yet get him away from the front line, often is little disturbed by the pain. Some pain we learn to enjoy like hot spicy food, or some people with certain sexual acts. For this musing, we will let these situations lie. 

While pain serves an important function, it isn’t very helpful if we suffer chronic stress. In this musing we are focusing on the kind of chronic stress experienced by children raised in our modern day ghettoes. Most of us raised in more affluent neighborhoods realize how much stress we felt growing up. No matter how we cut it, every child faces a strange world within which they struggle to survive and achieve some contentment. We cannot accurately indicate by what factor stresses on a child, raised in a modern ghetto environment, are increased. Maybe it is five or ten fold, but whatever it is, the factor is huge. Well adjusted adults have enough time adjusting to the stresses met in life—for children this adjustment is really difficult. The manner in which every system in the body is going to function for the rest of a child’s life is being developed during their formative years. Stress impacts every system in the body. Some of the impacts are more permanent than others. 

Here is what we now know. High level, sustained stimulation of pain pathways in humans of any age, but especially children, makes them more sensitive and more responsive to pain, physical or mental. Thus, pain begets pain leading to hyperalgesia. Well, this not good news for these kids being raised in a modern day ghetto environment. Why does this occur?  It occurs because the hormone beta endorphin becomes depleted and the child ‘feels’ the pain more acutely over time. While this information is all new, it may well be that children suffering from beta endorphin depletion need infusion of some morphine on a carefully controlled basis. Time will tell us the answer to this.

The length of this musing is pushing me to generalize or leave out some of the effects of chronic stress on the body. Let’s just point out, based on what is mentioned above about the effects of chronic stress, that children raised in our modern ghettoes will often reach adulthood with many physical, mental, and social handicaps than children raised in better environments. If our society has not attacked the problems inherent in their environment, but then try to solve it after children reach adulthood, this is probably an unrealistic goal, at least for most of those with such damaged results.  Affirmative action was an attempt to give such children some slack coming out of the ghetto and trying to succeed with a career, but the attempt was dead on arrival when it became a program targeting particular races. The end result was that, for the most part, middle class blacks, hispanics—whatever, were the ones to reap the benefits——not the blacks and hispanics in our ghettoes. Affirmative action has faded away since naturally it caused some backlash which was has set back race relations in some sectors of our society. Of course it did, if our son or daughter goes to school with a minority race student, who lives in our neighborhood, goes to the same school, and perhaps are friends, with the same academic grades in school—why the hell is one accepted at Harvard and the other one not?  Even more significant, this kind of nonsense does nothing to help those kids in ghetto environments. 

Having spent years teaching in a University where many of the students did come from these ghetto communities, some insight into this population was imbedded in my mind. The vast majority of ghetto kids will never even attempt to go to any college. They get to be 18 years of age where the unemployment rate is 60-70 % in their neighborhood, they are products of the worst schools, the weakest teachers, the least equipped schools, the most dangerous neighborhoods, have poor health care, and in many case therefore have poor health, their learning abilities and memory mechanisms have been stunted as a result of the chronic stresses they exist under, their social skills are lacking, and fear/anger/frustration are often the overriding emotions.

As we focus on the consequences of children born into these ‘ghettoes’, we must remember that all of us, collectively, through our elected officials, have precisely ensured that these ghettoes exist, and we have done little to prevent their spread and continued lousy environment. We have, to be fair here, given more groups rights and protections, and marginally better health care for some of them. Still, these kinds of ghettoes are the fastest growing environments in our society. Not good. 

The last part of the brain to fully develop is the frontal lobe. This is sort of the executive center of our brains. This is where we make judgments and plans and learn to inhibit compulsive and inappropriate behavior. When we drink alcohol, for example, the alcohol inhibits the frontal cortex and thus the frontal lobe is less inhibitory on our behavior. Thus, this part of the brain is most affected by the formative environment for the longest period of time. Simply put, a child who grows up in a dangerous and fearful environment is far more often to not even comprehend ‘normal’ behavior’ or ‘normal attitude’ or even have their frontal lobe as well developed as those in a more affluent neighborhood. Everything on this topic in this musing gets tricky. The formative environment for children these days includes, in large part, the kind of info coming into their brain from electronic gadgets. This, at least in theory, opens the door for all children, to create a formative environment which will impact on the development of their frontal lobes. Nevertheless, a child in a ghetto gets the violence and anger and frustrations from their actual environment as well as from electronic gadgets. We will come back to this later.

Chronic stress, via glucocorticoids secreted during stress, causes some atrophy in the brain, especially the hippocampus, since this part of the brain has a high concentration of glucocorticoid receptors. Since the hippocampus is very much involved in memory storage and retrieval, memory can be affected. If the chronic stress ends, the neurons atrophied may grow back to varying degrees. When we comment that some young adult from a ghetto doesn’t exhibit the best social behavior, that may well be true, and how much restoration of the damaged areas can occur is speculative. Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in adults is also associated with damage to the hippocampus. Part 5 to follow

Part 3: Violence in America: Homegrown Terrorism

Part 3: Violence in America: Homegrown Terrorism

To understand these young people behaving like animals before our eyes on TV, it is necessary to better comprehend what chronic stress does to kids in their formative years. These consequences often last into or through adulthood. Many of these young environmentally, educationally, and medically deprived kids begin to early on hold a grudge against the affluent people they see on their electronic devices. Their attitude more often than not becomes one of “you don’t like me and so I don’t like you. And if I get the chance I will hurt you like I have been hurt all my life by the affluent culture, of which I have never been a part.”  Kids learn general attitudes early on. 

The point so far is that most all of us know many of our governmental policies generate injustices to kids born in these ghettoes. But we all, in varying degrees, have a strong sense of ‘family values’, which dictates the notion, for example, that “over my dead body is some of my tax money going to pay for education in any other communities” or “I pay money for my health care or the health care of my family and I don’t want it being used to pay for free health care for others”. After all, the American way is each pays for his own way. Yet, this is not ethical, it abrogates the Golden Rule, it goes contrary to the teachings of Jesus and all the prophets of all major religions. We have this fixed image in our mind that those who can’t pay their own share for these benefits deserve their fate. While there are often invalid reasons why many adults can’t afford to pay their share (like the real wealthy), certainly it is absurd to claim kids are to be held accountable—they certainly didn’t earn being born into these American ghetto communities. 

Collectively we seem to have a bad attitude towards our poorer communities. If our wealthy country can afford to let the top 2-5% of our citizens own 90% of our wealth, then it seems we can well afford to provide excellent education and health care to all our kids. Period. It seems rather right that we, collectively, should spend as much tax money on every child for their education, regardless of where this child lives. It seems ethical that every child receive excellent health care regardless of where this child lives. If we can justify driver tests and fines for how all our people drive, then it seems a tad more important that we more closely monitor how every child is being raised. Unfortunately, we also have strong feelings that only parents have any real say on how their children are being raised. 

Given the current and ever increasing human overpopulation of our planet, there is an absolute necessity for all governments to enforce, in some way, responsible reproduction. The notion that we all have a right anymore to reproduce like rabbits, if we so choose, is idiocy. Sanity needs to reign here, but there is apparently no evidence it really will. I reckon that anything which follows here is therefore moot. We seem hell bent on self destruction of our own species. It may not be total self destruction, but billions of people are going to have to perish via Mother Nature’s laws. So far the only restrictions on population growth have been religious wars, international terrorism, childhood deaths from preventable causes, Recreational Drug Abuse wars, massive unemployment rates in many areas, lack of clean water, and an increasingly armed population, angry for varied reasons, backed by ‘stand your ground’ laws, and fueled by an outrageous distribution of wealth to a few. 

Nevertheless, let’s proceed with blinders on here relative to the last paragraph and look more closely at what we know from science about the current consequences of a child being raised in one of our urban, suburban, or rural ghettoes. A substantial accumulation of scientific knowledge about the effects of chronic stress on humans now makes clear just how damaging chronic stress is to kids living in ghetto conditions. Some will be quick to point out that most kids living in a modern ghetto have more amenities and ‘stuff’ than poor kids ever did back in the days of Lincoln.  Being poor back in the days of Lincoln did not come hand in hand with chronic stress. If a dozen people lived in a one room cabin, that was the norm. Most lived off the land or worked in simple jobs requiring few skills. There was a strong community presence—people knew each other well for miles around. Judged by today’s standards, I guess I grew up poor in my formative years. But I never felt I was poor. All the kids in my town went to the same schools no matter the neighborhood. Health care costs were minimal since none of modern day medicine was available. A few antibiotics existed and after that you simply got well or died. Things were relatively stable and most everyone could find jobs with living wages. Not that many women actually worked outside the home. Those people who had jobs had job security and got raises every year until they finally retired. Today the average young person can expect to have 30+ jobs and few of them come with any job stability—and many jobs come with non living wages.

These young people living in our ghettoes are well aware of how much better others have it than themselves. How the affluent actually live, is on all the gadgets they spend a lot of hours on every day. Naturally such children wonder what did they do to deserve having so little?  Chronic stress is inevitable whenever we are boxed in with no apparent road to success. Chronic stress is by no means limited to ghetto kids. However, the degree of chronic stress is often maximized in these children. It would take a book to take each potential consequence of chronic stress and go through the mechanism involved. Thus, here—a small book actually—we will simply list these consequences—and if anyone wants to learn the mechanism, just google “chronic stress and whatever particular consequence is of interest’. Just be sure the source you read on the internet is derived from actual scientific studies. Never use ’Sarahpalinites” as a source to understand anything (the blind leading the blind). 

This topic is so complex that we quickly reach for some general principles with which we can logically start, and then proceed further. General principles have exceptions and this applies here too. Chronic stress is a condition which can occur across all economic groups, in all kinds of cultures, and in all kinds of environments. Kids born in wealthy environments, strangely enough, are more likely to suffer from chronic stress than those born in middle class environments. The kinds of situations which can generate chronic success are numerous, just as the genetic capability to tolerate chronic stress is quite variable. The best situation is to have genetic resistance to chronic stress, a middle class environment, and the road to success come in a steady but progressive fashion. Too much for nothing does not generate contentment (contentment comes from within), while endless hurdles or lack of opportunity for success is most likely to create the most sever cases of chronic stress. Support from others plays a major factor in most success stories, and this support can be from individuals and/or from governmental programs existing to provide support for the least fortunate. This view of the forest enables us to now view the individual trees which make up the forest. 

Let us keep in mind that our body’s general stress response mechanism is geared expressly for dire situations in which our physical survival is at stake (being chased by a lion). The stresses created by our own thoughts and worries and fears about short term problems are not helped at all by our body’s general stress response. We hardly need endless increases in heart rate, blood pressure, or any of the effects this stress response has on the digestive, renal, endocrine, or metabolic systems. Many of the conditions from which we will die originate from excess chronic stress. It also needs to be remembered that too much chronic stress in our formative stage has harmful effects on our adult physiological status. It is this latter general principle which we focus on in this musing. 

Ethics hardly permits us to ensure all children are brought to birth and then walk away from the environmental conditions which exist for that child. In fact, when the planet suffers from human overpopulation, as it does today, it is unethical and disastrous for this kind of irresponsible reproduction to continue. The successful survival of our species as a whole supersedes any individual right to reproduce at will. To deny this is to suggest that we can really survive another doubling of the global human population as has occurred in my lifetime. 

Another generalization, again with exceptions, is that many social, learning, and emotional acquired mental states can be negatively altered in the formative stages of children in our urban, suburban, and rural ghettoes—these acquired mental states can rarely be changed after adulthood all that much. The damage has been done. If the only efforts made by a society, collectively through it’s government, is to try to make it right for the grown adults in such ghettoes, little will be accomplished. Again, the damage has already been done and it took 18 or more years for that damaged state to be formed. There is no claim here that none can be saved, but the science here dictates that many cannot. They will never be responsible productive citizens with appropriate social interactions with others. We can, I suppose, blame it all on the parents, but society as a whole is responsible for the environments in which children spend their formative years.   Part 4 to follow

Part 2 : Violence in America: Homegrown Terrorism

Part 2 : Violence in America: Homegrown Terrorism 

Most people are aware that when a severe crisis happens, a standard stress response occurs. If we are running away from a lion, stress responses occur which automatically stimulate our body to release energy stores, increase our heart rate, increase blood pressure and breathing to get more energy and oxygen to our muscles quickly. Many body systems, involved in short term matters, are inhibited—such as the digestive system, the immune system, growth, tissue repair, and reproduction. To keep better focus on the forest for the sake of the trees, the mechanisms involved here will not be gone into. Everything that happens during our stress response is very important If we are in immediate physical danger. In most animals, these extreme physical dangers are about the only time the stress response is activated. However, we humans have serious potential problems here. We generate concerns and anxiety about of a lot of things via daily mental activity. However, if there is no physical threat imminent, our stress response is not a good thing.  When the stress response is not triggered by physical danger, then we are dealing with anxiety, neurosis, hostility, and paranoia. If this is happening often, then we are exposing ourselves to long term medical effects, which can be mental and physical. 

Chronically stimulating our storage sites to release energy stores can lead to diabetes. And chronically increasing our heart rate, blood pressure and inhibiting growth, tissue repair, reproduction etc. can exact medical conditions down the road. These conditions can include memory problems, learning process damage, depression, anxiety disorders, a whole array of digestive disorders, anger disorders, and many other assaults on body homeostasis. 

We also need to be reminded that the ways in which our given genes operate, are affected by our environments, including the womb. Bluntly put, the degree to which we can ever become productive, responsible and personable citizens depends heavily on the environment in which we grow up in during our formative years. It becomes very difficult to change behavior (mentality) in adults. Yet this is the path we have chosen for those who live in our ghettoes. When they become incorrigible bad-behavior citizens, we are aghast and turn to punishment as a corrective measure. This rarely works and we either end up with dangerous people who need to be locked up, or more harmless forlorn people who often have given up all hope, and just exist to survive. When the percentages of people in this category were small, life just got better and better for the rest of us. But now the percentages of the poor in American ghettoes have grown, as the size of these kind of ghettoes have increased and spread. Not only that, but these incorrigibles now have all kinds of electronic devices to communicate with each other. Local riots are almost certain to become (in the future) organized rolling riots that alternate with each other in order to spread out the police or national guard. The police cannot be everywhere at once. Soon the rioters will appear wherever the police or guard are not. This may start happening sooner than we expect. If this sounds more like a third world country in action, it actually is. But we, of course, don’t like to think it possible that we could become Baghdad West almost overnight. That happenstance only happens in the many other countries now experiencing just this sort of societal chaos. Or so we foolishly think.

Just the economic cost of providing inadequate income safety nets is becoming insufferable. When 43% of our citizens no longer make enough money to qualify to pay federal income taxes, well—we have a huge dent in how much tax money the government even gets. We are now faced with the consequences of our past decisions about schools, health care, employment opportunities, how we handled recreational drug abuse, job benefits, and community safety. 

Frankly, there is no immediate solution. Many of the adults in these communities are beyond help. If we treated the children in these communities properly today, the results would not be seen for another 20 years. Americans can’t wait that many years. In addition, there are numerous other global problems facing humanity today, and almost all of them cannot be fixed overnight either. Human foresight is not an inherent characteristic which has kept pace with our greed for ‘things’ of all sorts. We prefer to deny science, and cling to anecdotal notions to justify why these global problems like human overpopulation, climate change, and human violence are overblown, and thus, we simply concentrate on our immediate well being; and if we are my age, we say a prayer of thanks that we will be dead when all this shit hits the fan. Of course we remain amazingly disingenuous about it all and say, and actually mean, we want our grandchildren to have a better life. Yet we know, for example, that when the next opportunity to invade some country arises, we will borrow the money to do so—let the grandchildren and paid mercenary soldiers pay the price for the invasions. Not surprisingly the next generation declines to pay off the previously acquired debts either. So we go deeper into debt—all the while insisting we want our grandchildren to have a good future.  Part 3 to Follow

Violence in America: Homegrown Terrorism: Part One—Introduction

Violence in America: Homegrown Terrorism: Part One—Introduction

Watch the three URL’s below (you won’t watch but a few segments of the 2nd). Comments follow.

(You will need to copy and paste each URL on a browser it seems)

http://search.myway.com/search/video.jhtml?n=781c03d7&p2=%5EBA5%5Exdm062%5ETTAB02%5Eus&pg=video&pn=1&ptb=94F91573-25EE-4278-8B57-8A7082E421F5&qs=&searchfor=video+showing+phiadelphia+women+being+beaten+in+broad+daylight&ss=sub&st=tab&vidOrd=2&vidId=Fr2KFB1J74w

No longer available 

http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/teen-honor-student-stabbed-to-death/

This musing originated several weeks ago when I viewed the first URL above. Then the second URL was listed on the first as a way to view more homegrown assaults on U Tube. This second site offered a subscription so one could view these clips on an ongoing basis. I didn’t of course subscribe, but the free ones here seem to have no ending, so I desisted watching any more. Then the next day I saw the third URL, no video here. Note: I noticed the second URL doesn’t exist anymore. I am going to guess some agency shut it down. It really was disgusting—one cell camera video after another of amateur beatings. Just as disturbing as the videos themselves was the obvious entertainment it served for the observers.   

The next couple of days I spent wandering around the Univ. of Wisconsin Arboretum and began to think a lot more about violence in America today. We tend to think of Al-Queda and ISIS as the terrorists to fear the most, and we need to try to eliminate them, but we lose far more American lives with domestic terrorism (violence) than we ever do to to these international terrorists. 

I began to think about why so many Americans are so eager to commit violent acts on each other. Times have certainly changed. When I was young it was still risky to wander in a urban, suburban, or rural ghetto, but mostly it was a fear of being robbed. I am going to leave out rape here as this is, at least in part, a sexual motivation and sexual activities are mostly hopeless to analyze. So this will be restricted to senseless physical attacks meant to kill or knock out someone as the sole purpose. No robbery involved. Hurting others in a rage of anger is the sole purpose. 

It is rare for more affluent people to venture into any nearby, or far away, ghettoes—the most we ever tend to do is to drive through them en-route to somewhere. In my younger days these neighborhoods were teaming with people outdoors—kids all over the place—riding bicycles, playing games, chasing each other around—adults sitting on entrance way steps chatting—just people everywhere. Today, ride through these kind of neighborhoods and it almost looks like an abandoned neighborhood. No kids in sight, maybe one or two people walking to a store or bus stop. Windows with bars, doors with bars, and all activity is inside on electronic devices. Most neighbors don’t even know each other.

But in parks, near schools, and other designated areas, groups of mostly young adults will congregate when they are too old to be kept restricted indoors. Many of these teenagers or young adults are dressed in a way to maximize the impression that no one better mess with them. In some sort of generalized way we have the predators, and then victims ripe for predatory assaults. When there are no obvious victims present there is verbal jostling amongst the predators, and this can lead to a violent interaction, as two or more are forced to ’stand their ground’. The basic emotions prevailing in these young teenagers and young adults, raised in these modern American ghettoes, is anger, frustration, fear. So the question becomes, where does all this negative emotion come from? 

Are these people genetically deficient, full of ‘bad’ genes?  Most affluent Americans are very angry at these ‘kind’ of people, find their behavior and culture disgusting, and are all for getting tough with their bad behavior. But we have been getting tougher and tougher on them for the last 50 or more years. We have mandatory long term prison sentences, we have more policemen. We also have more soup kitchens, shelters, food stamp programs, and especially more prison cells. 25% of people in prison globally, are in American prisons even though Americans only make up 5% of the world population. The cost of keeping these prisoners locked up is @$30,000/year. So we certainly do spend a lot of money on the ‘poor’—to protect ourselves from them.  And yet the size of these ghetto communities keeps growing and these ‘ghettoes’ have spread to suburbs, and of course rural poverty continues to grow also.

The question becomes, just where have we collectively, as a society, gone wrong?  In the last 50 years the amount of solid scientific knowledge has increased exponentially. But right step in step with that has the amount of anecdotal knowledge, upon which many form some of their strongest beliefs. 

As much as ever, huge cabals of people believe whatever they want to believe, and never let facts get in their way. With the internet we can always find others who believe in the same anecdotal stuff we believe. And this seems to fit in nicely with the way our own country has handled the lowest tier economic population in our country.

For example, of course almost everyone really does understand that if property taxes are to be the means to finance schools, then the affluent communities would have better schools and better teachers. It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to understand this. And of course we all know if universal health care is not in effect, that the poor will get inferior health care. Most people also realize that mental and physical health are most greatly impacted on during the formative years. We all know these basic things—and yet, we do little to protect the poorest families. They are essentially left to fend for themselves, with things like food stamps to soothe our consciences, plus exemptions from many taxations. Oddly enough, this is coupled with a fierce and ever ongoing debate about abortions and birth control. The ethics is solely exercised on maximizing the likelihood of fertilization, ensuring that every fertilization is brought to term—then after that, the child is left unprotected from any other kind of poor environment during their formative years. As these neglected children reach adults we are then very disgusted at the product of these environments. Maybe we need be more disgusted with ourselves for our collective failure as a society in this respect. Part 2 will follow

Gone With the Wind

Gone With the Wind

Like many people in many jobs, I was in a position in my productive years, to be of help to younger people in their late teens to late twenties. It had more to do with my achieving personal contentment than any theoretical demand from religious scripture. Whether the road to personal contentment is always via helping the less fortunate in life is debatable. But not a topic for this musing. 

Not long ago, in some sort of discussion, I was asked how many of those I helped, ever kept in contact with me. The question caused me to pause since the answer clearly was that few do (not that they  could locate me anyway). Later I thought about that. Does this mean there was little appreciation for the help given?  On the face of it, this failure to make any effort over time to thank those who made major contributions to our successes in our life seems lacking in gratefulness. Perhaps my help was not as significant as I thought.  Even if it wasn’t, the personal contentment I achieved by it all was valuable to me. At this point in this musing I made a list of all those adults who made major contributions to me in my late teen or productive years. How many of them did I ever stay in contact with, or track them down to thank repeatedly?  Maybe one, outside of a few boyhood friends, and that happened only because others arranged it to happen. Wow, these people who made a major contribution to my productive years were never subsequently, over time, contacted by me in any way to acknowledge how important their kindnesses were. I prefer to think the young people I helped are as grateful for the help I gave them, as I am grateful for the major help others gave me.  I guess, by nature, most of us don’t dwell on the past, we get wrapped in our own progress, and move on. These important people in my life moved on, I moved on, and that’s the way it is. Now in my seventies, I suddenly realize I never really properly thanked hardly any of them enough times. 

My guess is that this is typical. Many of those I helped, by the nature of my profession, were teetering on the precipice of success or failure, and often came from difficult neighborhood/family environments. Perhaps it is better I don’t really know what became of them. The few times I tracked someone down from my past, the results were too often sad and discouraging. There are so many really good people in life who never get the breaks, or the situation, or the opportunity to succeed. For me, given my peculiarities, I spend considerable time wondering why I had so many key people intercede and enable me to survive, while so many others—many better persons than I—never attained anywhere near the support they needed to reach their potential. So many things in life are puzzling.

I hate that, and always have. No matter how much good luck I have had, or how smooth my life may be in these retirement years, I often, late at night, feel genuinely saddened by the realities of life for so many people. The evolutionary process, the laws which govern it created by a God of some sort (wherever there is a gift, there is a gift giver), has been an endless progressive process, with plenty of major corrections along the way, and all of us were simply given the chance to exist for a minuscule amount of time in the process—well, that chance was our good fortune. Yet there exists too much sadness built in, at least for the human species who have the capacity to comprehend the sadness all around. The modern electronic gadgets are nice, but they also magnify the saddest of happenings around the globe. In that sense, the world is too much with us every day. I am not the type of person to get all weepy eyed about these sad situations of so many people, different species, different cultures, etc, but the sadness of it all weighs on my mind. No, not there but for the grace of God goes I, but there but for the genetic and environmental spin of the wheel goes I. This does not go so far as to imply I had no control over my life, but any success, at any level, also depended on the genetic cards in my hand, the environment in which my life existed, and the kindness of others who helped me play the right cards, or slipped me some aces when I was about to fold in life. That is the reality to me—and a difficult one. 

My own list totaled 25 people. With more thought maybe the list would be longer or shorter. Without these people there would be little of my life for which to be all that grateful. I could, of course, make a list of the 25 people who made my life more difficult, but it would be rather dumb of me to even attempt to recall them. I wonder at what point is anyone’s life not considered successful enough for them to be contented? The truth probably is that he/she, who is contented with little, is richer by far than those who have more—and still compulsively and actively seek even more. I have sure been involved with enough of these people in my productive years, and it is never a pleasure to be around them. I remember a Vice-President once telling me in his office that he envied me—even though he had a big title and made a lot more money than I—he was constantly under pressure and forced to do a lot of things to save his job, while I was free (tenured) to follow whatever path I deemed the right one to follow. I reminded him that he always had the choice to quit if he wanted. It is one of my favorite memories. He had been ordered by the the President to make me back down on some issue, no matter what it took. But he admitted he did not know how to make me back down. He said he was obliged to tell me that he could not sign any papers which crossed his desk giving me any promotion or salary bonuses or recognitions of any sort. I advised him, “Then just do it. I am not starving or trying to be elevated past my abilities or gain any public attention. It pleases me that you don’t want to do it. Presidents come and go and there will be another day to make things right for me.” 

Of the 25 people on my list of important contributors to my moderate success in life, 11 are dead for sure, and only 2 live anywhere near me and 6 I have no idea where they are. But after giving more thought to all this, what would chasing any of these people down accomplish? Like it or not, we cannot recreate the past, especially the intensity of moments that affected our lives. There are a few people, not on this list, who early in my career got fired because they supported me in a difficult situation. I was blindsided by that situation (they probably were too) and I never allowed that situation to develop again in my life. They were not that close to me (not that anyone ever is), and what the hell would I have said to them if I had tracked them down years after they were fired?  

And it works in reverse too. Suppose some of these young people, years later were to have tracked me down? We would have nothing in common anymore, it would be inane chit chat. And if I had tracked them down, a more difficult task, but I suppose doable in many cases with internet searches, there would be too many cases where I would be saddened by their current situation. Because we help someone over one hurdle, doesn’t mean they ever finished, or won the race. I remember some students approached a Vice President (not the one mentioned already—different job) and pressured him to defend me over a particular issue. This guy didn’t know me personally at all, but asked me to go to lunch and a meeting he was attending some distance away. Off we went in his expensive sports car. It was better than a Laurel and Hardy skit. He was a handsome, socially polished, suave dresser, riding along with a most unlikely counterpart, I guess so he could get to know me a little bit. In the end he stated I hadn’t given him much to go on in our conversation, but he appreciated the intensity of student support, so he would do what he could. He did, and the matter was resolved by directive from on high (the President).  I got a new office in the administration building and a secretary to boot. I never did know how many, and which students went to his office seeking his support. 

Life is interesting regarding so many people to whom we owe so much. They rarely ever get thanked enough except at the time, but after that it is more like ships passing in the night, a brief encounter, and then never to meet again. If I could do it all over again, I would have done more, more often, to remind them of my gratitude over the years. Even someone like my father, he had to die before I ever realized the extent of his importance in my life. I know I am not alone, that most people have certain people in their lives who they never adequately thanked, and certainly not often enough. My father had one trait which I am not sure I have ever seen in anyone to the extent he had that trait. He never said anything bad about anyone else in our family, or any of our relatives, or any of the people who worked for him, or any of his many friends. Never. I think he was on edge about me most of my life. On edge meaning he was unsure where I was heading or the means by which I seemed to tackle life, but he refused to criticize or pressure me about anything in my life. He was the kind of parent who felt he had taught me by example, and the rest was up to me after the formative years. In the end, I think both my parents were relieved and pleased that I some how modestly survived—something like at the race track we might not put on money on some ‘nag’ to win, but are really pleased when the ‘nag’ wins. There is something pleasant about an underdog coming out on top, at least most of the time. 

We have all kinds of special days—Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Veterans Day, Christmas, etc. But I think there should be a Gone With the Wind Day in which each year we would contact via a letter, email, phone call—whatever, those people for whom we owe so much of our success in life. Of course, over time, with most of these people, we would no longer have much in common—time brings change to all of us—but it probably would be nice to have one day when we could all, year after year, say thanks one more time.  And this day would actually encourage all of us to do more kind things to people outside our own family. No one would want to spend the day with no phone calls or emails etc thanking us for some kind deed in the past. It would be a pleasant way to remind all of us that others outside our own family do matter, do count. 

I understand the point behind “Black lives matter”, but my preferred sign would be a tad longer and read: “All lives matter, all species matter, all natural resources matter, the welfare of all matters”. It seems this kind of statement only matters for the generation in which we all live. In the long run the evolutionary process is geared toward change and progress——progress which has been occurring for millions of years. The human species has certainly altered evolutionary progression. In the past, the environment has changed evolution, as species had to adapt to a changing environment. Now, for the first time, a particular species is changing the environment, not some catalytic force of nature. 

Be all this as it may, despite the insignificant personal little world in which I have lived for a minuscule amount of time, I should have followed up more in thanking those who made my insignificant little world a better experience for me. I guess Terrell Owens isn’t the only one who is self centered. He was just more open about it. 

For so many musings I always end up with same quote, the author unknown. 

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