Funerals

Funerals 

I seldom go to funerals unless I am awfully close (not a likely situation) to the surviving families— the primary reason being the deceased will not be there. And, as oft stated, I really don’t like prolonged inane chit chat with people who I will seldom, if ever, see again. I know, a very self serving trait. Less important is the unavoidable ’normal’ social atmosphere right after the funeral. Frankly, I would prefer to honor someone who has survived to old age by having a celebratory gathering of their friends and family at some appropriate age, like maybe 70. That way we have paid our respect/social warmth to them in person and can skip the funeral and keep the sadness of their death personal. 

There seems to be some sort of relationship between the ‘importance’ of the deceased and the length and elegance of the funeral. This is probably good. “Lincoln was shot last night and this morning was cremated at a local crematorium. If anyone wants to pay their respects or watch any gathering of mourning, your own personal thoughts will have to suffice.”  

It is often said that we should not speak ill will of the dead since they cannot defend themselves. Suppose this was against the law. That would sure change the nature of history books. Also, we all have known good persons whose bland non social life was such that their death would hardly be noticed by anyone. This seems a tad sad, but then 'being important’ is not a priority for everyone. 

When I pass a homeless person begging on the street all disheveled and raggedy-assed dressed, it strikes me as one of the saddest pictures from life’s other side. It is something best not to dwell on, as it detracts from our own relatively ‘zippeddy do dah day” state of mind. Even worse, when it is a mother begging with two small children sitting in a large box starring at passerbys, the reality of it is surreal. What kind of future are these kids or mother likely to have?  Such occasions invariably remind me of two quotations:

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

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

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

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

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

As one whose religion is basically The Golden Rule I don’t spend a lot of time believing in Heaven. Nor do I spend much time trying to picture what God looks like, or how He/She/It thinks. Wherever there is a gift there is a gift giver and the gift giver I define as God. I certainly don’t believe that anything I might pray for to God would be granted, and those two children in a box be ignored by God. When I read of a child being tortured and raped I hardly believe that it was God’s will. 

I do know we all will die, but there is little basis upon which to understand what a proper funeral should be. I know in history when some despised ruler died by being slowly quartered alive and then what’s left be dragged around the streets by wild dogs—well, this is 100% pure vengeance. The evolutionary process is pushing human civilization to be more civilized, but it moves at rather glacial speed. 

At the other extreme, Lincoln’s funeral procession and final burial took twenty days while roughly a third of the country’s population viewed the casket or stood along the train route carrying the casket from Washington to Springfield Illinois. What is strange here is that few people were more maligned during their lifetime than Lincoln; at differing phases of his Presidency he was the target of real ire by all the various parties in such a civil war. Lincoln has best been described as like a steel cable that goes from Point A to Point B, sways this way and that way, but in the end the steel cable reaches it’s intended ending. While Lincoln bent, as needed, this way and then that way, in the process of moving public attitudes toward the better angels of human nature, he achieved the impossible—the end of slavery in the U.S.  There was a basic goodness and fairness about him which generated genuine shock that anyone would actually kill him. In that sense Lincoln got the well deserved ultimate funeral process. 

Death after a full life, for the purposes here to be defined as up to retirement age, is not a tragedy at all. Like who could seriously say “Who could ever have imagined that I might die?”  Of course we are going to die, and this is tragedy only when it happens to the young, and the younger the more tragic.

When I think of death it neither scares me nor saddens me. Like why should it? Of course my life could have been better—I could have had a better hand dealt—I could have played my cards better, I suppose even more people could have saved me from more self destructive behaviors, and so on, but what I do know for certain, which generates genuine gratitude for my life—is that there are far more people who never had as good a hand dealt, and never had the good luck I had. Who wins in a poker game tells us nothing about the person’s character, their basic goodness, or any other meaningful thing about them. It took me a lifetime to finally realize none of evolutionary direction is controlled by any individuals of the millions of species which have existed from the beginning of evolution, billions of years ago. The process is not only amazing and effective, but it has nothing to do with our individual lives, not even individual human lives. We have always invented our own individual importance, the notion that we exist in the image of God, think like God, can have a personal relationship with God, are God’s favorite species with dominion over other species and the planets natural resources, and of course, will get to Heaven if we let God save us from our sins. These seem clearly to be pure self serving notions that have existed throughout human history. 

In the absence of any scientific or logical basis for such beliefs, we have no reason to see death as something to fear. Are we upset we did not exist for the millions of years we did not exist before our birth? Of course not. And just how can the dead be upset about not being around for the future years of evolution? 

Thus, it is not death that saddens me, but the fate of the losers in life’s poker game, and when some people are forced by law to endure suffering during their dying process—when they wish to end their lives with dignity and peacefulness.  My career brought me in contact with all sorts of young people from all sorts of life backgrounds and genetic makeup. It is fortunate that those of us who see successes in our formative and productive years are mostly buoyed in spirit by these successes. It was my nature, especially when past my formative years, to be ever aware of those off to the side, out of the spotlight, fading further and further back from any contented existence. 

It has always puzzled me, if God (however we perceive Him/Her to be) is all powerful, then why didn’t he skip all the personal tragedies and create a perfect world perfect for every creature?  Maybe God has limits and needed to create the evolutionary process for progress to steadily happen. 

Funerals don’t depress me, they give the living a chance to reflect on the deceased. No, it is those who have no funeral which depresses me. There is a 101 acre cemetery offshore from the Bronx in New York on an island called Hart Island. No one lives on this island, in fact no one is allowed to go on the island except the prisoners who buried the 850,000 bodies interred on Hart Island. Adults are buried in pine boxes stacked three high, twenty five across, two rows per trench. For babies, the coffins are five high and roughly twenty across in a single row. There is only one individual grave on Hart Island. The headstone reads: “SC-BI, 1985”. Underneath lies NYC’s first infant AIDS victim.

Each year about 90 dead babies are just found on the streets of NYC. The rest of those sent to reside on Hart Island, over 1000/yr, die with no one claiming the body. When someone dies with no-one to claim the body and no one gives a rat’s ass about their death, this seems the ultimate picture of sadness from life’s other side. Some things are just inherently sad. On Memorial Day I don’t focus on dead heroes, important historical figures, my dead relatives, but simply, late at night, try uselessly to understand why some humans can end up on Hart Island. What is of no matter—somehow seems to matter to me. What matters to me or doesn’t matter to me, is—of course—no matter at all. 

In reality, evolution continues in a progressive and ever upward fashion as better always wins out over worse. But all this occurs on evolutionary time, not human time, in a very messy process with individual tragedies as a cost of the laws which govern the process. It is fair, I guess, in the sense that no God is predetermining in advance which individuals suffer tragedies. It is natural, I suppose, to question why God didn’t just make everything ‘perfect’ from the start. Maybe some things are not possible. For example, can we be happy on one hand without unhappiness on the other? It seems almost human nature for happiness to occur, there must be those who are less happy. Both teams can’t win the game. No one plays any games where no one wins or loses. It is not enough for us to win if no one else loses. What a wonderful thing that we breathe in and out billions of times to keep us alive, and yet so does everyone else. For example, the gratitude I feel for so many good things in my life does not include breathing. Everybody breathes, big deal. It seems we need things we have good in our lives that others don’t have in order for gratitude to kick in. Most of us are a tad more restrained in our gratitude than a Terrell Owens, who just goes apoplectic when he achieves something himself that others are trying to do but failed. “I win, you lose” is the ‘in our face’ reality for much of the pleasure we receive in life. 

At any funeral I am cognizant that ‘death levels all’. That is our long run fate. Like it or not, I reckon it is fair enough. No one gets out of this world alive. I suppose memories of us survive until all who knew us are dead, and then poof, nothing is left. Oh, I suppose the individual molecules or atoms which comprised our bodies are still floating around recombining with other molecules and atoms and therefore exist—but we certainly don’t. On the other hand, if no one we knew exists anymore and we don’t either, who is there left to care? If nobody cares, it is, so it seems, merciful justice. 

Parenting——Part 1

Parenting——Part 1

Any comments made here about this topic need be taken in context.  I have never been a parent. In that context what knowledge could I possibly have on the topic? For starters, given genetic diversity between any parent and each child, coupled with vastly different environmental situations in which parenting operates, it becomes clear enough that parenting must be one of the most difficult and individually unique experiences in life.

Whenever I see a book titled something like How to be the Best Parent, I kind of cringe.  I reckon one might be able, although not likely, to be the best parent for a given child in a given formative environment. While I have never been a parent, I certainly have had a front row seat to view the results of parenting by being a high school teacher and then a University Professor for thousands of young people. In a general sort of way there are two kinds of high school and university teachers. Some simply give lectures and exams and stick to imparting subject knowledge. Others get heavily involved with many students on a personal basis. Like so many things in life, we are not talking right or wrong here, but just a natural variation in human interactions. There are often good reasons why some teachers get more personally involved with students than others. 

By nature, rather obvious from my many musings on so many topics, human diversity and situational analysis is a huge hobby for me, and always has been for a long time. I have, for years, been intrigued by young people, not children, but young adults. Young adults are certainly adults, but adults with little life experience. I interacted with them at an age when they are usually the most flexible with how they think about and interact with their environmental situation, whatever it might be. 

Interacting with students can be very time consuming and very stressful. Parents can appreciate that statement. The difference is that a parent is involved with a young offspring round the clock for many years. My involvement was restricted by time of day or evening and rarely lasted more than a few years, often only one year. I have always been a sort of a hermit by design and nature. My own reality is this: at the end of each day I am in desperate need of personal space and quietude. On top of that I have little innate talent with younger children. So, for sure I would be a terrible parent. “Just shut up” is not an admirable method of parenting. If I had talent enough to be a good parent, then I would guess my interaction with students would have been far more limited, what with my own children to raise.

My contact with even the most difficult student lasted for a limited length of time. A parent has about 18 years of close contact with a particular offspring. Given the personality of some students I would often wonder how their parents tolerated or dealt with it year after year, day after day. Of course, poor parents can also be the cause of a student’s personal behavior. Everything just gets impossibly complicated. Furthermore, my interaction was most likely to be regarding a particular problem the student had at a particular time. Dealing with a particular problem for a limited length of time is, while challenging, more doable than dealing with endless problems with the same person year after year. 

While many kids get excellent parenting these days, far better than in past historical times, an even greater number of kids are raised in situations which impose often serious medical damage to a child. Drug abuse and parenting have in common that our government (society) does little to treat either situation on the basis of scientific knowledge, but rather leaves both situations subject to politics, police, and anecdotal cultural ignorances. 

Parenting, by universal agreement, is a very important and serious endeavor. To be allowed to teach students we are required to acquire college degrees. To be a parent we have essentially no requirements. We can’t drive on our roads without passing a driver’s test, but we can be a parent simply by accident/ignorance/impulse and possess little acquired skills to be a parent. We seem to be saying that giving birth as opposed to abortion is an ethical matter, and yet the quality of parenting and the environment for parenting is simply whatever it is, it is. In fact, if we are affluent we probably are in some way pleased that we can give our own children a better education than others because this gives our own kids a leg up on job opportunities. 

Science tells us that recreational drug abuse is simply an effort by the users to feel better about themselves and their lives. It is philosophically obvious that the solution is to change the lives of those who feel a need to be more pleased with their lives. Naturally this is often very hard to do, but what is utter stupidity is to tell such victims that the answer is to ‘just say no” to drugs. All of us want to be more contented about our particular lives, and by what logic would any of us want to refuse to try and be more contented about our lives? The answer to drug abuse is a very complicated medical/social challenge. All we can really do is try to treat the cause of the discontentment and vow to become better at it with time.  The police, prisons, and politicians are no solution. People should be fined and put in jail only for actual criminal acts committed, period. Using a drug to try and get relief from the pain in your life is not a criminal act in any legitimate use of the term criminal. 

But here we do not wish to dwell on drug abuse, but on parental/societal abuse of children. Parents are not alone in having concerns about their children. The future of society as a whole depends on the degree to which the maximum percentage of children in that society develop to become good citizens. 

To a large degree good parenting in any society is related to priorities. Most of us know good schools are important to good parenting, so we finance goods schools via local property taxes. That, of course, ensures the children of the affluent have good schools. This is wonderful for those of us who are affluent and disastrous for a healthy, prosperous, peaceful society. Ignoring the plight of millions of children in our society is hardly a Christian principle. Ignoring the plight of millions of people with medical problems or employment opportunities, and so on are ethical failures no matter what major religious organization we claim ourselves as a member. 

Because we cannot, overnight, make things perfect for all our citizens, hardly means we cannot make steady progress, realizing we all need to sacrifice for the good of our society or ‘all God’s children” or any other similar way to state this. 

It seems helpful to start by pinpointing the major factors which contribute to good parenting.

Here is a reasonable starting list:

Good genetics for each parent and child. (Not much we can do here)

Good medical care for all citizens, especially children

Safe neighborhoods for all citizens

Good schools for all children

Job Opportunities for all citizens

Living wages for all workers

Adequate vacation time for all workers

Healthy foods for all citizens

Every parent demonstrate basic knowledge of good parenting

This is probably a good start albeit I am sure with more thought additional factors could be added. 

Since we currently suffer from serious global human overpopulation, we need set limits for how many children a couple can have. Let’s say each person is entitled to 2 children who survive early infancy. For any couple to have children should require a license, just like it requires a license to do a lot of things in any society. We will call this license a marriage license. Couplings for purposes other than parenting would not require a marriage license. To get a marriage license a couple would have to be of age and pass a test on basic parenting skills and include such instruction in high schools. I know, many people emotionally feel no one is ever going to tell them how many children they can have or what is good parenting except themselves. This is the same mentality that surfaces anytime any society implements some basic controls over citizen activities. With historical progress has come change, and with change new controls over society are then needed.

Good parenting for all children in any society is such an important determinate for the future of all countries that it seems best here to take the factors which impact on good parenting and cover them in separate musings. Things I tend to muse on are more palatable with reasonably short musings. 

A Formula for the Best Terminational Years (life after our productive years).

A Formula for the Best Terminational Years (life after our productive years).

Given human diversity, no singular equation can be worked out; the best we can do is list some of the factors which play a role. What differs is the degree to which each of the factors below play at the individual level. These factors are not listed in order of importance since that will vary.

1. Good Health

2. A sense of gratitude for life’s successes, no matter how modest.

3.  Good past memories of people and things and places

4. The degree to which the Golden Rule reigns outside of immediate family

5. The degree to which we have understood during our productive years when ‘enough is enough’ regarding our goals, our wealth, our titles, our power over others, our achievements.  When enough is never enough, and we end up with compulsive behaviors in any aspect of our lives, then maximum contentment will never be achieved, just temporary states of happiness which become harder to match as the compulsive behavior continues.

6. Empathy for those less fortunate. Not the theoretical disingenuous whimsical empathy which contributes nothing to those in need via our time, proper political support, or with our money—or any combination of these three. To simply—occasionally—for self serving motives, express to others present our ‘heartfelt’ sympathy for the less fortunate (often really meaning imagined heathens, less talented, dumb-assed, or got-what-they-deserved) is just another way to exempt ourselves from any blame for their situation.

7. The ability to amuse ourselves, and not depend on those in their productive years to spend a lot of time amusing us. They need to get on with their lives and we need to enjoy our terminational years on our own, and eventually learn to die alone, which almost everyone really does anyway. Withdrawal from our surrounding earthly environment is a universal part of the last lap for most people. We have all been present when a dying person is surrounded by others, all wailing in some fashion, except for the person dying. 

8. Find ways to feel more connected with Nature and the Evolutionary process. We are a part of this process and to think otherwise and keep trying to swim upstream, is a mistake. No one is exempt from the laws of nature. 

9. Appreciate Quietude and Solitude—the days of wine and roses don’t last forever. Appreciation for the happenstance of being in life’s ‘game’ can last forever until our required departure. 

10. Let go of many pleasures of the past—trying to be more important than we are, trying to still run things that should be run by those in their productive years, and accept the reality that we are, by nature, relegated to the bleachers in our terminational years, so then we learn to enjoy the show rather than hopelessly keep trying to run it, hovering around the ‘huddle on the field’ still hoping we can ‘carry the ball’ once in awhile.  It is easy to be pathetic in our terminational years. 

11. We need to learn the difference between our efforts to understand more about this thing called our lives, and resist any desire to get back on the actual playing field. 

12. Learn to enjoy the simpler things in life like reading, exercise of some sort, appreciating nature, appreciating human diversity, science, cooking, eating, enriching our lives via the internet/TV/movies, and so on. 

13.  It is probably useful to understand the ramifications of where we stand in the following categories—not that it is possible to fit neatly in particular categories. We, are after all, complicated individuals.

early risers/early to bedders or late risers/late to bedders

homebodies or anywhere but home most of the day

social chit-chatters or private mental philosophers of some sort.

city or rural creatures

excitement seekers or quiet contentment seekers

appreciate diversity or see heathens/detestable people everywhere

serious or nonsensical

 

The list above can surely be longer and better identifiable, but whatever the general category probably impacts on just how we need organize our terminational years. 

14. The terminational years allows, probably even demands, we be more selfish with our time. We did a lot of things in our productive years out of duty, responsibility, cooperation, goal achievements, achieve victories, to succeed with our career, to be social, to fit in differing situations, etc. What we will let go and avoid in our terminational years will differ. I, for example pretty much tossed away social chit chat with those who I will seldom or ever see. It seems a waste of time and I don’t care what someone’s career is, endless chatter about grandchildren, and other endless topics which have no bearing on my own contentedness at this stage in life. Other people in their terminational years thrive on this sort of thing and really need a smart phone which can be permanently attached to their ear. I see people on a train, for example, a lot of people, who desperately dial up one person after another for fear they might have to actually generate some meaningful thoughts on their own. The conversations and text messages are mostly inane and shallow. Is this bad?  I really don’t know. It is sure a different kind of existence—a sort of global Tower of Babel. Personally, I detect more frenzy and desperation than peace of mind with this avenue of existence. It is almost like they sit most of the day staring at their ‘smart phone’ which is never more than inches away, as their eyes portray this burning need for the phone to buzz or ring or project some melody. It just doesn’t seem compulsive disorders ever generate contentment. Of course, I am not going to make any effort here to identify my own compulsive disorders—maybe writing musings fit in here—except there is no dependence on others here in that I can write as the mood hits me, about any topic I choose, and do not use the musings to push down anyone’s throat (I have no idea who reads these musings or even can find their storage site on the internet)—these musings exist just to increase my own level of contentment about issues in life that interest me.  For me understanding (right or wrong) enables me to elevate the degree of contentment about this thing called life.

As usual, nothing above is claimed to be a comprehensive long thought out treatise, with footnotes, references, and any philosophical ‘creme de la creme’ of the topic. Whenever any of us use our own experiences and knowledge to further our ‘own’ personal understanding of issues, we edge ever more higher on our own contentment scale. Each has to elevate their own contentment level with choices that mesh well with their own unique and often peculiar essence. There will never be another like us (and in some cases we can all certainly hope not). 

Odds and Ends 2

Odds and Ends 2

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/dvUF2fJkDcX

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/4HBVqvzDZ8f

https://www.yahoo.com/news/bear-vs-dog-comes-top-213100019.html

http://www.liveleak.com/ll_embed?f=c83358ee7d5c    ( I have a friend who likes to eat crunchy things, I suspect this must have made him hungry)

Enesto Cortazar~A New Day

Empathy and Contentment—A difficult combination

Empathy and Contentment—A difficult combination

While I spend many a post midnight hour pondering, wondering, trying to see relationships, putting pieces of life’s puzzle together, and claim it brings me more contentment to at least think I understand some aspects of life better—well, there is an emotional component to the process which is far less easy to put in words. That’s the thing about emotions, they influence us a lot, but are not easy to define why. 

Empathy is an emotion. Love is an emotion. Love is all over the map, often comes in endless forms, gets mixed up with sex, and especially in the younger years, is a totally nondescript stressful uniquely personal feeling which is hardly under the guidelines of reason. If we fall in love with the town idiot, or the wrong color, the wrong personality, the wrong social status, the wrong religion, we just do. Some people are universally lovable. Others are more like me, friendly in an odd way, but distant, not touchy feely outside of sex itself, and have been told many times I am way too in need of private space. Maybe that is the least of my weirdness. Then again, if we don’t think of ourselves as ‘weird’ compared to others, then perhaps reality escapes us. Weirdness is partially just another word for diversity. It is probably just safer to accept we are weird and just be sure our ‘peculiar’ weirdness does not harm others in the process.

When it comes to empathy, this is something which I had as far back as I can remember. It expressed itself first with pets of various sorts. Somehow I felt, even as a child, responsible for their well being and responded to their no strings attached love. Humans have all kinds of strings attached to any love for another human, while animals rarely do. Even when mood swings turn us into a total ass, a pet loves us back unconditionally. I doubt I was taught empathy, but am not saying empathy can’t, to some degree, be learned. What follows is way too personal, but I don’t know how else to judge empathy. Clearly, in the end therefore, there is no way for me to judge just how applicable this is to others. It seems hard to find any solid data on just how much empathy is an inherited trait, and how much of it is a learned trait from our formative environment. 

My first business as a young kid was to raise chickens and sell the eggs around the neighborhood—Reid’s Leghorn eggs. I think I was the only one to have chickens. When a chicken got sick and had to be put down, it was a traumatic experience to hang it from a limb and slit it’s throat while it was thrashing around. It would haunt me for days. Later in life when I defended someone in ways which irritated authority figures, some people saw my actions as daring or generating self-inflicted wounds with people over me in a position to hurt my career. But it wasn’t daring or stupidity—it was the empathy thing. I knew I could get thrown out of graduate school for stealing a dog from the Animal complex, but I also knew that this dog let me know he was depending on me to save him. It is always in the eyes. I knew it would cause me a problem way back when I coached high school and gave the most valuable runner award to a reclusive mud lark misfit instead of to the Prom King and high academic achiever, who had a slightly better score on my point system. It worked out well for all in the end but emotional dynamics were intense and whether it was all worth it is debatable.

I knew, when teaching at a University, and I spent time creating administrative hearings for students who were in violation of some rule, that this was way beyond my contract duty. I knew when I out maneuvered and boxed in faculty to revise some department policies which would be good for students, but a hassle for faculty, that at best, I would be temporarily very unpopular with my colleagues. For whatever reasons, I was blessed with the ability to box in and outlast faculty and administrators on issues which never remotely related to my gaining anything personally in terms of salary or title or power or popularity. Some students who pleaded for help were not even in my classes. On top of that, I tended to teach large classes and had a greater variety of class preparations than anyone else in the department. So I had no time for all this other stuff. 

Yet every time confronted with a good person trapped by injustice with rigid rules and circumstances beyond the student’s control, especially if they were right out of some sort of ghetto environment, it was hard to say no. Maybe it was that chicken all over again, trapped and thrashing around desperately not wanting it’s throat cut. More likely it was the eyes, often wide eyed with searing hopelessness and desperation. The general feeling is that most everyone, trapped in these hell holes for neighborhoods, are minus any redeeming personal values and priorities. That’s a lie. The truth is that many of them are the most honest, dependable, cooperative, hard working, most ethical persons I have ever met. They just have nothing much in life going for them. Someone told them I might help them, they believed it, and most of the time I gave in. It always seemed that I, with so much going for me, was obligated to at least try to help someone with so little going for them except their personal character— often an admiral personal essence developed in the worst of environments.

The routine got to be a very familiar one. My chairperson and other administrators would ask ”why are you doing this?  What are you gaining except to get a lot of others irritated with you?”  The administrative Chairperson of the hearing committee would invariably be sarcastic in his/her opening remarks something like: “Of course the student in question is being defended here by Dr. James who seems to find this sort of thing a game.”  Then would come the lecture about the purpose of Departmental or University rules and how they apply to all students, and when exceptions are made it is unfair to other students who have to abide by the rule in question. Most members of the committee would, one way or another, make the same pitch. The student would whisper to me dejectedly that he/she doesn’t have a chance, and believed the committee members hated him/her. I would tell them just relax, it is early in the game.The committee didn’t hate them, they just didn’t really know the student and loved their rules.  When possible I would get some authority figure like a former high school teacher or employer (almost all these students have to work besides going to school) to review the past history and current situation of the student. It was always important from the git-go to get the committee talking about the real live student in front of them, instead of the rule or me. I am taking a specific case here, albeit all the cases varied. 

When it was my turn I would talk first about the merits of the student in question and express the opinion that “we, as faculty and administrators, should always help students like this to get over hurdles that they face. This young man/woman has given the kind of consistent effort to get a college degree, under circumstances which most of us never faced. Yes, he (in this case) has missed more than three class sessions with unexcused absences. Yes, the instructor told the student from day one that he could not be excused from any classes due to his work schedule off campus, and yes the rules say a student can be dropped from the class for non attendance. It is a good rule put in to help maximize the number of students who pass courses. No one objects to the rule. The only day the student misses this class is Friday, and his girlfriend takes notes for him. Yes, the girlfriend is not authorized to be in the class, but this is trivial since she gains no credit or benefit of any kind by doing this. The student has passed exams to date with B’s and C’s. The student works full time, has financial obligations to his family situation with young siblings, and cannot take the course another semester because he needs to graduate since he is not eligible for any more student loans. For financial reasons he needs to get on with his career right now. It is our duty not to do anything to destroy his efforts, his hopes, his need to break out of his neighborhood and achieve a better life. When a rule no longer serves the purpose for which it was intended, it needs to be waived. What kind of institution would use a rule to wear a student down, make his life any more stressful, or disappointing, and call it our duty?”

Of course the committee members response for turning the student down is one of “where does making exceptions end?”  “No one is questioning the character of this student, albeit he is not really the angel Dr. James makes him out to be. But we also admit to his strong efforts to better himself. Letting him be exempt is simply unfair to other students who followed the rule in question.  At this point I size up the situation and fear he is going to lose so I say——“There is a bit more defense to present but this has gone on longer than anticipated and I need to get some preparation done for an upcoming class so we need to finish this hearing up another day.”  They are trapped. They can’t make me stay and they don’t want to conclude without his defense being completed. So it is adjourned. 

Before we meet again my ‘sources’ tell me we don’t yet have the committee votes, and that part of the problem is that some members don’t want to encourage me to keep doing this sort of thing. So I go to the next and more desperate plan B. When the committee meets again the student’s entire class is there and every student in the class says they are not offended at all with giving this student a waiver to the rule.  Some committee members try to push back and say there is a principle at stake here which is not easy to overlook. 

When they finish with their ‘principle’ position I pull out the last trick. “Yes, there is a principle here, an important principle.” I called his employer yesterday and the employer told me he would make some alterations in his employee schedules so the student could attend classes on Fridays. He thanked the University for showing such interest in our student’s success. My question of principle is why is it my job to make that kind of phone call when we have all sorts of student services in existence which I thought were there to aid students with just such a problem. We also have here someone from the Student newspaper (on purpose) so let’s not have this be a campus wide debate. The committee can leave here now with their arms still wrapped around the rule, the student can now be in class on Fridays, and personally I will be delighted to see all that desperation, frustration, and hopelessness disappear from his eyes. 

Later the student comes by and asks with tears in his eyes, “Why did you go through all that for me? I am not even in your class.” I reply, “Don’t take it personal, we are just ships passing in the night, a brief communication and our differing paths go on. I am paid to help students. You are obligated to do the best you can for yourself as long as you can. Keep the faith in yourself. Return the favor by helping someone else when you can. If I could have drummed up a good reason not to get involved I would have.” 

But, and this is a big BUT, which tempers the whole scenario here, is this: This student, like so many others from similar backgrounds, has multiple hurdles to get over. They may have ongoing family situations, may have health situations which need attention with no money to get medical treatment, may have work obligations that leave them with little time to study, may have graduated from a poor high school and they hardly are ready to start college, and it goes on and on depending on the student in question. The truth is this: most of the time there is no wonderful ending to their struggles. These disadvantaged students get helped over one hurdle but the remaining hurdles wear such students down, and most of the time they never do really reach their career potential. They get exhausted and settle for a limited career objective, hopefully manage to get to a better neighborhood and end up a postman or assistant to this or that, and at least get through life with less stress than the neighborhood in which they grew up. In the end, their formative environment was too much, too long, too often, too stressful. They sadly pay the price.

This probably explains why I am such a strong supporter of Terrell Owens. He lucked out. He has an amazing reservoir of willpower—which is mostly a genetic characteristic, and learned from his grandmother, who raised him, to focus on a single objective, not to trust anyone, and simply run over, through, or around every hurdle in his way, on his terms. He would never have shown up in my office because he amazingly could actually do it all on his own. He would, through amazing willpower and focus, get over every hurdle on his own. This is rare, and it irritates me that so many attack the very character qualities which enabled him to achieve success on his own. I know his detractors don’t realize what they are really criticizing, that it is not personal, but it is sad such feelings exist. That’s life I guess. Imagine if I had told the student in this narrative: “It’s always about you. You are very selfish. You are going through life thinking about yourself, focused on your own performance. Life is a team game. Others follow the rules. You should too.”

Empathy, once created as part of our persona, seems fairly permanent. When I retired I just shifted my empathy from ‘in my face’ recipients to my FANAFI Fund (Find A Need And Fill It). Just a case of ‘enough is enough’. In our face empathy is very stressful, at least it was to me, and at some point, enough is enough.

In the end I really don’t regret being saddled with such empathy. The point here, after all this personal history, is that contentment and empathy have an unusual relationship. I suspect that empathy helps build a base whereupon following the Golden Rule enables the giver to reach a higher level of contentment than if they didn’t have such empathy with diversity and the less fortunate. On the other hand, the sadness that comes with empathy for the less fortunate creates a contentment that is more mellow, and mixed with a healthy sadness. Contented or not, we cannot escape the reality of just how much genuine sadness abounds in God’s evolutionary process. To escape the depth of sadness which accompanies real life we, who are more fortunate, need dwell on gratitude for our own, however meager, successes in life. It is true, by the time we have learned enough to really live, we are old enough to die. After almost 500 musings since 2005 I have yet to be able to answer the question “And so what are you going to do with all this ‘understanding’?”.  Maybe the answer for me is simply “I will die with gratitude and contentment. Why not? We all die, no one gets out of this world alive.”  If there is a Heaven—fine; if not the gratitude and contentment achieved via the Golden Rule in our earthly lifetime was our Heaven---and probably a ticket to any post-life Heaven.  Like T.O. loves to say: “Fair is fair”, coupled with what I like to say: “Enough is enough”. If someone said to us, “Would we like to roll the dice again and be born again via the happenstance of which sperm combines with which egg, I reckon most of us would have to think it over. It is a very stressful experience, and like playing poker—it comes with no guarantees. The “enough is enough” me, would likely choose not to press my luck. We really know—we really do—that with a slight twist of fate, here and there, much of what we valued from our life would have never been. And that it is not just us, this whole life thing involves billions of other humans besides ourselves. Wow. Nah, don’t shuffle the cards again, this time I might get burnt in the shuffle.   

   

Odds and Ends

Odds and Ends

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/ZCX1tK23Cro   (the dress code back then seems creepy)

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/NjxQahff3SV I know my long time friend Bullet is not in the picture. He never wore at hat unless his mother was with him

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/VsQsb8WJKpf  Performers back in this day dressed as if they were somebody. I never thought Hee-Haw dress goals would catch on.

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/d1yD9w8y6kU  now here is a sport my neighborhood gang overlooked when planning our Morningside Olympics. Don might have won this with his backhand stab.

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/FknZBqj4AA9  I bet Bill L. was at this show. What kind of warm up act is taking place on the stage?

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/bsex3HCren2   Now this is what a mountain man is supposed to look like.

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/1LeDyKGvN9X  I think Riva the horse would be a tad intimidated by this. 

Proposed Changes in U.S. Domestic Policy

Proposed Changes in U.S. Domestic Policies

There is no naivety here with these proposals. On the other hand,, at one time it was an absurdity that men would be able to create a machine to fly around in the sky, or that slavery would ever be abolished, or the 4 minute mile ever be broken, or —as Thomas Jefferson thought he stated the obvious, when he said it would take thousands of years to fully populate the U.S.—that our land was endless.

There have been many historical setbacks in the evolutionary process, mainly due to sudden environment changes leading to ice ages, flooding, meteorite collisions, etc. This is the first time environment changes great enough to cause danger to most earthly species are caused by the activity of one species—the human species. 

For example, there is no serious political debate whatsoever about responsible reproduction. Most people, if asked, would say of course the planet cannot handle a doubling of the world’s human population in the next generation as it has doubled in this past generation. But having said this, few humans are interested in any serious population control measures. It would be political suicide. When decent concerned parents say they fear the kind of future for their grandchildren, it is disingenuous babble. Americans, for example, invade other countries right and left on borrowed money, many feel climate change is a myth, they favor tax cuts over balanced budgets, and on and on it goes, hardly a ripple of genuine concern about grandchildren. 

Nothing proposed below is likely to happen in the short term. But over the long haul, thousands or millions of years down the road, what is best for evolutionary progress tends to become reality. So nothing below is necessarily anything which I am predicting will happen in the short term. But if there is any truth to it, it will happen in the long term. 

Domestic Policy

Capitalism, with it’s inherent competition, is good. Unregulated, unlimited capitalism is bad. Therefore limits must be placed on just how much wealth of our society can be accumulated by 2-5% of our citizens. It is no coincidence that our country had it’s most rapid economic growth for everyone when there was a 90% federal tax on the very wealthy and estate taxes which prevented most earned wealth being passed on as unearned wealth to offspring. Teddy Roosevelt got it right. 

Every citizen should, by law, be limited to two children who do not die in early infancy. Records at birth will keep track of all this. Failure to abide and cooperate with the necessary rules will require jail time and any children over the limit put up for blind adoption to adults licensed to adopt children. The rules will apply to both male and females via genetic testing. All citizens will have a genetic blueprint on file. 

Every person will be required to have a card, or whatever, which proves they are legal citizens. All employers must only hire those with such proof of citizenry. Those here illegally when this starts, if they have no serious criminal record, will be allowed to stay because both parties were at fault—the immigrant and a government who enticed them here, under the table, to work at slave wages. 

The military draft will be reinstated. All military actions must be paid for up front. No more borrowing money for military invasions. Whenever there is military action all segments of society must contribute to the action via a military draft or increased taxation. There will be no more wars which send huge number of young men at the bottom of our economic ladder into our battlefields and leave major portions of affluent society totally untouched by such invasions ( no risk to be drafted and no loss of income via increased taxation). I, for example have lived through dozens of invasions and have never been financially burdened by any of it. All this above would make all citizens think twice about invasions of other countries, and all citizens required to participate in the cost of the war, one way or another. No more free rides.

All citizens will be entitled to good health care, period. In an ethical society citizens treasure the welfare of each other as they do their own family.

The same amount of money will be spent to educate all children and the money to do this come from the Federal budget. There would be no more property taxes to finance education unless it is some form of federal property tax. The federal government would issue the money to varied school districts on a per student capita basis and the district would control the kind of educational methods and priorities. Competition is good here, and those districts going down the wrong road would feel the pressure by parents to change their educational approach. Every child is entitled to a level playing field in matters of education.

All citizens will be periodically tested, especially children, for their levels of stress hormones. Chronic stress harms virtually every system of the body, especially during the formative years, and especially the Central Nervous System, while the damage is often permanent. All citizens, and especially children with chronically high levels of stress hormones, will be sent to Stress clinics which will be available in all areas of the country.  These licensed Stress Clinics, along with Addiction/Compulsive Behavior Centers across the country will replace drugs, religion, and motivational seminars which simply influence the mind to pretend things are okay when they really are not. Trying to alter the mind (via drugs, religion, or  motivational seminars, in some form or fashion, to pretend a problem doesn’t really exist or matter, is never a solution). 

Correcting the situation behind the chronic stress will be far more difficult than even regular medical practice. Over time, the effort by the Stress, and Addiction/Compulsive Behavior Centers will improve, but total success would seem far down the road. Still, government should always try.

To eliminate the need for politicians to reflexively promise tax cuts, a reasonable level of taxes to accomplish all of the above would need to be established and that level rise automatically with the cost of living increase. 

The cost of all these services to the public in general is bearable for several reasons. First, when 2-5% of citizens no longer own 90% of our wealth (let’s not quibble here about the exact accuracy of these figures) then imagine how much more money the federal government will take in just by this. Tax rates will rise for everyone just as they are higher in those countries which already spend more money on education and health care for all, but the trade off is that people in those countries score much higher on happiness polls precisely because they don’t have to worry about health care, good school, benefits for the aged, and so on like so many Americans have to worry about these things. True, we have less money to spend after the high taxation, but what is left can be spent on  pleasurable things, not endless matters pertaining to our health and economic welfare. Naturally any military invasions require an automatic tax increase to pay the costs of the invasion. By law, budgets will have to be balanced, no more one generation borrowing money to be paid off by the next generation. 

The government would take responsibility for job opportunities and safe neighborhoods. Many neighborhoods today cannot possibly be made safe simply by police toughness. Many of the very people we want to get tough with via police treatment have nothing to lose. Short of hanging them up by their limbs and torturing them everyday, how is police action going to make their lives any worse? Jail or freedom becomes a toss up for these society ‘neglected’ citizens. 

To enable job opportunities be available to all citizens depends on level playing fields in education, welfare, and ‘quality’ of parenting. Let’s forget this nonsense of expecting the less fortunate in our society, all walled off and out of sight, out of mind, depending on success by pulling themselves up by their own boot straps. This is a joke and an impossibility for the vast numbers of those born into less advantageous environments. There are few people in those situations with the genetic willpower and learned focus to accomplish success on their own—like a Terrell Owens. We have already talked about how to level the field in education. Now we need tackle welfare and ‘quality of parenting’. 

We currently have the government license, fine, and monitor a lot of our behaviors—like driving, like protection of individual rights, like safety requirements, and so on. We are not free to do whatever the fuck we feel like in many situations. But we are allowed to procreate via whatever means, place, and time we choose. Okay it is illegal for adults to have sex with minors, which is loosely enforced, but vigorously sometimes. Marriage should be required for procreation, not of course to have sex. But then sex can be safe sex and that would be the responsibility for all citizens. If a child is born out of wedlock, then that counts as one child out of the allowed 2 for both participants.  Getting a marriage license should require both parties to pass a test on basic responsibilities for parents. If they pass the test they can proceed to have children, BUT if the family situation changes after childbirth and becomes such that basic needs of the child cannot be met, then the government intervenes, not to punish the parents but help the children, not for their sake alone, but primarily to help the children in question. So parenting would be monitored loosely, but sufficiently enough to become aware of dire situations. 

At this point we need focus on job opportunities. This is tricky in a global economy. For example, workers cannot be protected as long as there are no global minimum wages which rise regularly based on cost of living increases. Naturally cost of living increases vary globally so this all gets tricky. But with modern computers, reasonable variations in these increases could be effectuated. As long as some workers somewhere can work for slave labor, this puts workers making good wages at a huge disadvantage. In the absence of global wages then Americans will be prevented from purchasing goods made abroad via slave labor. Bargains are fine unless the product of slave labor. We are fortunate in America in that, when push comes to shove, we have the resources to make our own essential products.

It is to the advantage of any society as a whole to generate full employment. This is the responsibility of the government. Individuals can’t do this. Realistically, the government can only provide a job which matches an individual’s skills and capabilities. There is no way the government can be really accurate or fair here—and will often peg a particular individual’s skills and capabilities too low. But with fair minimum wages, there will be no job in which a person cannot at least pay for livable housing, decent transportation, health care, and adequate food. But the idea here is that individuals will use their spare time off the job to improve their skills or abilities so that they can then begin to move up the ladder. Keep in mind the government is guaranteeing full employment opportunity and only that. If you went to some school and got a license to be (I’ll make this up) an Events Planner and there is no one wanting that person because of limited job openings, the government is not obligated to find you such a job. The government’s job is to find you employment at a job which clearly meets your qualifications. Otherwise you would end up unemployed with all the downsides which comes with that situation. 

So how, we might wonder, is the government going to do this?  Where is all this money going to come from? First we might remember that when 43% of adults do not make enough money to pay federal income taxes, the government is losing tax money from those unemployed or working at slave wages. So all the money the federal government never gets in these situations is now flowing into the treasury since everyone is now paying some federal tax since they are employed at livable wages. Thus, the cost of welfare goes down but the cost of maintaining full employment rises. When everyone has a job with a livable income, crime rate goes down, illegal drug use due to chronic stress goes down, parental responsibility goes up, and welfare eliminated in terms of unemployment costs. What, we need ask, happens to someone who can’t hold a job for which they have the skills? Well, they can’t get welfare, and if we have to jail them for this reason of refusing to work a job at a level of skill they have, then they do go to jail and work hard labor for food until they decide to hold down a job on their own. 

The biggest change to ensure government has enough money to support all the changes being favored here will come from a more honest way to tax citizens. I will use Donald Trump as the example but this legal basis to escape taxation is rampant among the wealthy and even those just quite affluent. The biggest welfare costs to our country is what we let the affluent take via various loopholes and tax exemptions. Instead of just taxing some income and letting real accumulated wealth be pushed to the future when it is possible to avoid taxes ever being paid on it, taxes every year should be based on wages and accumulated wealth during the year. Period. Of course wages income will be taxed but all at the same tax rate. No more taxing the guy who pushes a wheel barrow around at maximal rate and give huge tax breaks for those whose income comes from shuffling papers around in speculative ventures. There would be no more citing legal paper losses which enable a person to pay no taxes at all. Thus when Trump declares bankruptcy and declares these huge financial failures a loss, it will mean nothing since during the same time period his personal wealth grew by billions. Since change in personal wealth is now taxable he is nailed on that. The nice thing here is he may as well pay his investors and contractors since he then will be taxed less for having done so, as his net wealth will not have grown so much. Most affluent citizens will be affected. I, for example would have to pay taxes not only on stock dividends, but on any increased stock values—not be able to push the can down the road to the end and then leave all this non taxed earned wealth to offspring thereby giving the offspring huge unearned income without any taxation ever. The offspring never earned that money and the government has been cheated out of the taxes owed. Of course these stocks are real wealth. We could buy an expensive house by selling these stocks although there are escape clauses here which would be removed. The principle here is that all wealth, lying around anywhere, would be taxable every year, at least the accumulated wealth for that particular year. The earlier wealth has already been taxed. There would be no loop holes whatsoever. If a stock portfolio increased in value by $20,000 then taxes will have to be paid on that $20,000. If your stock portfolio fell by $20,000 then a $20,000 wealth reduction will be available. Even I will whine about this, and maybe the loudest, but no one is going to stop investing in stocks or other adventures likely to increase our wealth. Sure, we could just put a lot of cash in a suitcase instead of investing it and our wealth would not then increase at all because of that suitcase of money doesn’t grow. 

Next, the ability of the wealthy to finance select politicians for office and have an army of lobbyists influencing elections will be ended. No more phony propagandistic media ads and TV. Defining issues will be limited to actual debates between candidates and this be free. Voting will be a duty just like paying income tax is a duty. Voting will last two weeks and a person is free to vote anytime in that two weeks by going to the designated local place to vote. If there is a safe way to do it online that would be ok too. Since the Government will have a list of all citizens, and all citizens have to vote, a lot of money will be saved from getting out the vote, and the money collected from fining those who don’t vote will make it a win-win for everyone except the professional brain washers and their disingenuous ads. 

Primaries will be done away with. No one wants to put up with these primaries which go on for years and attract all kind of weirdos as candidates. Most competent candidates for office are not going to go through years of campaigning to get on the ballot. Party leaders will choose their candidates at party conventions in August like it used to be and then there is just two months for TV debates between the candidates.

Politics will be removed from picking a Supreme Court Judge. All judges who qualify to be a Supreme Court Judge will be candidates. Right now I am not sure who best judges which potential candidates qualify. Anyway, all the qualified names go into a hat and when there is a vacancy a name is pulled out of the hat. Nothing could be worse than the present system. And Supreme Judges would have to retire at age 65. Let the next generation preserve rights and determine what is law. 

We need to pause here and remind ourselves of the overall goal in these domestic changes. It is assumed here that no society can long survive in which 2-5% of it’s citizens own 90% of the wealth. No society can long survive in which most of Government ‘welfare’ costs go to the already affluent. No peaceful and economically flourishing multi-cultural society can exist until most all it’s citizens have productive work and livable wages. No society is likely to achieve full employment when many citizens need work two jobs in order to survive. When 43% of Americans don’t earn enough money to qualify to pay federal income tax, just what kind of behavioral and attitudinal culture would we expect to emerge?  The kind of changes needed today in our political structure rival the kind of changes needed when our country moved from a confederation of states to a republic under the original constitution. 

Here is how dire our situation has become. We just elected a President who made billions of dollars by inheriting a few million for start-up money (all of which is unearned money for the receiver), then makes millions, all legally, by stiffing workers and investors by declaring a series of bankruptcies, each time ending up worth millions more while having to pay no income tax for at least 18 years. Here is a man who literally trashes individuals and whole groups of people as his primary personality. He never misses a chance to brag about how much money he has made, or in a political debate brags he has paid no income tax for years because he is ‘smart’, and parades some sort of trophy wife around and virtually turns the wheels of our government over to a cabal of rich ‘brats’. His first proposal for tax reform was to lower the tax rate from 35% to 15% for people who own businesses like himself. Statistics seem to show it is the workers who are suffering not the owners, although even more and more owners are being forced to close their businesses. We have waited more than 50 years for trickle-down economics to work.  Only the rich still insist it works. 

Historically, as more machines of some sort were invented to do work humans used to do by hand, one of the benefits was the working hrs per week went down steadily from like 80 to 40hrs per week and then mysteriously stopped going down. Why is this? With more and more inventions surfacing why isn’t the work week down to maybe 30/hrs per week. 30 hrs per week would make it more realistic for us to achieve full employment at livable wages. One thing is for sure. Full employment at 30 hrs per week would drastically reduce the now pandemic chronic stress syndrome in our current society. With living wages it would be illegal for a person to hold more than one job. To  permit this makes it very difficult to have full employment.  One point seems clear. The 2-5% who own 90% of our wealth are still not satisfied. Many got so rich by compulsive behaviors toward wealth and power. On top of this our government is now too weak to set limits and force much of that money back into society for others to subsequently flourish economically. Economic collapse along with chaos in the streets seems inevitable and is only a question of when. 

Trials in this country have become a sorry mess. Jury of our peers?  Hardly. Lawyers make a sick game out of the jury system by having the right to dismiss a prospective juror for any reason, including the guy might be too bright and see through the defense or prosecution. Or he/she might be the wrong race, the wrong profession, and so on. The only person who should be able to dismiss a prospective juror is the judge. And where is fairness when one murder trial is over in a couple of hours and another goes on for three months?  In the last 50 years we haven’t created a better society, just the biggest prison population in world history. We are 5% of the world’s population and have 25% of the world’s prisoners in our jails. We have gone on for more than 50 years throwing young ghetto kids into jail, often with mandatory sentences, for selling marijuana, a recreational drug which is only now becoming legal. Let’s acknowledge that throwing any young person in jail for a mandatory ten years is a death sentence. The odds of them leading any kind of productive life is slim to none. 

So, in this area all recreational drug abuse will be considered a medical problem and there will be Drug abuse centers all over the country to assist victims with their problem, not just a few treatment centers for the affluent and their kids. Every child will be considered precious. And science, not the police or the politicians will set drug policies. Science will rank drugs in regards to toxicity, not the silly notion that whatever recreational drugs the majority uses will be legal, and any recreational drug used by a minority made illegal. Citizens need to understand that recreational drug abuse is simply a way to alter a mental state which is unpleasant and has become unbearable. Whatever is causing the unpleasant mental state needs to be addressed for successful treatment. This is not an easy challenge but is the only avenue for real success.  The real tragedy is that we have allowed so many aspects of life in so many communities to be so stressful, filled with so many dead ends, that far too many people turn to a particular recreational drug for relief. Not all turn to drugs. Some turn to religion and convince themselves that God operates in mysterious ways, and that if they just hang in there Heaven will await them after death. Whether this is good, bad, or just sad is debatable. Others will attend all kinds of workshops which will teach people how to successfully develop the illusion that everything is really ok and they can be happy about their reality not being ok. We all have known people whose life is depressing them, not a lot of things falling their way, and yet suddenly, despite nothing much changing in their lives, they appear in public with this bright and cheerful ‘what a wonderful day, the birds are singing, the sun is out, and I am so lucky to be alive today.’ Ok, we know this forced effort to be so positive does not have a long shelf live. Some people spend their entire life jumping from one ‘training’ seminar to another. Is this bad? Hard to say, but for sure the best solution is always to find a way for a person to have success with their priorities and goals. 

This is a whole new industry in the making if we ever seriously try to help people with their drug abuse, their compulsive behaviors, their addictions of any sort, and provide them skills so they can gain meaningful employment. There are so many avenues, all costing money, which we can, as a society, travel down to make life better for the maximum number of citizens. But we can never find the money to do these things if we insist it is ok for 2-5% of citizens to own 90% of our wealth. And we can never achieve any kind of prosperous and peaceful society if we can’t find ways to effectively impose global responsible reproduction. Then add that enough citizens cannot find decent wage jobs until there are global minimum wages. Finally, we  need develop a culture in which people buy into understanding when enough is enough for so many aspects of life in which we end up with compulsive behaviors, chasing contentment down all the wrong paths. We even have a President now who has excelled in compulsive behaviors to the degree he is round the clock angry at just about everybody and everything all the time, never missing a chance to put others down, insult them, take advantage of everyone in every situation—calling it the art of the deal—-where the object with every interaction is to make sure the other person or side gets the short end of the stick. The mentality he fosters upon his own citizens is a toxic culture which encourages violence, dishonesty, disrespect, intolerance, hatred, and an obsessive drive to constantly punish anyone different from their own mirror image. Trump is the King of ‘family values’ and outside that family circle everyone else is the enemy. The atmosphere he is creating is more dangerous than his specific policy positions which change daily depending on which policy gives him an advantage with whatever the immediate goal at hand at the moment.

This musing will end now, not because all aspects of domestic policies have been covered, but because this is enough to illustrate the many fronts we need to address.  Also, there is no pretense here to claim any real in depth expertise in these varied suggestions. Whatever skills I have, however modest, have always been the ability to see the bigger picture rather than the endless details. The devil is always in the details so probably every area addressed in this musing would need to be tweaked when it comes to the precise details to implement the addressed objectives.