One Huge Soap Opera

One Huge Soap Opera

There are times when I think my existence overdid the diversity bit associated with the Evolutionary Process. It seems likely that most people feel personal inadequacies of various sorts at various periods in their life. To some extent it seems that happiness for us depends on unhappiness of others for survival and depth. The confusion and frustrations of our formative years usually give way to goals, personal growth, competition with others, social complexities, sexual peculiarities, the search for power, accumulation of power and recognition, ethical challenges, friendship, love, hobbies, and of course personal contentment. 

If we have considerable gratitude about life it is primarily because we know so many others who suffered a lot in life. We just can’t be constantly happy because happiness depends on escaping all sorts of things which create despair and sadness. I chauffeured for an extremely wealthy lady widow one summer whose whole genetic clan wreaked with money and material benefits. It is no exaggeration to say not a single member of this clan was happy by any measure of the word. They were always angry about something, seldom anything of real importance, and bitterly complained about everybody and everything. My only official responsibility was to chauffeur her around the city on Tuesdays and stay home Saturday night when the maid was off. 

The most intense exercise almost everyday was the endless attempt by the rich widow to catch the maid eating some of the good bacon, which was reserved for her, not to be touched by the maid. She liked to bare her soul to me every chance she got. I didn’t dislike her, she was plenty nice enough to me, but it was pitiful to see someone, wallowing in wealth, so unhappy. 

It took me a lifetime to comprehend that wealth, power, social position, good looks, athletic prowess, titles, brilliance——none of this generated anything more than temporary elevated spirits, and more often permanent emotional states like eventual depression, frustration, anger, distrust in others, etc. We all know it is not unusual for the rich to have drug addictions as an attempt to change their unpleasant emotional states.

Of course those living in our ghetto hell holes have an even worse fate. No need here to list all their tribulations. 

Ironically, most of us have no regrets for all the efforts, stress, progress we made in our productive years. If we don’t have goals and the needed effort/talent/help to achieve some of these goals, then we will have nothing to reflect back on that will give us some gratitude for our lives when we reach our terminational years. It is almost like everything is a catch-22. Damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. Most things in life at times seem rather unreal yet need to be muddled through one way or another. 

No matter how energetic we were about so many things in our productive years, if we can’t logically and emotionally understand when enough is enough, this spells trouble for our remaining years. When someone says “Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to work for a living during our productive years?”, it is a tad ridiculous. It is important that we set some career goals for our productive years and find some success. Maybe the goal is to raise children or have career success, or invent something, or help those less fortunate, or win athletic contests, or in some way be significant at something. To fail across the board spells trouble for our emotional state.

Our American culture puts to much emphasis on individual talent and making our own way in life. Diversity has a huge negative drawback. That is, there can be no maximum achievement of contentment for the maximum number of citizens without the maximum percentage of citizens living by the Golden Rule. The Golden rule makes winners out of everyone—both the givers and the receivers. Of course we try to make it a lot more difficult—throwing into the mix inherited religions, political preferences, cultural lifestyles, ethnicity, personal talents, personal looks, and so on. 

I recently started to watch this TV series via Netflix titled Grey’s Anatomy which lasted I guess for many seasons. If you are not familiar with this TV series then the following will be meaningless to you.  At first I thought it was a real interesting show with interesting and somewhat plausible medical events taking place in a hospital, along with the daily lives of some interns and doctors. But after about the first season I began to become annoyed that it really was a glorified soap opera. The actors were superb and while any of the emotional interactions which were happening to varied staff members were plausible enough and stressful enough to happen to anyone, all these stressful personal interactions were happening to the same staff members one after the other, hardly a realistic situation. Earlier in evenings I tend to watch DVD lectures on serious topics by professional experts on the topic in question. But by midnight I am ready for simple amusement, not quality concentration, so I put on a netflix video. 

To date I am still watching episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and try to figure out why. I know the audience is being played via steering us to varied emotions about characters we have learned to have an interest. For my own part, my productive years were endlessly mired in departmental problems, student problems, immediate family problems, hearings, grants——and being single probably more involved to a greater extent than other faculty. All I really was obligated to do was teach my classes and go home, a relatively stress free life. For varied reasons I kept my social life to a bare minimum, a whole ‘nother’ matter. Constantly being in the ‘mix’ of things is chronically stressful. In my case, when a retirement opportunity arrived (special deal for those a certain age) I grabbed it and eagerly set the ground work for serious semi-hermithood. 

This effort for semi-hermithood (patterned after my dad with writing musings the only difference)succeeded for the most part with few, if any, exceptions. The truth is I enjoy my simple daily routine immensely—precisely because it is stress free.  I have no immediate family left living, no student problems to solve, no departmental matters to address, no obligatory meetings, no title, no hearings, no involvement in matters of any sort except deciding how best to amuse myself everyday in peaceful satisfying ways. 

Given the above why would I watch episodes of Grey’s Anatomy which really triggers emotional feelings towards all these characters with so many stressful events in their lives, one after the other? Something seems a tad strange here. My conclusion is that these are fictional persons, and so whatever they all are up to or whatever is happening in their lives does not involve anyone I, or anyone can personally know. There is absolute certainty that I personally cannot resolve any of these emotional situations being carried out before my eyes, so I can safely have very temporary emotional responses which crisply end immediately after the episode is over. There is zero carry-over.  In real life there are serious carry-overs which pushes one to get involved to aid a best outcome. 

The first romantic encounter between a new intern and a popular surgeon separated from his wife, occurred in the first episode before they met each other on the job, and then it took probably 15 episodes to resolve whether they would ever become a real couple, and then every member of the cast ends up in emotional situations which are masterfully dragged out for a whole new series of episodes. Clearly all this will go on and on and on. Maybe I will stop watching, or maybe it is just a harmless way to be reminded just how stressful life can be in its productive stage. 

I sense, for most people, the productive years need be stressful in order to achieve anything of much note and yet we need at some point to understand when ‘enough is enough’. It won’t be at the same point for all of us, but if we can’t let go we will end up in our terminational years with emotional stresses which we no longer have the title or institution, or energy, or power to control. If we cannot position ourselves to go down the stream gently in our terminational years it will not be a pleasant journey. If we have not secured financial independence and protected our state of health, bad situations beyond our control at that point can be the wrench which messes up the best laid plans. 

If I could make the same points without personalizing a musing of this sort I would. On the other hand I write musings for my own personal benefit—period. Writing things out always works best for me to achieve the best and most logical conclusions. Of course these conclusions may change over time, but for the most part, given my age, they do not. It has been my peculiarities in life as the source for many people to comment, “I don’t understand what you are up to most of the time, but you do seem to achieve good endings  in the end. Just don’t drag me into this personally unless it becomes a necessity. You can’t come to this well  too often or it will dry up.” Of course all this is paraphrased in order to condense the substance.

I am rather proud to report that no one need give me this caution anymore and no-one has had to for years. It is the next generation who race around like chickens with their heads cut off, dealing with all sorts of challenges which lie in front of them. It is just like Greys’ Anatomy——Good theatre, albeit real theatre, and just like Grey’s Anatomy the episodes drag out unmercifully ad nausea. But it is no longer on my watch. I am not worried—evolution moves on like it always has. Will it ever end? I don’t know and I don’t care—I mean how can the dead care?    

   

“Violence Begets Violence”

“Violence Begets Violence”

The following URL is reflective of a changing global culture, and in this case, just where the tensions are heading as our own society is becoming a seething cauldron of anger between the have’s and the have-nots. For more than a decade now I have been harping away using the phrase “violence begets violence”. The problem with using violence to punish these ‘have-nots’, raised in ever expanding rural, suburban, and urban ghettoes is simply this: violence is no deterrent for those raised in environments where violence is rampant and poverty reigns.

While it is true that people have for ages lived in poor environments with hardly any material comforts, they did, for the most part, live off the land, or had menial jobs which paid them enough to have enough food to eat, some meager shelters to live in, had a relatively safe community environment, and they had decent community schools to attend—often not the best, but at least minimally functional. 

As a physiologist I have been harping on what happens to a person, especially someone in their formative years, when they live in an environment which creates chronic high levels of stress hormones in their body. Every system, but especially the central nervous system, is negatively affected by the chronic presence of these hormones. The ability to handle this varies from person to person, but for many the nervous system ‘derangement’ is significant and affects their learning ability, their memory, their emotional state, their attitudes, their social skills etc. By the time they are teenagers there is often little ‘normal’ about their mental state. Only at that point does our society finally direct some attention to these ‘kids’ and for the most part that means jail, at the average cost of $30,000/yr/prisoner.  

The whole purpose of the formative years is to provide a proper environment for body systems to develop properly. Unfortunately, many of the ‘defects’ are not likely to be correctable after the formative years. Thus we have a huge population of young, mostly incorrigible socially damaged products of environments which we should never have allowed to fester, grow, and become even worse. And surprise—these end products of our ghettoes rarely make good parents. Thus, those who put all the blame on parenting are being a tad silly. On top of this, all these people now have smart phones, internet access, and media gadgets which make them aware constantly, all day long, how the have’s live compared to how they live, and the anger grows. Anger and poor formative years environments do not mix well. On top of that, job opportunities often don’t exist, and if they did, who is going to hire them—their mental state is often emotionally and conceptually unstable. We already have put in jail so many people in the U.S. that we now have 25% of people globally in jail, in our own jails. Multiply the number of people in our jails times $30,000 per year/inmate and the cost is astronomical. 

Because the increased violence and the nature of the violence has been increasing slowly over the last couple of decades we feel powerless and numbed by it all. This kind of street violence and terroristic types of acts are not unrelated. Most of the terroristic acts in the United States are not being done by foreigners. Terrorism, by its very nature, is virtually impossible to stop. Any of us, if our goal is just to kill a bunch of strangers, could do so most anytime, wherever we find a bunch of people. How do you get tough with people who actually plan to die with their violent or terroristic acts? In some respects, they were raised like animals, they live like animals and they they often die like animals—being killed by engaging in acts of violence.

The answer is clear—you don’t solve the problem via violence. We have proven that well enough in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, South America, Africa, the entire Middle East——our War on Drugs—our mandatory prison sentences— and our increasing physical police assaults on innocent citizens who ‘look’ like they might be products of these rural, suburban, or urban ghettoes. 

We have effectively ‘walled’ off the have-nots from our own daily lives. For all practical purposes we simply have isolated the ‘haves’ and the have-nots. When 2-5% of citizens own 90% of our country’s wealth, it simply verifies that we don’t have the right priorities, that we have let too many young children grow up in these ghettoes where we do not give them good health care, good schools, good teachers, a safe environment, job opportunities—-but rather let be social environments which are as toxic as they are stressful. 

The URL below is not something where most people are going to read each article. This newspaper is just for one city—New Orleans, and I think just is one weekend of ‘activity’. I went to read about one incident and was stunned to see I could scroll down and I don’t think I even had the patience to scroll down far enough to get to the end. I mean ‘wow’, can implosion of our whole society be far behind?

Will I be able to get through my terminational years before such an implosion? Obama kept things fairly quiet with his empathy to various groups, but he never could find a way to reign in the wealthy and spread the wealth out more reasonably, so which group (have’s or have not’s) is going to teach the other group a lesson they will never forget seems right on the horizon. If history is any lesson, the have’s, with so much to protect, always lose to the the have-nots who have nothing to protect. One side has a massive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, and the other side has violence and terrorism as their weapons—PLUS the have-not’s now are well armed with gadgets which will make “roving’ riots the possible and eventual strategy on their part. The police and national guard can’t be everywhere at once. Then what do we do?  For the moment it beats me. 

One thing about the evolutionary process. None of us can ever know when we will get the short end of the stick. The wheel of fortune spins, much as it did for our birth, progress will continue to be achieved on evolutionary time, not human time, while individuals of any species will be tossed around at random until the laws which govern the evolutionary process weed out the good from the bad, with temporary setbacks en route——but in the end, progress is achieved, opening the door for a new and better product. Will this process ever end? Well, for us yes, but then individuals were never the focal point of the process. I prefer that I be more important, but all things considered, I will accept enough is enough, and having no choice, will accept my own brief existence sacrificed for the best interests of the whole evolutionary process. It is what it is, so be it. 

http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/crime_police/article_3a4917b4-5b3f-11e7-b336-e76679525c42.html

Vintage pics 3

Vintage pics 3

Vintage Photos

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Bill Cosby and the Criminality of Sex

Bill Cosby and the Criminality of Sex

Few things are more difficult to write about then sex. Logic, common sense, facts—all of which contribute to comprehension, are to varying degrees missing in the topic of sex. Nothing varies more than the way we end up wired about our sexual drive, our sexual turn-ons, our sexual orientations. Religions have tried to encode strict sexual norms with abysmal failure. Societies encode all sorts of laws which govern sexual behavior with little success. While sexuality is a part of our lives, sometimes a compulsive reckless part, this aspect of our behavior varies all over the place. With most other species, hormones get produced, sexual acts of a very predictable and usually short duration occur, and that is that—the species generates replacements which keep the species existing. 

Of course, not with humans—our brains get involved, and sex plays a major role in most of our lives. We end up with feelings, not about how to reproduce, but how to maximize our enjoyment from sex. Not all human sexual activities ( any porn site will give many dozens of categories for this enjoyment) have anything to do with reproduction. I reckon it is easy enough to explain to a pre adolescent child just how new babies are produced, but it would be futile to take the list of varied sexual activities listed on a porn site and explain why this might be so enjoyable. Did I say enjoyable?  Probably the wrong word as there is very little smiling during sex, and when there is laughter the activity isn’t going well. Actually, we can’t explain all this variation as adults. If we do not have  a foot fetish, how can we feel anything but aversion to the activity?  We certainly cannot understand or appreciate why someone engages in a sexual activity which we have aversion to. Tolerance doesn’t come easy. 

Even mixing love and sex is a quagmire. We could be totally in love with a person only to find their sexual preferences are something over the top for our own inclinations. Not only that, but over time, our own sexual drives and preferences may change. Today the quagmire here just becomes more complex. With internet porn, every individual can find something tailored to their sexual interests at any stage in their life, including little sexual interest by not watching any porn. Some individuals can’t have any intense orgasm except from porn. Remember when it was difficult as a child to gain any access to nudity let alone any sexual acts? How many couples exist oblivious to what their partner really feels about varied sex acts? It is usually said a parent should talk to their kids about sex. I suppose if that means explaining the mechanics of how babies come to be, that is certainly true. But does that mean talking about oral sex, or submissive/dominant roles, anal sex, foot fetishes, etc.? When a child is old enough to start dating, these kind of issues will surface in some way, or to some degree. and I guess, when it happens, a young person is just on his/her own—no parent can make any of it clear to us. 

Sex tends to make emotional fools out of all of us. Sex and love we are led to believe go together, that sex is a good thing given to us by God. Really? Clearly God didn’t do us any favor by having so much variation in potential avenues in which to achieve sexual satisfaction. Not too many animals spend time experimenting or discussing exactly what type of sexual activity works best for them.Slam bam, thank you ma’am/dude, is pretty much the mode of operation in the animal world. But not for humans.

It should not therefore, based on all the above, come as any surprise that sex trials are so complicated and somewhat farcical.  Take ‘date rape’. In most cases, how the hell can this be decided fairly if we were not present?  We basically would end up deciding which one we would least like to see punished, and this feeling has little, if any, factual basis.  

It goes without much discussion that we all know sexual drives and specific sexual preferences vary all over the place. It still may well have been said best by a lady from England, once was quoted as having said: “I don’t care what they do as long as they don’t do it in the street and scare the horses.”Maybe (but highly unlikely) she is the same English gal who is quoted: “When I hear him coming down the hallway I just close my eyes, spread my legs, and think of England”. While we may not smile a lot during sex, we do smile a lot about it otherwise. More jokes are about sex than any other topic. Someone once stated: “God must have a sense of  humor because He/She invented human sex.”

Sex may be humorous but trials based on sexual matters are usually dead serious, and so are often the consequences.  Before we proceed to the Cosby case, we need note a couple of puzzling aspects of sexual activities.  Not only does the amount of pleasure vary tremendously, but so does just how upsetting it is to have sex with someone you don’t desire.  Some people make a living by having sex with whoever is willing to pay for it. Doesn’t bother them to have sex every day with some total stranger, no matter their attractiveness. We say sex is a blessed gift from God, but then we say someone who has sex with the ugly for money is a sinner. I mean, who else is going to have sex with the ugly?  It almost sounds more like charity rather than a sin. But then being paid to engage in sex doesn’t make it a charity. If some attractive young gal has sex every day with the ugliest guy they could find that day, and doesn’t charge, are they saints?  Then comes the question of psychological damage from being forced to have sex. Some get raped and virtually shrug it off like having a purse being grabbed is shrugged off. Others remain psychologically damaged for life.

I often take long walks through varied city neighborhoods (not the known worst areas) and people say this is nuts. Well, I tend to dress like I have already been mugged.  Of course I have every right to parade around any neighborhood dressed all up in fine manner. But I don’t out of common sense. Some criticize women if they dress too sexually provocative and feel, “well, they were attracting rapists.”  But they also have every right to dress that way. So have we now resolved the questions here? Of course not. And I don’t have the answers either. Most parents get upset if their teenage gal or son dresses to emphasize their ’sexiness’. Hard to think of any other age when being sexy is not more important to the person. 

So now let’s take a look at the Bill Cosby case. About 50 women have accused him of raping them, usually after giving them drugs in a drink.  But only one case is recent enough to be inside the statute of limitations. If 50 women said he did this, then the odds are great he did. Cosby did not exactly pop out of the bushes and grab the nearest object of his sexual desire. As far as I can tell they were all career women seeking advancement in the entertainment industry, in one role or another. When Cosby was acquitted I was surprised and angry. 

But maybe it is best to view how sexual actions are currently viewed by citizens in our country.Most probably feel that adults are entitled to participate in any sexual activity which is consensual. What about sex for money?  Here it starts to get real cloudy. The lowly prostitute is at the very least considered a nuisance and most probably think prostitution should be illegal. On the other hand most everyone thinks if two adults want to marry they should be allowed to do so, period. Even gays have finally achieved that right. But what about someone who marries for social position, lifestyle, or money—is this ok? The law clearly says it is ok. Thus, legalized sex, in these situations is ok for money or lifestyle. A trophy wife does not marry someone because their chosen husband is the most handsome, brightest, or most charming personality available. It becomes sex for a lot of money and lavish lifestyle. So sex for a lot of money becomes legal, sex for a small amount of money on a one time basis is illegal. Really confusing. 

It can be carried even further: suppose one person marries another because he/she feels she can tolerate the sex and social relationship long enough to then divorce and receive enough money to live comfortably the rest of their life. All of this is legal and perhaps even a good business decision.I mean some people end up fighting in like in Iraq or Afghanistan and come back with no such comparable benefits for the rest of their life. Compared to being married to someone hard to tolerate for two years, then getting a financially comfortable lifestyle for the rest of their years, this seems to beat serving in a foreign war for two years. Interesting. 

Now let’s examine current attitudes toward sexual affairs on the side.  “Smith conducted the highly respected study “American Sexual Behavior,” a poll of 10,000 people over two decades. The study found that 22 percent of married men and 15 percent of married women have cheated at least once — similar to the results from the MSNBC.com/iVillage survey.”  “15 percent of men (though only 7 percent of women) have engaged in online sex or sexual Webcamming, which 66 percent of people consider to be cheating.”

“In that same CWLP study, 34% of executive women claim they know a female colleague who has had an affair with a boss.  Furthermore, 15% of women at the director level or above admitted to having affairs themselves.And worse, 37% claim the action was rewarded: they said that women involved in affairs received a career boost as a result.  A Business Insider survey of about 2,500 respondents indicated that 54 percent have had sex with a coworker.” (Business Insider)

With this as background, assuming it has some validity, what does this portend how a jury will view the Cosby case? At least a few jury members are likely to have had affairs themselves or know someone who they think got a career advancement via a sexual affair. Most people probably assume that “Hollywood” career situations generate an unusually high degree of using sex to advance career or lifestyle. Certainly media portrayals of the entertainment industry presents sexual dalliances as common. So here we have 50 women, none of whom reported a sexual incident which they now consider abominable. Cosby was no stranger to any of them. A high number of movies and TV shows depict using social settings as a means to meet and effectuate a sexual experience for career or social advancement. Without the drugging purported to have occurred, the case would be viewed by some on any jury to be following the typical media script as to what goes down in Hollywood. A few jurors might even wish they were a star and could pull off sexual experiences with hundreds of women of their momentary choice. Why, our President Trump bragged that, with his public stature, he could just grab pussy when he felt attracted to a female within range. I don’t recall any of them pressing charges, I mean “Trump will be Trump”. 

Whether we like it or not, or whether this should be or not, a lot of people justify a lot of things done to others by “well that is just the reality of how things work.” We in our society are now having to live with the reality we collectively have created. Trump could admit relating to women by just walking up and grabbing their pussy and enough people shrug it off and make him President. Like it or not, some people who don’t behave like that wish they were in a position to do so. Some can rant that no one in their right mind would vote for someone like Trump, but yes—plenty of people who have lived during the Presidencies of Reagan, Bushes, Nixon, Clinton, and Obama for the last 50 years——and having seen their wages shrivel, job security vanish, pensions disappear, their salaries not keeping pace with the cost of living, employment opportunities shrink, non livable wages in many cases, the need to work more than one job, every decade living in neighborhoods less safe, poor health care, poor schools, and so on—are going to vote against the status quo and vote for someone who is just as angry as they are and even tells off every established politician in crude, infantilized fashion.

So yes, I guess I can imagine some jurors refusing to convict. In their minds I suppose Cosby was just a fool to use drugs. I mean, he was Bill Cosby, there were plenty enough women available who would give it up as an honor that someone as famous and ‘good’ wanted to sex them. It would be something to brag about: “Yeah, I been around, even slept with Bill Cosby a few times. In their minds, “If these gals were so upset by what happened why didn’t they press charges?  They probably are upset they got no career advancement from it and now have the opportunity to become famous in the name of women’s rights, so they jump aboard. Too late, the train left the station long ago.”Frankly, and I don’t even know Frank, I have always been surprised how hard it is for women to attain equal rights. Black males had the right to vote roughly 60 years before women got the right to vote. Equal pay is getting better but still lags behind. We got a black President before we ever will get a woman President, and they barely hang on to the right to control their own bodies in the case of pregnancy. Most pro-lifers are really just pro birth and could care less what happens to a child after birth and will vote against any measures to provide poor kids good schools, good neighborhoods, good health, and so on. Pro-life is not very appealing if it means a poor life from the git-go.

Women, compared to other groups, rarely stick together. They seem to be their own worst enemy. Who could possibly be more of a chauvinist than Donald Trump?  And plenty of women chose Trump over a female President. Many of the rural poor voted for Trump because at least he is angry and doesn’t bullshit us that he is going to bring a better life to our doorstep. Maybe it is designed to happen that our whole society will implode and everything start over from the bottom up. It is creepy to me that some will engage in sex with someone they are not attracted to sexually and do so for reasons mentioned previously. That so many people, male and female, will do so makes it pretty hard to convict an ugly-ass fool, lacking the sexual appeal of those who can behave in such a way with no repercussions. I can faintly hear those two holdouts, “Poor ugly ass Bill Cosby, he tried to sexually do to endless women what a lot of Hollywood stars do all the time, and he had to get it via the help of drugs. Others, more sexually appealing, do this sort of thing all the time. I ain’t gonna convict him while all the others receive no punishment.” Or perhaps these two holdouts feel, “Hey there but for the grace of God goes I. I vote to acquit”. 

Thus, the behavior in question is not so uncommon, so getting a unanimous verdict will be tough. 

Over time it is already changing because more and more women are willing to object at the time of occurrence—just like bad police behavior will go down now that cameras are everywhere. Male sexual behavior against females is tough to discipline in a court room just as bad  police behavior is difficult to discipline in a court room. Both behaviors are likely to go down for reasons outside pure logic or fairness. So all is not lost—unless you are poor living in a rural, suburban, or urban ghetto, then there is no light at the end of the tunnel. This is a sure sign that terrorism will continue and increase at a precipitous rate. Implosion of all advanced nations seems a well predicted lesson from human history. Tis a pity. Our society doesn’t seem to grasp that letting our ghettoes grow and deteriorate even further, gated away from more affluent society, will sooner than later, implode our own society.

Where does the blame go for dismissal of police brutality and sexual misconduct? It probably lies with the general public. Individually we of course are not the general public. But comprehending the ‘general public’ is not easy. A few years ago a proposition was on the ballot in the state of Washington which would have increased taxation on the very wealthy in order to pay down the state debt. It failed by a sizable margin. Yet, if the question on the ballot had been: “Is it unacceptable to have 2-5% of our citizens own 90% of our wealth?” I assume most people would say “yes”. So there is often a huge disconnect between what people believe abstractly and what they do in reality. Most people would love to be wealthy and I guess therefore admire those who are wealthy and this admiration allows the wealthy to keep a firm grip on all three branches of government. Interesting. 

A sizable percentage of our population has negative feelings about a lot of minorities of varied ilk, whether it be race, religion, culture, dress, music, etc. Hardly any of us are completely free from this. People raised in ghettoes tend to commit more crimes and develop bad social attitudes. Minorities tend to make up a good percentage of people who live in these urban, suburban, or rural ghettoes. Even though whites make up a huge majority of rural ghettoes, they are not really mainstream white and have developed hostile attitudes toward mainstream culture. In jury trials the members are not always going to shed hostile attitudes. People, and this means most people, would not even think about taking a stroll through urban, suburban, or rural ghettoes. Few people are emotionally neutral about every diversity. If I am spending a day walking in a city neighborhood and see, for example, a handful of gangster looking young men coming down the sidewalk, I usually cross to the other side of the street.  And I do this even though my career brought me into contact with many young blacks from unsafe neighborhoods. The truth is that most people who live in these dangerous neighborhoods are not dangerous at all. They are really good people trapped in an environment from which most of them will never escape. I once asked a young man dressed like a ‘wilding’ young thug from a ghetto, “Why do you dress like this and yet are seeking an education to escape from this kind of environment?”  His answer was simple: “I live where I live and have to be out on the streets to get anywhere. The best way to be personally safe is to dress so that others are afraid to mess with you.”  Sad, simply sad.  

I need bring this to an end. The point here is that if I am afraid of some blacks, then on a jury, I tend to accept a white policeman should be afraid of blacks and may over-react and behave violently out of fear. It is kind of the attitude, “I wouldn’t want to be a policeman in that area so I just can’t punish him for any misconduct.” And for Bill Cosby, some jurors are going to see sex being used all the time as the basis for human behavior, including trophy spouses, engaging in sex for career advancement, using titles and power as access to endless sexual conquests, etc. If Bill Cosby had the looks of Eddie Murphy or Robert Redford he wouldn’t need to use drugs to achieve sexual conquests. How many jurists would believe gals who had sex with Eddie Murphy didn’t want to do it? A cynical jurist would probably ‘feel’ that these women understood what Cosby was up to from the start, ran the risk because having sex with him might further their career and be a ticket to a broader social life with important people in the industry. Well, unpleasant sex in their mind, is a small price to pay. Later on, they could deeply resent the lack of return they achieved via being used as a sexual object. 

In the last analysis, the many games our society plays with sex as a tool for achieving something, makes trials about sexual behaviors somewhat hopeless. There will always tend to be some jurors who will feel ‘so what else is new here? This sucker just tried to behave like others who with better looks do all the time. He is just a fool, that’s his only crime. They tried to use him and failed to get the results they wanted and this is all about revenge.”

If modernity gets to the point where people can hook themselves up to certain gadgets, then watch porn and will get a sexual experience that exceeds real sex encounters——What happens to real sex? Maybe then real sex will actually only be used to procreate. Given the huge size of the porn industry, perhaps we are already half way there.  Life has always been good theatre, but the intensity of life today on so many fronts, is a whole new ballgame. Too much, too often, everyday, all day, makes it difficult to control our own destiny. Garbage in, garbage out. In slower, simpler times, individuals had no choice but to spend considerable time mulling every aspect of life over. Today, depending on what programming is being crammed into our central nervous system non stop, our feelings and understanding about just about everything is far less likely to b a product of our own contemplated thoughts. 

A lot of people, and obviously Bill Cosby, develop compulsive behaviors which need medical treatment. In a society now inundated with an information overload, compulsive behaviors are far more common, and we need medical centers across the country to help people with whatever compulsive behaviors are out of control. This would be expensive and clearly not going to be a priority in the near future. Ironically, putting people in jail for unacceptable compulsive behaviors isn’t exactly cheap either, not to mention the pure uselessness of this approach. 

     

The Age of Human Self-Serving Angry Irrationality

The Age of Human Self-Serving Angry Irrationality

God’s laws which govern the evolutionary process make interesting theatre for our existence—sometimes good theatre and sometimes bad, but always on Evolutionary Time not on the human ‘little gleam of Time between two eternities’. The whole process operates much as Lincoln’s brilliance and strength—like a steel cable which goes from pt. A to pt. B, but not in a straight line—sometimes swaying this way and then that way, BUT ALWAYS eventually reaching pt. B. 

It is not human nature to deal with the above reality, and we invent a God who thinks like us, looks like us, has given the human species dominion over all other species, likes our species the best, and if we practice inherited religious rituals and scripture, will allow us to enter a Heaven after death. To ensure we get to Heaven we can be forgiven for any sins, even on our deathbed. No matter the particular human created religion, the whole thing begs any real logic or rationality. But religion is often our nature, our crutch, our pacifier—despite the cruel reality that our species, the first one ever, whose activity has created the 6th period of massive species extinction in evolutionary history. Hard to imagine this makes us God’s favorite species.  

Just when our scientific knowledge has grown at a mercurial rate, giving some people an amazing array of gadgets to elevate their standard of living or to overcome medical situations, it also carried with it the ability of 2-5% of people, for example in this country, to own 90% of our country’s wealth. This phenomenon is world wide with the stats a tad different. However, the rate of this imbalance is growing faster in the U.S. than any other industrialized society. Sad.

At the same time our planet suffers from human overpopulation. These two developments have generated a long sequence of events which hardly bode well in the immediate future for practically all species currently existing on our planet. It is not coincidence that more and more national leaders bear varying likenesses to Adolf Hitler. Just look at the leaders who will guide humanity through the next decades at a point when we have already crossed the thresholds on many fronts, which will create havoc that cannot be reversed any faster than the slow speed at which these situations developed. These leaders include Putin (Russia), Kim Jong-un (North Korea), Rodrigo Duterte (Philippines), Ali Khamenei (Iran), Bashar al-Assad (Syria), Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel),

Omar al-Bashir (Sudan),  Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed (Somalia), Joseph Kabila (Congo), Theresa May (Britain), Mamnoon Hussain (Pakistan), Faye al-Sarraj (libya), Donald Trump (U.S.) plus a lot of others whose names and countries are less known right now.

All of these ‘leaders’ have angry, intolerant, belligerent natures and seek to punish all sorts of groups within their own country and abroad. They are malignant fireballs of ill-will whose mental state is constantly a tirade of anger against everything and everybody except themselves. We now have two populations, one population living in the ‘best of all possible worlds’ and another population living in the ‘worst of all possible worlds’. The latter is growing exponentially. 

We live now in an age of unabated self serving greed—for power, for wealth, and an unethical obsession with ‘family values’—which means everything is viewed purely on what’s immediately best for ‘my family’—whatever group constitutes ‘my family’. It could be a genetic cabal, a religious cabal, an economic cabal, a nationalistic cabal, a cultural cabal, a racial cabal, an age cabal, etc. Most everywhere we look the wagons are being circled. 

It was the hope of so many, when Obama became President, that these dangerous mindsets would be reversed. After all, Obama seemed never to have met group of people for whom he did not try to make life better—more just, more peaceful, more opportunities, more goodwill toward everyone. So then why, many asked, did the people vote for Trump who admires no one but himself, is angry at just about everyone and everything, and hell bent on teaching all kinds of groups a lesson they won’t forget? The problem was, although Obama tried, he could not break the control the wealthy have over  American politics. Unable to break this control, the economic status of more and more people took a nose dive with their pensions, job security, job opportunities, living wages, and whose lives were becoming fiscally harder and harder to manage.  They turned angry—really angry. Kind and heartfelt words were no longer enough, and the only candidate who matched their anger was Donald Trump. “What have we got to lose at this point?”, many concluded—“let’s blow up the whole system and see what emerges, it just can’t be any worse.”  As usually happens in situations like this, anger begins to focus on all sorts of groups for getting perceived help that they weren’t before getting. It is one thing to see other groups getting more justice, opportunities, and acceptance, but it was perceived by more and more citizens as coming at their expense. Of course this was not true, the real problems were human overpopulation and the strangle hold the wealthy had on the wealth distribution in our nation. Neither problem was solved—and the greed of the wealthy for even more wealth drove more wealth to them at the expense of others—-which necessitated more and more of the middle class falling into poverty. Ironically, no one represents the greed of the wealthy more than Trump. He inherited millions and parlayed that into billions adroitly using a rigged system to stiff investors and contractors, while declaring bankruptcy multiple times—-each time legally becoming more and more wealthy while not having to pay any taxes for decades. 

Of course it was not logical for the frustrated masses to vote for Trump, but they just didn’t care, they just wanted something other than a continuation of their own fiscal decline. They lived through Reagan, the Bushes, Clinton, Ford, and Obama and their own personal financial situation just deteriorated at about the same pace. It was a frustration vote. Unfortunately for them, they just pulled the rope on their own trap door for hanging themselves. No party better represents the wealthy than the Republican Party.

As always, as individuals, we wonder what can we do to ensure a better future for ourselves, realizing that a better future depends on maximizing the contentment for the maximum number of inhabitants on this planet. It does not seem we can even know the answer in any real predictable fashion. As humans we are part of this evolutionary process, not the driving force. We can no more envision or predict the future than Lincoln could have predicted our present from his past time of existence. We all do ‘our thing’, driven by a real diverse cauldron of emotions and perceptions. The internet has become our Tower of Babel, our perceptions seen through the prism of our own experiences and diverse genetics and environments. Everyone is free to create ‘alternate facts’. We react, and the billions of reactions get sorted out by the evolutionary process and the process moves on. Sometimes in the process there are cruel corrections which can last thousands or millions of years before a new improved status arrives. The evolutionary process is the real object of God’s importance, not individuals of any species at any time in the process. It is difficult for us to accept that because at any time, in varied ways, each of us can suffer greatly by events beyond our personal control. This is not to say that our own actions can’t sometimes avoid or dampen the suffering, but there is no God taking us personally by the hand and leading us around the many land mines in life’s journey. 

Right or wrong I feel, at age 77, like an abundance of good luck enabled me to survive this long and have some modest successes. The next generation has to tackle the mess descending upon our planet. The blame game is silly and pointless. This is just how the evolutionary process works. Even our species cannot work it out via our own decisions, notwithstanding we always think we are in control. We are not.  We do the best we can, although we seldom do, and Time moves on. Time stays and we go. There is no tragedy here except on an individual basis. Even Lincoln ended up assassinated. It is not possible for any of us to earn any escape or reprieve from God’s laws which govern the evolutionary process. 

When I retired it was envisioned by myself that I would do all sorts of things to enrich my life and make it more exciting and contented. But contentment is a rather elusive state of mind, and the path to contentment is not the same for everyone. It seems clear enough to me that the extent of our contentment depends heavily upon life by the Golden Rule. Both sides win in this lifestyle, the recipient and the giver. We can give via direct contact, our time spent helping the less fortunate, and via sharing our wealth. For me a contented retirement was easy.  None of my hobbies, like writing musings, is expensive. Or my wandering walks, or my endless reading of biographies, or my time spent in nature, or my cooking. None of what I do since retirement directly involves helping less fortunate individuals. But I have my FANAFI Fund (Find A Need And Fill It) which provides yearly grants to worthwhile charities. More of my money goes there than anywhere else, and I get a lot of satisfaction from a situation in which I can amuse myself in pleasurable ways and yet spend more money on my FANAFI Fund without any real sacrifice. Sure, I could pester others to amuse me everyday. Sure, I could wander around some foreign country for a week OR provide the money for 2500 destitute children to get vaccines which may prevent they from dying from preventable diseases. If I were a tougher and braver nature, I could personally be part of the good people who attend hapless victims of horrible conflicts around the globe as do those in Doctors Without Borders. But lacking these admirable attributes I can at least help finance the efforts of those who do such good work. No aspect of nature impresses me more than the Redwood Forests—these trees have in some cases been around for thousands of years and their habitat is the best place to sense life from the far distant past. We are a part of nature, and seeking some kind of relationship with the process and it’s past helps us accept our role and appreciate the evolutionary process. So I also use my Fund to help protect these forests from human assault. We are, by nature, worse than locusts or pigs at a trough. And so it goes on, yearly grants which help those less fortunate than myself or protecting our environment. Gratitude is the mindset necessary to maximize our own sense of contentment. Something for nothing is universal—after all we all were born via the wheel of fortune. None of us ever earned our chance for existence and the fact we exist does not generate contentment, just the opportunity to acquire some contentment.  

The productive years can be very stressful, our objectives in life difficult to achieve, but achieving personal and meritorious goals in our productive years enables us to have more contentment in our terminational years. If we reach retirement having been little more than an inane social butterfly flitting around amusing ourselves with frivolous matters at some sort of dizzying pace, what degree of contentment can be achieved from that in our terminational years? If we live our lives as if life is all about us, we eventually pay a price for this mistaken notion. All we can ever hope to receive from life, of any importance, is a high degree of contentment. Nothing here is guaranteed. We play the cards in our hand as best we can, hope for enough luck along the way, and require help from others to achieve some success. Forget the silly ass self-serving lie that “I achieved my success the old fashioned way—I earned it”. Donald Trump believes that, and it would be hard to find anyone so angry about so many others and things. He has long lived a daily life of angry frenzy. The Golden Rule, understanding when enough is enough, a sense of gratitude, and a whole bunch of luck is maybe the only path that maximizes contentment. 

The many global forces bearing down on our planet have been going on for too long from too many directions for mere humans to effectively reverse these global forces which threaten humanity on a global basis. Democracy has become a farce. For 50 years we have invaded dozens of countries on borrowed money, at the same time expressing disingenuous concerns for the future of our own grandchildren. While progress had been made, substantial progress, on individual rights—the political parties simply debate whose base is to pay the cost for the debt we have been rolling up, whose base is going to get good education, get tax breaks and loopholes, and tax shelters. Sacrifice is going to come from the other party’s base. The main contest seems to be which base—the wealthy or the poor—are going beat the hell out of the other, one by squirreling away more of the nations’ wealth and the other upsetting the whole cart by social chaos in the streets. Few seem to realize, with modern communication devices, those living in rural, urban and suburban poverty will soon be able to coordinate roving riots just about everywhere and this battle—with one side having nothing to lose—and the other side having so much material wealth to protect, will find history has always been on the side of those with nothing left to lose. Many countries have already found out the police and army cannot be everywhere at once. Terrorism is unstoppable by its very nature. It has become the ‘weapon of mass destruction for the ‘have nots’. Violence begets violence has become the means by which problems are being solved—except of course this method simply is inoperative in our current times and situations. We now have 25% of the world’s prisoners in our own jails at a cost of $30,000/yr/per prisoner. Jails and military expenditures explains exactly why we have no money for universal health care, universal good schools, proper infrastructure maintenance, to pay workers living wages, to maintain or establish good pensions, good job security, job opportunities for everyone, and on and on it goes. Our priorities have never been more screwed up. 

Yes we have now embarked on this age of irrationality, faith based ‘alternate’ facts, self serving anger, crazy-ass family values, and an ever increasing hopelessness for a better life for all our citizens. Still, there is no reason to believe the evolutionary process, churning on via the laws created by God (however we wish to define the term)—having continued for billions of years, will not continue on ad infinitum. As already stated, “Time Stays. WE Go”.

Lincoln’s Only Poem

Lincoln’s Only Poem:  (Actually I found out on Google that he has written at least one other))

As many know, Lincoln is my favorite amongst many favorite special ‘characters’ in human history, including some current favorites. It just seems impossible to tire of him no matter how many years pass. I first read about Lincoln at a very young age in Carl Sandburg’s biography of Abraham Lincoln. That was one of the earliest biographies, but after that more books have been written about Abraham Lincoln than any other person in history except Jesus; if one considers Jesus human. It always seemed strange to me that if God had a son it would  be human. What kind of DNA would show up on a DNA test? 

It appears to me—I guess a lot of things ‘appear to me’—that it is most often the formative and terminational years which are the most unstable periods in our lives. In the formative years everything is so new and thus bewildering and uncertain so much of the time. During our productive years we, to varying degrees, are more certain about things, more challenged with career, family, and economic matters, and via genetics, environment, and lot’s of luck, we accomplish at least some modest goals—- and then comes the terminational years (the years after retirement). Retirement is far more likely to be pleasant if we have some gratitude for our productive years. Our life is also is far more contented if we can amuse ourselves. I think the terminational years are more frustrating for those who spend every day seeking out someone to amuse them. Inane chit chat, in excess, does not seem to generate any real sense of personal contentment, just more boring jabber about nothing much important under the sun. 

Before I drift too far from the title, below is a poem Lincoln wrote after he returned to his childhood neighborhood in Indiana where he spent his formative years up until around 18 years of age. He was 35 years old when he made the trip to his boyhood community. Here is the poem he wrote:

Poetry Written by Abraham Lincoln Springfield, Illinois In the spring of 1846 Abraham Lincoln sent some poetry to his friend Andrew Johnston, and on September 6 enclosed additional stanzas with his letter. At Lincoln's request, Johnston published portions of the poetry anonymously in the Quincy, Illinois Whig on May 5, 1847. Lincoln offered Johnston an explanation of the first poem ("My Childhood Home I See Again"), saying he had visited his boyhood neighborhood in southern Indiana in the fall of 1844 while campaigning for presidential hopeful Henry Clay. He commented that the region was "as unpoetical as any spot of the earth," but it brought back memories of loved ones such as his mother and sister who lay buried there.

He made Matthew Gentry the subject of Part II, telling Johnston: "He is three years older than I, and when we were boys we went to school together. He was rather a bright lad, and the son of the rich man of our poor neighborhood. At the age of nineteen he unaccountably became furiously mad, from which condition he gradually settled down into harmless insanity. When, as I told you in my other letter I visited my old home in the fall of 1844, I found him still lingering in this wretched condition. In my poetizing mood I could not forget the impression his case made upon me."

My Childhood Home I See Again

[I]

My childhood's home I see again,
And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds my brain,
There's pleasure in it too.

O Memory! thou midway world
'Twixt earth and paradise,
Where things decayed and loved ones lost
In dreamy shadows rise,

And, freed from all that's earthly vile,
Seem hallowed, pure, and bright,
Like scenes in some enchanted isle
All bathed in liquid light.

As dusky mountains please the eye
When twilight chases day;
As bugle-tones that, passing by,
In distance die away;

As leaving some grand waterfall,
We, lingering, list its roar--
So memory will hallow all
We've known, but know no more.

Near twenty years have passed away
Since here I bid farewell
To woods and fields, and scenes of play,
And playmates loved so well.

Where many were, but few remain
Of old familiar things;
But seeing them, to mind again
The lost and absent brings.

The friends I left that parting day,
How changed, as time has sped!
Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray,
And half of all are dead.

I hear the loved survivors tell
How nought from death could save,
Till every sound appears a knell,
And every spot a grave.

I range the fields with pensive tread,
And pace the hollow rooms,
And feel (companion of the dead)
I'm living in the tombs.

[II]

But here's an object more of dread
Than ought the grave contains--
A human form with reason fled,
While wretched life remains.

Poor Matthew! Once of genius bright,
A fortune-favored child--
Now locked for aye, in mental night,
A haggard mad-man wild.

Poor Matthew! I have ne'er forgot,
When first, with maddened will,
Yourself you maimed, your father fought,
And mother strove to kill;

When terror spread, and neighbors ran,
Your dange'rous strength to bind;
And soon, a howling crazy man
Your limbs were fast confined.

How then you strove and shrieked aloud,
Your bones and sinews bared;
And fiendish on the gazing crowd,
With burning eye-balls glared--

And begged, and swore, and wept and prayed
With maniac laught[ter?] joined--
How fearful were those signs displayed
By pangs that killed thy mind!

And when at length, tho' drear and long,
Time smoothed thy fiercer woes,
How plaintively thy mournful song
Upon the still night rose.

I've heard it oft, as if I dreamed,
Far distant, sweet, and lone--
The funeral dirge, it ever seemed
Of reason dead and gone.

To drink it's strains, I've stole away,
All stealthily and still,
Ere yet the rising God of day
Had streaked the Eastern hill.

Air held his breath; trees, with the spell,
Seemed sorrowing angels round,
Whose swelling tears in dew-drops fell
Upon the listening ground.

But this is past; and nought remains,
That raised thee o'er the brute.
Thy piercing shrieks, and soothing strains,
Are like, forever mute.

Now fare thee well--more thou the cause,
Than subject now of woe.
All mental pangs, by time's kind laws,
Hast lost the power to know.

O death! Thou awe-inspiring prince,
That keepst the world in fear;
Why dost thos tear more blest ones hence,
And leave him ling'ring here?

I like to write (an understatement), and yet I really don’t think I could write a poem. Maybe I just don’t have the patience or talent to become skilled at writing poems. Frankly, most poems don’t interest me as much as non poem literary forms. Like for Lincoln, and most people I suspect, the formative years seem so long ago, but full of so many memories—bad and good—all dimmed and tainted by so many years gone by. The feelings of youth we can try to recover, but it really isn’t possible; thus reality sinks in that our youthful past is really gone—gone with the wind.

By the time our terminational years arrive, we struggle to accept that sooner than later, we too, our past and present shall be gone with the wind. I know, many really believe they will go to Heaven. Good luck with that. No-one can prove otherwise, albeit logic seems to dictate that such belief is quite a stretch—a rather self serving illusion.  Since life for everyone is not a level playing field, judging whose behavior qualifies for Heaven would be a task far too complicated for human judgement. There are currently 7.5 billion people on our planet. That’s a lot for God individually to review and judge, not to mention all the prayers coming in, with over 120,000 dying every day.  We humans are individually self-serving by nature and while given the gift of life via a spinning wheel of fortune, we of course want more and so invent a Heaven as our final destination. Maybe, but more likely not.