The Essence of Nature and Reality

The Essence of Nature and Reality

I suspect most people, of so many varied genetic and environmental compositions, in so many varied ways, try to grasp the essence of nature and reality. We cannot succeed because humans, like all other species, do not have the intellect to really comprehend the evolutionary process of which we are but a part. While I personally, after retirement, have flailed away with written efforts to make sense of so many aspects of life, it always ends up being more like the blind man who ‘picked up his hammer and saw’. At best, we get a glimpse here and there of reality—and even then it is one of our own perceived reality. 

In some respects I decided later in life that I really did not want to be part of all our species’  ‘noise’. There was no reason or obligation to be mired in it all since I am single, no immediate family, no attachment to any inherited religion, am financially secure, in fairly decent health, free from the daily stresses most people are surrounded by in their lives, very independent (almost hermit-like), and seem to have unlimited ways to amuse myself, all of which are inexpensive. No matter, I suppose, since shortly via age, I will come to an end—the one thing sure from the beginning of all our lives. I like to let gratitude rule my disposition in these terminational years, for I have a lot to be grateful for, at least compared to so many others in life. I am bereft of any conceited arrogance about any of my rather modest achievements. Luck, and the help of others, enabled any innate abilities to ever even survive. If I have learned anything during my lifetime, it is that the evolutionary process is not about any particular species and certainly not about any individual member of any species. How annoying is that? That’s hard to accept, but the process depends a lot on chance, diversity, genetics, and environment. The notion that God is ever personally on anyone’s side is simply self serving, at best necessary for us to retain some sanity, but really unrealistic. Why would a just God be on anyone’s side any more than a just parent would be preferential to any of their offspring? We cannot know the essence of God, or even begin to know His/Her essence. We cannot even begin to understand how something (God) came from nothing. We can come to realize just how amazing God’s laws are which govern the evolutionary process, since this process has been around billions of years. We can’t even really comprehend that length of time. It is all past our pay grade.

I haven’t even been around enough of varied human communities across the planet to pass any overall judgement. I do feel closest to the nature of life when in nature on solitary walks. It is very mellowing. I am never more mellow than after a long solitary walk in nature or a city environment. Masses of people are nature too and always good theatre. It is possible though, to sense the reality of other scenes not part of my life via the eyes of others. Books and movies help with this. My favorite ‘in my face realities of life’ movie is The Salt of the Earth, a movie about the life and observations of Sebastian Salgado. He is a photographer and been all around our planet observing a huge portion of human life that most of us never see. Yet it is important that we do see it in order to grasp the entirety of human existence on our present day planet. 

Watching this DVD will share more valuable insights into life than any of my, or anyone else’s, musings are likely to do. I put Salgado’s impact on how life is best viewed right up there with Abraham Lincoln,  Barack Obama, and Victoria Woodhull. These three did it by being most consistent with the ethical principal of the Golden Rule, while Salgado did it with his camera. 

The Salt of the Earth DVD can be purchased at Amazon.com for $18 or rented via Netflix or others. It will be unnerving, but necessary to be a part of our understanding of reality. That these kind of realities exist for so many current humans across the globe is to understand just how far removed so much of humanity is from the Golden Rule. Our own evolution of ethical behavior is not keeping up with our understanding of science. This ‘best of all possible worlds’ for some and ‘worst of all possible worlds’ for so many others cannot possibly bode well for the immediate future of our planet. Then again, the immediate future is never the end point in the evolutionary process. So the process is well, but the amount of tragedy existing for so many humans across the globe is but evidence that the ethical state of the human species has not kept pace with science, and self serving behaviors. Humans collectively, right now, have the theoretical capacity to ensure almost all of the human tragedies rampant across our globes could be attended to. There does not need to be so many people starving, homeless, dying from curable diseases, without decent health care, with limited job opportunities, with poor schools or no schools, and rampant, mindless, irresponsible human reproduction which has resulted in  human overpopulation. If our current species cannot grasp the absolute necessity of implementing the Golden Rule as the basis for ethics, then another species will appear which can do exactly that. Whatever the needs of a particular period in evolutionary time, the evolutionary process will sort it all out and progress will sooner or later proceed. 

The reality is this: we as individuals are not important at all and the chips fall as they may, but our human species is the only species with the capability to ensure, via the Golden Rule, that the maximum number of humans can achieve the maximum degree of contentment—if we only could accept the Golden Rule as our ethical basis. Human society has progressed over the short period of time humans have been around. Life is certainly better today than in the past, at least for some of us. Our imperfections are clearly creating a crisis level point for our species. One way or another the evolutionary process will change to eliminate these imperfections down the road.

I personally don’t like the reality that Salgado has so clearly portrayed to us in his pictures and text. None of us can personally change that reality. The evolutionary process can, and will change this reality. The evolutionary process will continue because this created process is the measure of progress, never our own self serving desires. Some people go gently down the stream in their terminational years and others flail away and try to swim back upstream to the ‘good ole days’. Other people never even make it to their terminational years, but die earlier. All my life, when confronted with individuals who have been dealt a bad hand in life and their hopelessness/frustration can be seen in their eyes, it triggers a kind of special sadness in my own mind. Of course I am not alone in this respect, although we all vary in how we react to this kind of reality, and as is so often the case in human affairs, the advice of Lincoln is precious: “Let us have faith (the Golden Rule) that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.” Only to the extent we do this can we ever maximize the amount of contentment in our lives. This only works when we manage to understand, in our own lives, when enough is enough, and then share any excess with the less fortunate. Enough humans may not understand this right now, but the evolutionary process will certainly see this as a proper/desirable goal and make the necessary adjustments in order to put this in place down the road of evolutionary time. 

P.S. When people say “I am worried about the lives of my grandchildren’s children down the road” that is a pretty silly unrealistic emotion. The dead don’t worry. Plus, the reality is that our grandchildren’s children will themselves have no real relationship to us. A name, a place, and an occupation is not a relationship. We can only have relationships right now, and after a generation it is over both ways except for those individuals in the past who serve as our guideposts for proper thoughts and behaviors. Many may think highly about a Lincoln and study his advice, but Lincoln is no longer thinking about us. Can we believe otherwise? Of course we can and no one can prove us wrong. But there is no evidence at all for such a belief. However, these kind of beliefs are not harmful to anything. They are like placebos in medicine. The dead have ended their role in the evolutionary process. When I point out that none of us are essential to the evolutionary process itself, this means, for example, that if Lincoln had not engineered the elimination of slavery someone else would have down the road. If the Wright Brothers had not invented the airplane, someone else would have, and thus it goes with the evolutionary process. From diversity, chance, and the environment comes the future. The evolutionary process is running this show, never any of us as individuals. That it seems, is the essence of nature and reality. If we are looking for something to brag about personally, it will have to be elsewhere. All we can ever have is gratitude for the chance to be part of the evolutionary process, while the painful reality is: too many humans don’t have much for which to be grateful—for the lack of sharing on the part of the more fortunate. Reality is full of personal tragedy and Delgado’s efforts make that abundantly clear. The saddest eyes are those who have nothing left to give/nothing left to lose. This is not God’s fault. His evolutionary process gave the human species the ability to collectively help those less fortunate. We see that today in the health care debate where many proudly and emphatically assert that the healthy are not about to pay any of their excess money for the sick—-until of course they become the sick. From an ethical standpoint we all know who is really ethically sick in this debate. We have met the enemy and it is us. 

Ghettos—Cause and Reduction/Elimination---Part 1

Ghettos—Cause and Reduction/Elimination

This topic is proving to be long so I will break it up into one session reading lengths. 

While my career and lifestyle provided me meaningful contact with ghetto life, it would be an exaggeration to pretend that this refers to the most incorrigible ghetto elements. What I can attest to is that some of those who live in ghettos were some of the most honest, dependable, forthright, personable, co-operative, least prejudiced, hard working, generous, sympathetic to others, open-minded, emotionally stable individuals with whom I have ever met. Thus, I approach this topic somewhat from experience, but only with limited range of exposure to the underbelly of ghettos. This is a huge topic, one which clearly would require a life’s work to become an expert, if that is even possible. 

So I will approach this by first gathering as many facts about ghettoes as I can, then try to assemble the facts into some sort of reasoned analysis about the topic. With google, facts are easy to find these days, that is—if the sources are really factual. The latter is no easy task. We can do our best to gather facts from responsible government or legitimate research studies. The trick here is to avoid studies by known political think tanks, biased self interest groups, or the obvious political hucksters—perhaps like me, spending a lifetime expressing opinions on all aspects of life. Ideally, every factual source would be listed. Doing this would quadruple the time to complete this musing as well as double the length. This is a major limitation for any reader. On the other hand, any reader is free to google their own search about any stats listed. And of course, no one is obligated to buy into any opinions in any musings I write—it is assumed any reader will be free to arrive at any differing conclusions dependent on the quality of experience and research they have on the topic. It would be helpful I suppose, if I allowed comments on individual musings. But then again I don’t want to provide yet another outlet for people to spew forth with emotional toxic venom about ethnic, cultural, religious, political, economic classes they hate with an irrational passion. Most responses to internet articles are nothing more than short, shallow emotional toxic tweets. I know, this is oft more tolerable than lengthy musings such as I write. But I remind others that these musings are written for my own benefit, there is no attempt to seek out, attract, or imply that others cannot differ and have their own conclusions. The only benefit anyone could gain from any of my musings is simply food for thought. 

So what is the definition of a ghetto?  “a part of a city, especially a slum area, occupied by a minority group or groups.”  I am going to alter this definition for the purpose of this musing to “a slum area of any urban, suburban, or rural community.”  The rationale here is that any slum area is controlled by the same forces regardless of ethnic background of the inhabitants. 

“How many Americans live in slums?  The number of people living in high-poverty areas—defined as census tracts where 40 percent or more of families have income levels below the federal poverty threshold—nearly doubled between 2000 and 2013, to 13.8 million from 7.2 million, according to a new analysis of census data by Paul Jargowsky, a public-policy professor at Rutgers University-Camden and a fellow at The Century Foundation. That’s the highest number of Americans living in high-poverty neighborhoods ever recorded. The development is worrying, especially since the number of people living in high-poverty areas fell 25 percent, to 7.2 million from 9.6 million, between 1990 and 2000”

“Out of the original 800 public school children he started with, 33 moved from low-income birth family to a high-income bracket by the time they neared 30. Alexander found that education, rather than giving kids a fighting chance at a better life, simply preserved privilege across generations. Only 4 percent of the low-income kids he met in 1982 had college degrees when he interviewed them at age 28, whereas 45 percent of the kids from higher-income backgrounds did.  “The implication is where you start in life is where you end up in life,” Alexander said in a press release. “It’s very sobering to see how this all unfolds.”

Before going any further, this confirms some simple facts. Noone chooses to be born in a ghetto. No one chooses the kind of parent(s) they will have. Noone chooses what kind of schools they attend when a child, or what kind of teachers they will have, or the kind of health care received, and so on. The above data confirms what we probably suspected; that only 4% end up by age thirty in higher income brackets. This puts in perspective the obnoxious statement: “I achieved my economic status the old fashioned way, I earned it.”  Wouldn’t it be nice, if when we hear this blather, we could press a button and have them start over their life in a ghetto. Even then they would still have whatever genetic advantages they possess. 

Next, let’s envision what a child needs at the start of their life:

good genes

good parents

good health care

good schools

good teachers

healthy diets

safe environment at home, at school, and out in the neighborhood

It seems obvious enough that a child cannot effectuate any of the above. The next question is why don’t more of these children, seeing what life is about all around them and becoming aware via the media how other people live, just take a deep breath and make sure they are prepared to escape after their formative years? We all have known some individuals who grew up in slum areas who were determined to escape and did. I guess this proves that some do escape.  But only 4% or some other more factual number ever do escape. 

To proceed further we need to understand a principle well documented in Biology 101. Namely, no species can survive in a healthy fashion when that species suffers overpopulation. We are overpopulated right now—that is to say we do not have, at the present time, enough natural resources to enable all humans on the globe to live a lifestyle many Americans do right now. If the population doubles again, as it has in my lifetime, the price to pay for most humans will be unthinkable. It already is for 75 million global refugees, many of the residents of our own ghettos, and most of the global workforce. In most any logical and scientific analysis, certain assumptions need be made at the start. 

Here are the assumptions at the start:

1. Wherever there is a gift there must be a gift giver. I call the gift giver of our Universe God.

2. If the human species cannot, in the nearest of futures, learn to control it’s own global population growth, than debates about other issues are moot, including what to do about human ghettos. 

3. In other musing I have stated the case for believing God is the author of the rules which govern the evolutionary process, and that there is no evidence God ever suspends any of the rules in favor of any species or individual members of any species. 

Ok, so what then do we do about the ever increasing size of human ghettos across the globe.?

We could all pray to God to eliminate them or expect the inhabitants to pray to God to help them.

This seems not to be working. Millions of people pray God to help them get out of a ghetto of some sort and millions of people pray that God will help the less fortunate, the poor, the sick, etc. 

Ironically billions of people pray for God’s help getting a job, getting well from sickness, winning a game, passing a test, right on down to asking God’s blessing for someone who sneezes. What group is given exemption from any of these situations? And if God’s favorite group or groups don’t get their prayers answered any more often than other groups, just exactly whose prayers is God Answering?

Thus, it seems logically clear that we can’t do anything about who gets whose genes. We can’t do anything about the parents of any children. We cannot decide which kids get born into what neighborhood. 

Suggesting that the poor people in ghettos need to help themselves is a useless and silly notion. If it is not a silly notion than we need to sit down with each child in the ghetto and explain to him that his life will be better if he/she goes to different schools, gets better health care, has better job opportunities. lives in a safer neighborhood, and so on. “It’s your choice kid, and if you refuse to make these improvements, you are most likely destined to be ghetto bound till death do you part. 

Another assumption is needed to be made here. Humans cannot know much about God. If we say God can do anything we are saying what we obviously don’t know. If we say God can do only this or that we  don’t know what the this and thats really are. If God can do anything then why the hell didn’t He/She make everything perfect from the start? If He could have, but didn’t, doesn’t that make him a tad sadistic?  All we can know, and only by logic, is that it must be God’s laws which govern the evolutionary process. In the end of course, our own comprehension limit prevents any possible answer as to “where did God come from”? Something coming from ‘nothing’ is way above our heads.

If our government is the only tool of our society which can eliminate or reduce in size our urban, suburban, and rural ghettos, then what exactly is government to do?  Right away it gets complicated since we have local government, state, government, and national government. On top of that where is the money going to come from? Finally there is the common attitude amongst us that we earned our wealth and we are not interested in having our excess wealth taken from us and given to those who did not earn it. 

This brings up another assumption needed in order to proceed.  The needs of the entire society trump the needs or demands of individuals in that society.  Thus, when anyone says they have the ‘right’ to control how many kids they bring into this world, it is poppycock since overpopulation is a dire threat to any species and like it or not, no individual can be allowed to procreate at will. And as a corollary here, if the government is going to ensure level playing fields for all kids in areas like health care, schools, job opportunities, safe neighborhoods, and so on—then the government has to put limits on just how many children a particular person can “enter” into this system. Some will immediately say that if they can afford to raise ten kids themselves and pay extra to the government then that should be their right. Of course it is not since the entire goal is to prevent human overpopulation. 

It thus would seem at this point, employing logic as our guide, that since government is responsible, in the last analysis, for the kind of communities which are part of government domain—then we now need to list exactly how the government can level the playing field for all citizens, and especially all children. Some will quickly assert that if government is going to take care of all basic needs for everyone, then why will anyone work?  They will just sit back and wait for all this ‘welfare’ to arrive and be a couch potato the rest of their lives, at least until the bars and nightclubs open. each night. 

The word welfare is conveniently defined by most people as a source of help someone else gets  which they themselves don’t get. In reality, all these basic needs given to any child is welfare from somewhere/someone to the child in question. In affluent families the parents are the source. Without spending time here on the topic of welfare, we do need mention that food stamps are welfare, housing subsidies are welfare, unemployment benefits are welfare, tax breaks are welfare, tax exemptions are welfare, tax shelters are welfare, good insurance premiums are welfare, inheritance is welfare, and on and on it goes. The total amount of welfare I have received in my lifetime, considering all the above, if far more than the welfare received of most anyone in a ghetto. 

Another assumption to be made here at this point is that competition is good providing the playing field is made as level as possible. Government can’t change genetics, personalities, the amount of luck someone gets, the different priorities a person sets, where people are born, and so on. Seeking wealth or fame or power, or pleasure, etc. are not sins or evil or the work of the Devil. What the government can do and should do is to establish limits to the things mentioned here. The accumulation of wealth should have limits—precisely because it is damaging to the future of any society to let money accumulate in the hands of  genetic cabals. There will always be the poor, the middle class, and the wealthy as long as there is such diversity of human beings. What changes when the playing fields are made as level as possible is how many advance in wealth, power, pleasure, etc. 

It interests me that government uses test to determine who graduate from high school, can drive a car, can be a nurse, a policeman, and just about every occupation that requires some skills, and yet anyone can become a parent. It even gets worse. If a crack-head single gal wants an abortion because she sees clearly enough through her mental fog that she is not in a position to have a baby, the pro lifers want to force her to go through with the pregnancy.  Pro life is a good state of mind if that extends to everyone throughout their life, not just their life in the womb. The day a baby to the crack head mother is born most pro-lifers disappear like thin air, at no time to give second thoughts about the prenatal child they sincerely thought so special. That’s just weird and astonishingly disingenuous. 

Thus, males and females need to be licensed in order to legally have children. There ought to be certain evaluations throughout that child’s formative years  to ensure the child is getting minimal support in various ways. The cost of education should borne by the federal government with the same amount of money available to spend on each child each year. Local control of how that money gets spent is good since those communities wich instill the better educational programs will find other communities following suit. Local control would mean all the parents who have kids in a certain system. Some will say, “I can afford that my kids have a swimming pool, and other non educational amenities”. Fine, they can form a private club to provide such amenities for their children. It seems oxymoronic to debate whether all children deserve good schools and good teachers. What did any child do to deserve less in this area than other children?  

We now have another assumption to make here: whenever an individual or group becomes strong enough, they more often than not play God and decides which of God’s ‘children’ get which of the basic needs of life and to what extent—and these self-appointed Gods will use their own self-interest and ‘family values’ to ensure their own selves and families, religions, and economic group get all sorts of ‘welfare’ which gives them and their group endless advantages.

Now another assumption: The greatest ethical society is created when the maximum number of citizens practice the Golden Rule the maximum number of times. This is the one universal ethical principle and the one which is win/win for both parties involved.  End Part 1

Whose Responsibility?

Whose Responsibility?

Behind many of the modern day issues is the question of whose responsibility is this or that? We each do, of course, have responsibilities for ourselves throughout life. This is self evident. Part of the formative years is the need to develop our own ability to be independent, and to understand our own strengths and weaknesses as we increasingly make practice attempts to generate progress on our own. Some parents are so stifling, so controlling, and so protective that their kids never ever become really functional independent adults. As a Professor involved with college age students, these kids stood out as quiet, uncaring about others, rigid, fearing change, fearing challenges, were hesitant, critical of diversity, socially inept, and heavily indoctrinated. They kept things close to their vest for fear of the unknown. Without someone making decisions for them, or dictating how they should think, they are lost. 

Let’s start with the most overreaching aspect of responsibility. Every society has a government of some sort, and this government has a responsibility to ensure all citizens have access to basic needs. Government is responsible for all the communities under its governance. One of the serious drawbacks of democracy is that once a particular party puts together a majority base, it becomes that base for which they feel responsible. This means good things get parceled out to their base, and the unpleasant things get dumped on the other party’s base. What could possibly be the ethical case for this? There is no genuine patriotism when various segments of a society can’t stand each other, when the affluent feel no responsibility for the welfare of the less fortunate, when racial or religious groups circle the wagons and gate themselves off from other groups diverse from themselves, when religious groups try to force others, via laws, to practice or participate in their own religious beliefs, when huge national debts are run up for future generations to pay (which they won’t either), when wars of varied sorts are fought with borrowed money and paid mercenary armies who signed up to escape a ghetto of some sort, or to get an income, or by nature they get a thrill of some sort out of violence/danger. Without mercenary armies and with a draft instead, then the population will think twice before engaging in these invasions/conflicts (like the people finally revolted in Vietnam) and thus the draft ended. Most citizens made no sacrifice personally whatsoever for the dozens of invasions over the past 60 years. The cost of war should logically be shared by all citizens one way or another, including the financial costs.

Their is no genuine patriotism when citizens tolerate ghetto communities, whether urban, suburban, or rural. There is no proper acceptance of a collective responsibility when we finance schools via local property taxes. Of course we realize that this means affluent neighborhoods will have good schools  and poor communities will have poor schools along with poor teachers. There is no legitimate national pride until we care whether all citizens have good health care, a safe environment, job opportunities, the same individual rights, good pensions, and livable wages. When huge numbers of people feel: “I worked hard for what I own and have. I earned my ‘good life’—-let those in urban, suburban, or rural ghettoes earn their own wealth and benefits.”  Remarkably, those who say this sort of thing are often quite religious and devout followers of their own inherited religion. They refer to our country as a Christian nation. That always seemed strange to me since, if Jesus were living today, it seems only logical that he would spend his life, as he did back in his own historical age, helping the poor, the sick, the outcasts, and the less fortunate of all kinds. All religious prophets of major religions have preached the need for everyone to give excess earned wealth to those less fortunate.  Jesus believed in family values too, but the family he focused on was the ‘human family’, not genetic cabals. After wrapping themselves around ‘family values’, these are the same people who treasure the national anthem and the American flag the most. It is all so disingenuous and in reality—self serving. True patriots embrace all the diverse people who make up their country. 

There is much to be said for individual efforts and individual responsibility for our own actions. We are not all equal. Not in our genetics, our environment, our historical time of birth, our community in which we lived our formative years, our physical appearance, our health status, our personalities, and on and on it goes. It is what it is because diversity plays a major role in the evolutionary process. It is a cruel process where tragedy awaits many of the participants. Humans, however, have a genetically endowed ability to reason and an ethical understanding which enables humans to collectively help the less fortunate, level the playing field for as many as possible, and in so doing, maximize the degree of contentment for the maximum number of people. This is called the Golden Rule—an ethical principle understood by everyone everywhere. 

It is also our collective responsibility to enforce some system of reproductive responsibility. There is nothing wrong with responsible reproduction. The needs of society as a whole always trump the needs of individuals. No one with any degree of intelligence would suggest that our planet can flourish if human population doubles as it has in my life time. If it does, the lives of billions will be lost, not to mention further raising the current species extinction rate which is now the 6th major extinction era in evolutionary history—on top of which this current extinction rate is noted as almost entirely due to human activities. We are trapped now in a culture where ‘other’ people don’t count, other species don’t count, environmental protection or climate change rejected because of the cost, facts are irrelevant, emotional baseless opinions are truth, any sacrifice for an ethical society is trumped by self serving materialistic goals, while violence as the means to an end has become more and more rampant.  

It is our collective responsibility to protect our natural environment including the air we breathe, the water we drink, and all the natural resources upon which we depend. All the preceding flaws in human nature help prevent climate change. Everything in this paragraph impacts on the future of humans, other species, and the nature of our planet. The planet will survive, evolution will proceed, but the nature of life on our planet is at stake. It does not seem that anything in this paragraph, or some of the preceding paragraphs, are beyond the ability of humans to understand. Unfortunately, we are still flawed by our greed, our self-serving mental states, and political/religious/cultural mindsets which paralyze us from saving the future of our society. It is a rare politician anywhere that even talks about the matters covered in this paragraph. Mention responsible reproduction and most just conclude “Well there is nothing we can do about that. No one is going to let anyone tell them how many children they can have.”  Same with sharing our wealth with the less fortunate. “it is my wealth, I earned it and I want to give it all to my own kids.” End of discussion. Of course, we all like to say that everyone should earn their own wealth—except our own kids who should be given huge amounts of unearned wealth via inheritance. We are all so disingenuous regarding major aspects of life. Inheritance is just another form of welfare. 

We can blame those who live in our urban, suburban, or rural ghettos for their plight and we do. But because we allow these ghettos to wallow in their own misery and to grow larger decade after decade we have created a very explosive situation. Science dictates that people, especially children, who live with chronic high levels of stress hormones in their body will be physiologically affected, especially those in their formative years. This is not to infer that only those in ghettoes can end up with chronic high levels of stress hormones in their bodies. And it is also true that individual responses to stress vary considerably. Not everyone raised in a ghetto is adversely affected in any permanent way, but most are. We watch these people in riots and many of their everyday actions and we are aghast at their behavior—“they act like vicious/dumb animals”. Yes they often do. If we allow people to be raised like animals, they may end up behaving like animals. Beware of people who have nothing to lose in life. They are usually not filled with kindly thoughts and are even eager to make others feel their pain in life.  After listening to someone emotionally make clear to me how much they despised the people trapped in a ghetto community, I remarked: “it is quite clear how you feel about them, but why then are you so upset, when given a chance, that they show how much they hate you?”

Ours is the first age noted for human overpopulation, The ever increasing toxicity of differing groups toward each other, is hardly a surprise. When there is not enough pie for everyone to get a piece, behaviors deteriorate. This is probably the first time in American history when the older population often state “I would not want to be young again given the current state of affairs”.  Which is not to say a sizable portion of our citizens do not live well, appreciate diversity, live mostly by the golden rule, and are not caught up in endless compulsive/addictive self serving behaviors. But they are not in the majority, as clearly evident from the last Presidential election. Nor is it reasonable to say that these people are all that irrational. The lower economic class victims of our society have lived through Reagan, Bushes, Clinton, Obama etc. and nothing has changed but for the worse in terms of their salaries, pensions, job opportunities, job security, quality of schools, neighborhood safety, health care, and so on. They are at the point they are willing to blow up society as a last measure—just to see what happens after it gets blown up.  They have had enough of the empty promises. Even Obama, who tried, could not stop the flow of wealth going to the already wealthy. It is not clear that any President really could succeed in this area.  

It is necessary to point out that the long term future of the evolutionary process is not at stake. This process has been going on for billions of years, and the human species involved a mere several hundred thousands of years. Species come and go and almost all eventually become extinct. Of course not us humans, we—blessed with the best inherited religion—will be lolly gagging around in Heaven. The human species is as dominant on the scene as were dinosaurs in their day. I mean, how would they ever become extinct with all their size and power?  Humans have already evolved since we arrived, both physically and socially. Our genetic capabilities have really surpassed that of former species. Because of genetic diversity, chance, and environmental changes, predicting the future is simply impossible for any species, or the nature of future living. While humans tend to view ourselves as a focus of importance to the process, there is no real evidence of this. God’s laws (regardless of our concept of God) which run the evolutionary process remain in charge. Time stays, we go and that is about the reality. It is really sort of inane to worry about the future of our grandchildren or their grandchildren—since soon we will never have anything to worry about again and whoever ends up being our genetic descendants will never give a thought about us either. 

Gone with the wind is a perceptive expression.  

Vintage pIcs # 5

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

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/6cWd9ghgKHn

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/R5rZgENpkur

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/D2PARU9HUry

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/Y3Mf9DrmT6S   People were almost always dressed in suits when out in public places back then. Today, the one who looks most like they just emerged from a barn shoveling manure are probably a famous singer.

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/EW8m672jziN  this could have been Madonna today

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/9PxQ9MUumg9  Little need for health insurance back then, nothing much to spend it on.

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/j4MfyYpNHtC  war was different back then too. For one thing with better modern day weapons the boy would be dead. 

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/Jmp8ttiLgD7  Don’t they have smart phones?

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/8WNJ4hBYDwa  Dress code different today

Who are Dumber—politicians or the Average American Voter?

Who are Dumber—politicians or the Average American Voter?

In a decade, the number of people imprisoned every year in The Netherlands fell from 50,650 in 2005 to 37,790 in 2015. And the rate of incarceration stands at 57 prisoners per 100,000 residents, compared with 458 in the United States.

There is something very dense about the people in the United States when it comes to crime and drugs. We pride ourselves in being tough on criminals and tough on drug users, traffickers. Yet we have more of our  people in jail, higher crime rates, and greater problems with drug addictions than most, if not all, other modern industrialized countries. Wow. How come?

For a start Americans have let politicians and the police determine our policies and attitudes here rather than let medical professionals deal with drug addicts, scientists dictate information about drug abuse, and sociologists deal with criminal behavior. Most Americans have essentially been brain washed by our Government, for political motives, regarding crime and drug addictions. Few things help a politician get elected better that a promise to throw more people in jail, not mentioning that it costs about $30,000/per year/per innate. Many citizens no less dense that our politicians, albeit at least an honest dumbness, don’t realize that more prisoners means more tax money is needed. But of course the same politicians promise a tax cut also. Silly games like this ends up with our country much deeper in debt. 

Below is a comparison with just one European country in the areas of crime and drugs. . People are not, for the most part, with few genetic exceptions, born to be criminals or drug addicts. Our attitudes regarding universal health care, good schools for everyone, employment opportunities for everyone, vacation time for all workers, livable wages for all workers, and respect for diversity have created toxic ghetto environments for many of our citizens and these toxic dangerous environments are growing at an exponential rate. Why can’t we change and take responsibility for all our communities and citizens regarding basic human needs? I guess the idea of meeting the basic needs of all our citizens sounds like socialism and that word makes most Americans see red. And thus we are now paying a terrible cost.

The formative years today, for far too many Americans, is so stressful for them that they suffer from chronic high levels of stress hormones in their blood—this damages all organ systems in their body, especially the Central Nervous System, and by the time they are adults they are damaged entities, sometimes permanently. The stats below are just disgusting and yet there are no indications we are about to change our attitudes about these areas. How bad does it have to get before we face the reality that we are doing many things wrong here?

Why is it so difficult to understand that people use recreational drugs when their lives are too chronically stressful and these drugs, depending on the drug, relieves them in varied ways from the pain of their reality. Our attitude continues to be one of “we don’t care about your pain from your reality. Stop taking the drug or we will jail you. And we will stiffen the jail terms for those who supply you the drug. “Just say no” is the most ridiculous answer to drug addiction imaginable. People can handle chronic pain, physical, mental or emotional, for just so long and then will do most anything to relieve the pain—often using drugs to do it. We essentially are telling them “We don’t care about your life of pain and frustration, you just put up with it without drugs or you are going to jail.”  60 years of our useless War on Drugs and the stupidity still goes on. We are stupid about drugs, we are stupid about taxes, we are stupid about invading countries right and left—driven essentially by our biggest industries——the Military/Industrial Complex, our biggest industry outside of the black market on drugs. Isn’t that a pip—our two biggest industries are weapons and the illegal drug market. 

The ultimate irony here is that the last person who would ever do anything to give his angry trapped base a more level playing field is Donald Trump, but he gets their vote because Trump is angry at the same politicians that they are angry at, and even holds more draconian views on ghettos, drug use, and basic needs for all citizens than his predecessors. Not hard to picture what will happen when this ‘angry’ base turns against an ‘angry’ ignorant emotionally disturbed President. The sparks will likely fly, co-ordinated roving riots with the requisite economic chaos—-the inevitable formula for domestic implosion. This is a very dangerous game being played out here. I like good theatre, but not of the horror show venue. 

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Country vs country: Netherlands and United Statescompared: Crime stats

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STAT	Netherlands	United States	HISTORY
Adults prosecuted	194,677  Ranked 11th.	14.2 million  Ranked 1st. 73 times more than Netherlands
Adults prosecuted per 1000	12.06  Ranked 9th.	49.38  Ranked 2nd. 4 times more than Netherlands
Age of criminal responsibility	12  Ranked 34th. Twice as much as United States	6  Ranked 58th.
Assault victims	1%  Ranked 16th.	1.2%  Ranked 9th. 20% more than Netherlands
Assaults	351.8  Ranked 14th.	786.7  Ranked 1st. 2 times more than Netherlands
Auto theft	138.3  Ranked 21st.	390.2  Ranked 6th. 3 times more than Netherlands
Believe in police efficiency	52%  Ranked 17th.	89%  Ranked 1st. 71% more than Netherlands
Believes crime increasing in the past 3 years	61.76  Ranked 54th.	65.22  Ranked 44th. 6% more than Netherlands
Bribery victims	0.4%  Ranked 8th. Twice as much as United States	0.2%  Ranked 12th.
Burglaries	427.5  Ranked 21st.	714.4  Ranked 9th. 67% more than Netherlands
Car thefts	35,384  Ranked 16th.	1.25 million  Ranked 1st. 35 times more than Netherlands
Car thefts per 1000	2.19  Ranked 18th.	4.33  Ranked 11th. 98% more than Netherlands
Crime levels	36.59  Ranked 58th.	55.84  Ranked 30th. 53% more than Netherlands
Drug offences	12,683 per 100,000 people  Ranked 17th. 23 times more than United States	560.1 per 100,000 people  Ranked 41st.
Drugs > Annual cannabis use	5.4%  Ranked 6th.	13.7%  Ranked 1st. 3 times more than Netherlands

“I Don’t Know. Maybe If……….”

“I Don’t Know.  Maybe If……….”

“I don’t know. Maybe if I had been the man I am today, it could have turned out different. But I had a different mind set back then.” 

The above seems a simple, but interesting comment that signals something unique about life. Namely, that we are never the same person today as we were yesterday. To the extent this statement is simple—but profound—it alters the way we judge others and ourselves. It also alters the way in which we understand life and it’s consequences. One of the major flaws of most religious scripture is the absoluteness of many ethical statements. And this rigidity runs head onto ethical fairness. Ethical fairness, it seems, is seeped in flexibility dependent on time and circumstances. On the other hand, ethical flexibility opens the door to ‘anything goes’ dependent on circumstances. Since circumstances can be varied depending on culture, historical period, custom, tragedy, luck (bad or good), economic resources, health, age, and perhaps many other factors—— fair or ethical judgment is extremely tricky in many situations.

When we sometimes say that “God will punish those who do wrong” we do this in the same way we say “God will help those in need”. But in both cases this lacks logic. After all, the laws created by God to control the evolutionary process depend on diversity for advancement. So does this mean God will punish Himself? Let’s take an extreme example or two—if some guy cuts off his mother’s head and carries it around in public this is obviously both wrong and crazy. Who is to blame?  God for allowing such mental states to exist? What is the proper punishment?  We don’t say “Well, God will punish him so let’s just stay out of it. The truth is we collectively are to blame because most everyone knew the son was mentally ill and yet the mother got left to do the best she could to feed and house him, at a substantial financial and emotional cost to her and any others in the family dealing with the situation. It only makes sense to accept that diversity is necessary for evolutionary progress, and that fortunately for humans, we have the mental capacity and ethical nature to understand that we collectively, have to help ‘care for, isolate, or punish those who are a danger to others. 

When some ghetto gang member murders a different young gang member or kills/rapes/terrorizes innocent people, who is to blame?  By the same logic we collectively know that children raised in such environments are often not mentally normal or emotionally normal. We also know, but rarely admit, that our society via our government is responsible for what kind of communities exist as part of our society. The trouble is we punish but fail to eliminate such ghetto environments from existance.  Science now understands  when people, especially children in their formative years, are left in situations which generate chronically high levels of stress hormones, many of them will be mentally and emotionally damaged individuals by the end of their formative years. 

In short, our entire society, collectively, is responsible to do the preventing and the punishing. For self serving reasons the human species is not ‘advanced’ enough to be very good at this. We invent ‘family values’, individual responsibility, economic greed, and resent certain aspects of diversity. So the easiest way to cop out of our collective responsibilities is to ward these people off, gate them away from our own lives, and jail as many of these ‘misfits’ as we can. The trouble here is that obviously these kind of communities grow and spread to suburbs and rural areas until a greater and greater percentage of our population are ‘developmental’ misfits.    

Sometimes we make bad decisions when young because we are still in our formative years and have limited experiences. While individuals can grow ethically at any age, the ability to be flexible enough to grow seems to shrink with age. Many diverse minority groups achieve more justice or rights only when the generation which created the injustices dies out and a more flexible, younger generation is able to accept the ’new’ justice or rights. At any rate social interactions are complicated precisely because of such wide diversity in human social attitudes. Other species have social behaviors driven much more by hormones and genetics, while human social behavior is far more learned and adaptable. Doe (deer) do not have to decide when to send their fawns off to be on their own. The right hormones kick in and just like that she drives last year’s fawn off to be independent. Humans on the other hand have to think about whether to send their offspring off to be on their own to fend for themselves with holidays created for family reunions. Some families never cut the ‘apron string’ and ‘family values’ becomes a permanent  primary social entity. Is this wrong or right? Hard to conclude since with individuality of human reason comes a lot of diversity. 

That our current social milieu is more advanced, in general, than during the Stone Age, the Dark Ages, or even our social milieu a hundred years ago, is evident enough. Because of global issues like human overpopulation, distribution of human wealth, climate change, global economics, and multiple access to varied modes of mass human destruction—aided by the internet and multiple gadgets which enable all sorts of human cabals, centered around self serving interests, to organize effectively without ever any having to be near each other physically—all this access to terroristic methods creates a human species sitting on a modern day tinderbox capable of genocidal acts of major impact. We need remember the more complex a society, the faster it can often crumble since so many factors which enable a complex society to function well, are dependent on each other. Cut off electricity, fuel,  clean air, unpolluted water sources, functioning financial institutions, fair elections, intact infrastructures, and so on—and Humpty Dumpty falls and “all the kings men and all the kings horses cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together again.” Gone are the days of the Wild West or less crowded and isolated communities when a family could simply pack up their belongings and move to another area and start over. There are currently 75 million refugees who can attest to that. 

Putting all this global stuff aside, the best way for an individual to grow to be a more ethical, economically independent, physically healthier, more accomplished and a more contented product of personal growth is to continually make the effort to be a better person today than we were yesterday. Without this positive growth and adaptation to change, we become frustrated, angry, emotionally unstable, cantankerous fools who lash out against everybody and everything, sometimes tweeting endless nasty personal insults  24 hrs/day about anyone not a mirror image of ourselves and our own particular circumstances. Rapid changes in technology can generate less interaction between diverse populations, while 24 hour endless babble between personal cabals of some sort create toxic feelings about human diversity.  All this while still another large group uses technological advances and gadgets to expand their social interactions with diverse groups. If we read the comments following many internet political, religious, or lifestyle articles, the hateful toxic mindset of so many people is clearly evident. Reason and good will as a means to coexist is a train which has long left the station. Which is not to conclude that the same train will not come back, at some distant time, again to the station.

While we all can still become better persons today than we were yesterday, the times are making it far more difficult to impact positively on others to the degree we could in the past. Our social environment today is far less about our diverse neighbors or community, and more about an internet cabal of like-minded people having their own mindset or genetic base, or inherited religious beliefs, or current political beliefs, or sports interests, etc. who can end up far more isolated from real diverse people than say 60 years ago. Community used to be important socially to everybody, but this is a thing of the past. The world as we may have known it or grown up in, is gone. No surprise here since this has been happening as part of evolution for a long time. But the pace has picked up exponentially the past 100 years and just what this all means for the evolutionary process is not clear. The evolutionary process is heavily dependent on change and chance and diversity. We cannot logically predict chance and change so we cannot therefore predict the future—not our own nor the future of the human species. The greatest illusion our own species has at the present time is the belief that we now control the environment, the natural resources, the fate of other species, and so on. Mostly we have, as in the past human cultures, created a God which thinks like us, likes us best, interacts with us on a personal basis, and will, if we play our cards right, suspend some laws of nature so we can be exempt from their consequences. We have put the cart before the horse and while this in no way impacts on the laws which govern the evolutionary process, it makes it ever more clearer that our species has vulnerabilities which are very self destructive. How this all plays out is beyond human predictability. No, the universe and it’s amazing evolutionary  process are not in trouble. The evolutionary process has never been about us, in fact we are one of the newest specie participants. The process is obviously amazing, long standing and Time does not pass away. Time stays and we go, every one of us goes, and the process continues on evolutionary Time, according to the laws God created to run the process. All is well with the process—- how well it is for any of us, or our offspring—today or tomorrow or the distant future, is another question. 

Could any us of have lived our lives better?  “We can’t know.  Maybe had we been the person we are today, it could have. But we had different mind sets back then.” (Paraphrased quote of the original quote at the start of this musing.  Author: Terrell Owens”  (smile)