Discrimination—Considered Aspects
In a world where humans are born by chance with genetic, environmental, cultural, religious, physical, mental, and personality differences, it comes as no surprise that discrimination of some sort becomes a rampant feeling. God’s evolutionary process, governed by His/Her own created laws to govern the process, depends on discrimination for progress. What fits best survives down the line, what fits least, does not survive down the line. For humans, this includes not just physical changes but social changes as well. Thus, the end result is good and amazing, albeit the process to produce progress is rather messy.
Birth itself is the ultimate discriminatory process. There is little we can do about our physical appearance, our place of birth, the historical age in which we were born, who our parents are, what neighborhood we grow up in, where we go to school, what kind of health care we get etc. Some individuals are born with cards in their hand which have the likelihood of disaster written all over it. I reckon there are those who believe God decides all of the above on an individual basis. Nevertheless, such a belief has no evidence whatsoever. Not surprisingly, we create a self serving image of God. Thus, the image created is naturally rather self-serving and of course, just to be safe, always forgiving. At no time does God appear in the sky to everyone and say, “All right, listen up, make a note of this”. No, we instead, more often, just buy into the belief that he talks to us via inherited religion or religion by way of marriage. Or that God selects the Pope to be his official intermediary between us and God—even though many particular Popes have committed the cruelest of crimes, which is not to say many have not been good ethical individuals. We get even sillier and sometimes say at weddings “Let no man put asunder what God has put together”. We all know if this were true God must be an idiot since the divorce rate in our country is around 50%.
It seems the best our human species can do, to maximize the contentment for the greatest number of people, is to level the playing field the best we can, and find a way to replace human created religions with the global ethical principle of the Golden Rule—do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let’s be direct here. When we treat others as we ourselves would like to be treated, then discrimination is kept in check. Equality though, is never an option, not in an evolutionary process which depends heavily on diversity and chance as important operative parameters. Only death creates equality, thus making any individual ’superiority’ very short lived in evolutionary time.
The riots in Charlottesville, the last Presidential election, and the growing global ineffectual government control over the immediate planetary conditions, which threaten massive destruction ahead for most species, are all consequences of human overpopulation. Bluntly put, how can discrimination be curtailed when more and more humans are seeking larger and larger pieces of a pie which does not have unlimited size? It isn’t just discrimination itself which is on the rise, but also the growing inability for us to discipline ourselves over ‘enough is enough’. We should make no mistake about it—when enough of —whatever— is never enough, then compulsive behavior and addictions thrive, and neither of these mentalities brings contentment. The nature of the problems we face today are very complex, often very technical, and we are often asked to vote on issues which so many have little real knowledge base to have an opinion. Elections have become almost exclusively disingenuous brain washing, a process to which we are all susceptible.
Like it or not, we all live now in a world that is ‘essentially the best of all possible worlds’ for a few and the ‘worst of all possible worlds’ for far too many. If the evolutionary process was a play, this may well now be the time in this play when the ‘shit hits the fan’. And to the extent this is true—well, the flying shit will not discriminate. Whenever calamity hits of any sort, no religious cabal in history has ever been protected. “The battle is over folks and none of the troops who were Southern Baptists got killed.” “The stats are in folks, and fewer Catholics die from cancer”. “The tornado which hit the town yesterday killed almost everyone except Jews”. “Hurry folks, baptize your young girls. God never lets Muslim girls get raped”.
During my productive years I was exposed extensively to all sorts of people of every ilk, almost on a daily basis. I cannot say I ever found any admirable human trait which is not found amongst diverse groups of humans. Part of the problem in our country is that we have managed to allow the wealthy to mostly control all three branches of government and rig the system for their monetary benefits. This leaves the rest of our population free to attack each other as the cause of our economic or social misery, whatever the particular misery be. It was unfortunate that ‘Black Lives Matter’ had not been promoted as “Black Lives Matter Too”. So now we have the debate as to whose lives matter instead of the debate centered around whether all lives do matter. Then we have the conservative right who peddle that all lives matter until after birth, then their attention shifts to ‘family values’. The kids are left to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.
Now comes the frustrating part. Ethically speaking, all lives do matter and thus it is the collective responsibility of all humans to level the playing fields, live by the golden rule, and thus enable the maximum number of citizens to reach the maximum level of contentment. Unfortunately, we manage to devise all sorts of rationale as to why others are less important, including ‘family values’, inherited religious beliefs, cultural differences, economic differences, racial, political, personality differences, physical differences, etc. Why people even riot at major sport events sometimes over which team won. We lock people up because they don’t use the same recreational drug that we do, we ok a system in which property taxes are used to fund local schools, ensuring that the poorest children will always get the worst schools and teachers, and so on. We have, for the most part, convinced ourselves that self serving attitudes are not only ethical, but the proper focus of our efforts to be successful. It always puzzles me when some athlete gives a ‘humble’ “Glory be to God” when he wins an athletic contest while I wonder why God helped an athlete win and not the 75 million homeless refugees living in refugee camps. If God really did that I don’t think much of God.
Some people, not many, seem to be truly accepting of all varied cultures, races, religions, and so on. Abraham Lincoln comes to mind as maybe the best ever practicing the Golden Rule. Obama is up there too, and others too, but most of us are prejudice to varying degrees. That is a bit weird too as everyone says Obama is black, but he is just as much white as black since his mother was white. It is noteworthy that both Obama and Lincoln understood human nature enough not to get too mad at racists. Lincoln made it clear that had he lived in the deep south his thoughts on slavery would likely have been different. He made it clear that circumstance does not make someone right either. God, the Devil, right and wrong, are not determined by human circumstantial, cultural, ethnic, or any other parameter of diversity, but by the laws which govern the evolutionary process. If we want fairness and the maximum number of people to reach a maximum level of contentment—if we want this—then we collectively are responsible for this to happen. But that is hard work, praying to God to do all this is easier, so we have endless idiotic selfish prayers heading God’s way. Every army, every human cabal believes God is on their side. Really? If this is true, God’s chosen human cabal would have been firmly in control of human societies long ago in history.
One role of any government is to promote non discrimination toward all its citizens. But even that is tricky. Few people, at least at first, thought Obama was against their own group. He kind of got elected, despite being black, because he seemed to be on everyone’s side. But then certain groups began to get human rights that only certain others had before, like the right to health care, or right to marry whomever one chooses, and put in a lot of federal regulations to ensure all citizens could compete with a more level playing field. That is when more and more people began to feel conflicted about Obama and his ‘playing favorites’, when in fact he was only leveling the playing field wherever he could for any group who needed the playing field leveled. The biggest failure Obama had was his inability to force a more reasonable distribution of wealth. This is not about socialism, but about not letting too much of any country’s wealth be owned by 2-5% of the population. Money, to a large extent, controls who gets the tax breaks, the tax deferments, the tax shelters, the lowest tax on their source of revenue, and so on. There is no longer any means to make the wealthy pay their fair amount of tax. If Obama couldn’t make a dent, who else will ever succeed? It is so bad now that, despite our huge debt, no politician can get elected unless they promise a tax cut—which will inevitably be chump change for the average person and millions for the wealthy. And the national debt grows. Why would social security payments go up with the cost of living and not our taxes? And why don’t minimum wages go up with the cost of living?
But again I stray, a genetic defect. We are now faced with differing groups blaming each other for their own miserable economic status. If they were smart--the poor whites, poor blacks, poor hispanics, poor anything, would pool their resources, find good educated candidates, put their names in a hat, and whatever name comes out they just all agree to vote for that candidate. There is your majority and there would be no need for debates or campaigns. Just go vote and get a Congress and President that will energetically proceed to make the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, make the same amount of money available for all children to have good schools, good teachers, good health care, good job opportunities, and safe neighborhoods. Alas, all this is futile if we cannot learn to enforce responsible reproduction on our own species. Where is Abraham Lincoln to engineer another miracle when we need him? We don’t associate Lincoln with a particular religion, a particular ethnic group, a particular culture, a particular anything except associate him with honesty and fairness. He came out of the woodlands, a dreamy eyed product of nature, solitude, and ethical superiority. Of course Trump would say “Lincoln is no hero of mine. I like heroes who don’t get killed”. Like maybe Santa Claus and other assorted illusions.
Government has failed to provide tolerable formative year environments for more and more of its citizens. This has been going on now for over 50 years with Republicans and Democrats in power, and yet those most in need see little change in their economic status or a safer neighborhood. So they are angry, very angry——and Trump expresses round the clock anger at just about everybody and everything—so guess who all the angry people vote for? Right, the angry candidate. And which candidate for President has never shown in his past any interest in the less fortunate of any ilk? All Trump has consistently done in life was to inherit a lot of money, stiff contractors, workers, and investors, finagle paying little or no taxes, focus entirely on amassing as much wealth as possible by making sure those with whom he comes in contact always get the short end of the stick. And is he really the one who is going to pry some of the wealth of the richest away from them and return it to the society from which it was derived? That seems a bit of a stretch. He preys on people’s prejudices and fosters discrimination between all diverse cabals in our nation. Each group now sees other diverse groups as the cause for their own misery. Oh what a tangled web we have weaved this past 50 years. We have met the enemy and it is us.
