Life As A Surreal Experience

Life As A Surreal Experience

When I was young I had no idea what to make of life. Now after 70+ years I am finally more settled in my thoughts about life, but not with any consistently factual or slam-dunked totally-grasped understanding. After all, I am human.  And thus I will, like everyone else, sooner rather than later— simply die. When all is said and done, with far more said than done, the evolutionary process will not have been impacted upon by me anymore that it has ever been impacted on by any member of any other species. Oh, sometimes an evolutionary change will happen to occur because of the actual presence of a particular member of a particular species, but the same change would have occurred later, again by chance, when a different member of a particular species happens on the scene and plays the needed role to bring about an evolutionary change which all along was just waiting to be made.  Evolutionary change has a direction to it. Life was bound to expand to include life on land just as it had been occurring in water. Life then was bound to expand to include life flying around over the land, and so evolution goes in a very directional manner. 

It is well to remember that life doesn’t just change in physical ways, but in behavioral ways too—especially with the human species. All sport records continue to get broken because, over time, humans become stronger, bigger, faster, and better trained with better diets. We know from historical records that humans have become more civilized, more intimately involved with each other, and kinder in the way we tolerate/treat each other. Even religions change over time in very specific directions. We don’t routinely anymore burn witches at the stake, or quarter heathens in the public square, or use guillotines to behead people (at least very rarely), or make human/animal sacrifices on alters, and so on. That is an aspect of the evolutionary process to which which we often give little focus. 

We also learn that so much in life is relative. I see videos of very rural and unsophisticated societies and wonder how these inhabitants can live life in such crude simple primitive ways. And yet, when some of these individuals experience their little village huts burned and most of the residents raped and killed—and when a few surviving young people escape—to live in refugee camps for years, and end up here in the United States—when all is said and done these survivors have their fondest memories of their simple village life back so many years ago. For them this is a treasured past. They lived it and I did not. 

By nature I have always had empathy with those who suffer misfortunes of various ilk in life. It is probably less kindness than a fear that ‘wow, that could be me suffering such a fate’. Early in life, when bad things happened to a treasured pet, and I couldn’t make the pet better, it was personally tragic to me emotionally. When I ponder people from the past, it always includes those whose misfortune in life left them poorly equipped to have success in various ways. When I ride on a city bus or rapid transit, or just walk along urban streets I am overwhelmed at the “still, sad music of humanity”. When I watch the inhumanity of so many during street riots in ghettos, I don’t hate them, I cringe to realize so many people, raised essentially like animals, suffering from chronic high levels of stress hormones (with all the consequences of this), would likely be my fate were I to have been raised in the same kind of environment. 

While all these glimpses of life from life’s other side make one’s view of life rather surreal, the sheer numbers of humans (7.4 billion) is too vast a number for me to process in any realistic manner. The Black Lives Matter people made a big mistake when they left off the word “too” at the end of their movement title. But because of the huge numbers of humans now existing, how do I possibly make everyone’s life matter? Things mattered a lot more to me when there was just a small family, some pets, and some neighborhood friends that constituted my formative years. But in our formative years we really have limited control over anything and so the things that really mattered were more frustrating than anything else. Of course we need to be self-serving, since self survival starts with ourselves. We inherit or develop peculiarities which make us different. These peculiarities can make it easier to fit in with others or more difficult. 

No matter the particulars of our peculiarities, it is a rare person who is self made or can remotely claim that they earned their successes the old fashioned way—they earned them. If Robert Redford were to brag about his many sexual experiences with beautiful women it would be inane. If I had his looks I would be on my 4th or fifth marriage and have had too many easy to come by sexual experiences for sex to even be a big deal. There may be truth to the saying that good looking sex partners are usually bad in bed. And what kind of crazy aspect of life is it when people have such a variation in terms of what sex acts turn them on the most? Or don’t much get turned on by sex at all? When I read about a young person who forces sex on an old woman I am aghast at something like that. Why would a young person want to have sex with some old wrinkled senior citizen?  As much as some sexual activities are wrong, they also are compulsive. Why, we might wonder, would a nationally known politician start sending pics of his private parts to strangers over the internet? Huh? This is insanity and a sad kind of insanity. Sex is the most surreal aspect of our lives and the least controllable aspect of our being. This is the one area where feelings are totally the basis for the behavior. If someone likes oral sex there are no facts here to discuss, and God help their partner if they don’t like oral sex. It is not even clear to me how counseling would help. “Of course you can learn to like oral sex, now take a deep breath and do your duty”.  Yeah, ok. Which always reminds me of the English gal who, upon hearing her husbands footsteps coming down the hallway, would sigh, open her legs and think of England. Or another English gal expressing her attitude towards sex acts, “I don’t care what they do as long as they don’t do it in the street and scare the horses.”

But even after we remove sex from consideration here about life, in the end, after all our experiences and pondering, life will still be surreal. After sex, religious beliefs are the next most surreal stuff in our lives. Most people simply inherit their religion or marry into a religion and then whatever the scripture attached, it becomes the Word of God. Of course no one claims God wrote the scripture, but we use our faith to maintain allegiance to our religion, at least when it is self-servingly convenient. The problem is that those with the most faith end up with their religious behaviors becoming compulsive/addictive irrational behaviors. The only logical and universal ethical principle is the Golden Rule. Any deviation from this is ethically irrational. 

So, okay we will remove sex and religion from our consideration. Does that make the rest of our lives less surreal?  Well, by definition surreal is associated with unreal, bizarre, unusual, weird, strange freakish, unearthly, uncanny, dreamlike. Ok, so be it. But that is why we like movies so we can be entertained by this kind of stuff. I suspect my hobby of wandering around for hours in nature or urban communities is just another kind of movie—only it is a real life movie. And for sure, we learn from our real life input. Movies are simply someone else’s created sense of reality. What we experience ourselves in life is our true reality. I can watch a movie, or a campaign clip about some important person running for office, but that is hardly a portrait of reality. If we knew the person well that would be our reality of them. 

At this juncture, in a musing about the surreal essence of life, we need to assume the premise that the Golden Rule is really the inherent universal human principle for ethics. It seems, at least to me, that this is a logical conclusion since no one, anywhere, ever disputes this is an ethical principle. We really do understand this, but seldom practice it when it clashes with our emotional or self-serving interests at the time. Like any ethical structure, there need be a reward for ethical behavior, or for what then would be the purpose of ethical behavior? Many, if not most, would insist there will be a Heaven after death of some sort. There is no logical or factual basis for this, but neither can anyone prove such a phenomena might not exist. Interestingly, we sly-ass humans always combine Heaven with a God who will forgive us for our sins, even at the last minute, so we can get to Heaven no matter how many sinful killings or robberies, etc. we may have committed. How convenient.  After, while we may have been ’saved’ at the last minute by a merciful God, how can those we killed be saved from Hell if they had not yet been saved at the time we killed them. Well, lucky for us, too bad for them, and God will understand because He is our friend. How self serving is all this?

Anyway, the reward for using the Golden Rule as the basis for ethics is to maximize our contentment in life. Remember the giver and the receiver get some contentment in life from this behavior toward others. Even so, after letting all this be a crucial given here in this musing, just why is there so much tragedy, sadness, and unfairness in human lives?  Any process which depends on diversity, chance, genetics, and environment will be seeped in all these unfairnesses en route to evolutionary progress. None of these unfairnesses are personal, just like the person who invented poker, is not personally responsible for who wins or loses while playing the game. We mentioned earlier that praying is so much easier than effectuating change via a collective application of the Golden Rule. So naturally prayer becomes a more popular approach and stupid to the extreme. Hardly anyone in a football stadium or watching the game on TV thinks God is really going to decide which team wins and which players have a good game. But nevertheless some players have a prayer circle before the game, and after, some look towards the Heavens when the game is on the line, and often individuals of the winning team thank God for their personal performance or team win. Really now, why then did so many people argue so ferociously about which team would win before the game started? Clearly they don’t really believe God is going to decide who wins the game. It seems evident that the evolution of the human species has a way to go. 

At this stage in the evolution of our species, we often insist it is either a religious sect which will determine the future or a particular form of government. We routinely kill each other over these ‘crucial’ aspects of our societies. Interestingly, both sides in any political or religious clash (the usual culprits) believe that God is on their side. But this is confusing. After all these years, what religious, political, ethnic, cultural, or geographic group is God really supporting?  God must be awfully fickle in his support and keep switching sides. And therein lies the core of the surreality of human life. We too much believe in perceptions which are irrational. In terms of maximizing human contentment in this world, religious and political groups are of no real importance. I doubt God is up there waving the American Flag around or the Jewish flag or the Russian flag or any flag at all, for that matter. Even religious leaders don’t go so far as to depict God or Jesus etc, waving any sort of national flag around. That’s our personal nonsense. 

The nature of the evolutionary process is such that there will be too much tragedy, sadness, and unfairness in human lives. Yet, because of the inherent human ethical principle embodied in the Golden Rule, we can, as a species, keep the tragedy, sadness, and unfairness in human lives to a minimum and maximize the extent of human happiness in our societies. Whenever we personally see someone suffering and we should help alleviate their suffering, we ought to do so. And we will feel good for doing it and even even receive greater contentment when the help goes to someone different from our own self, group, nations, etc. It is hard not to feel a greater sense of contentment when someone who least expects our help, receives it. Invariably, the degree of contentment on both sides will be maximized. We are expected to help solve problems in our own family, but helping others outside family generates even a higher level of contentment. After all, the Golden Rule is an expanded concept of any genetic or national family. I guess  a lot of ‘God’s children’ prefer to limit these children to their own children. Family values is not the same at all as the Golden Rule. Of course parents have special obligations to their own children, but ethics applies to ‘all God’s children. 

My career as a college professor made me realize, early on, the positive significance of helping those who least expect us to help. Our antennas should always be up looking to spot those in need, especially if they seem isolated from others. Isolation of some citizens from others is toxic to any society. No one initially appreciated my assigning permanent lab partners after a couple of weeks to couples who were very opposite from each other in some way. I would try to match the good looking with the plain looking, the outgoing with the quiet, the smart with the less smart, the straight with the gay, the social with the nonsocial, and so on. When they would complain I would explain: “The real world is one in which we are expected to relate well to all sorts of people different from ourselves. So I just do my best to be sure you are well knowledgeable about physiology and can relate well to all sorts of people.” As a result of this pairing some of the most diverse personalities became good friends by the end of the semester. It would be especially gratifying to me when a student especially different from me personally, and may have given me an excuse for some action on their part, only to find I offer my help to solve the problem. Offering to help someone who is least expecting help from someone of a different bent, will invariably be received with astonishment. Any distant disdain will change overnight to permanent gratitude. Over the years I received many Teacher of the Year Awards or Outstanding Faculty Awards and it was not because I was a great lecturer or the smartest Professor around, or the easiest grader, had the most impressive appearance or whatever, but precisely because students thought I cared about them as individuals. Some awards are not what they seem on the surface. 

Because life really is surreal it is a losing battle to pretend it is otherwise. Take the human created terms good and evil, right and wrong, God and Devil. Nowhere in the history of evolution are these terms used. Evolution is based on suitable and unsuitable for the environment at a particular period in evolutionary history. The dinosaurs did not disappear because they were evil. Even right and wrong has limitations. With a planet occupied by endless diversity, it gets rather tricky to start too carefully labeling what is right and wrong. Slavery back in it’s day had plenty who said it was right and plenty others who said it was wrong. The issue was not decided by a tribunal of experts on right and wrong. It was decided by a civil war in which one side won and the other side lost despite plenty of Christian clergy on both sides. Burning at the stake, beheading, hanging, and so on were all deemed right at some points in history. Interracial marriage is deemed by some to be right and others to be wrong. Same with gay marriage. I suppose inbreeding can be claimed wrong on a scientific basis. 

When humans start to stray from their inherent understanding of ethics by practicing something other than the Golden Rule, then right and wrong lose any universal appeal. In any event, it really makes no difference what any species thinks about any aspect of the evolutionary process since it moves forward on evolutionary time according to the laws which govern it’s operation. God is the Whatever that created these laws. Well, just who the hell is God and how did he get created? Something, I guess, came from nothing and only an illusionary fool would claim to know the answers here. It is what it is. Every gift has a gift giver and that is the only basis for us to understand anything about God. 

Life is surreal because we have limited intellect, some more limited than others. But it makes no difference anyway since neither the dumbest of us or the smartest of us has any personal power to alter the evolutionary process. It is likely that a pet thinks human behavior is surreal, albeit they don’t have any abstract concept of something being surreal. But it sure must be puzzling to them. Every time each of us, or we collectively, make a decision not based on fact or careful logic we have contributed to the surreality of life. Today feelings, intolerance to diversity, alternate facts, and internet misinformation all tend to push life further into surreality. It is, I reckon, good theatre but not a good sign for the future of humanity. Clinging to a past in which nations could pretty much be an island unto themselves creates a new surreality that ensures chaos as a consequence. It is probably fair to say things are getting a lot more surreal. 

When we take the stance that we cannot tolerate those who think, behave, and feel differently about some issue in life, we simply ensure that our level of contentment will be short circuited by this lack of tolerance for diversity. It is always better to ask someone to explain why they feel the way they do about this or that than to attack them for their varied feelings toward your own feelings. This is not to say we need tolerate anyone’s actions which are interfering with someone else’s rights or physical safety. When we can bring ourselves to accept diversity, be genuinely intrigued by it, it is at that point we are actually putting ourselves in line with the surreality of life. Life is not just what appears to be real to us. Life is real to others in ways life is not real to ourselves. Of course there are social limits to someone else’s reality. If they kill because they feel the need to, this cannot be tolerated; if they steal someone else’s property this cannot be tolerated; if they deprive others of rights which they already have, this cannot be tolerated—and so on. When someone says they don’t want to stand during a national anthem, they don’t have to. We might want to enquire why they don’t want to stand so we understand where they are coming from. They might say “Well I don’t stand because I don’t approve of everything my country does”. Ok, then the question might be, “well then, why is anyone standing”? The only thing certain here is that another person cannot themselves define why someone is not standing for the anthem, only the person who is not standing can answer that. Of course all of this is surreal.

Life is surreal. When I wander around on my lengthy walks I see so much about life that is surreal. If we fight this reality, and insist all of life has to be just as we personally perceive it to be, then we will end up as discontented as a Donald Trump—with everybody and everything—all the time, twenty four hours a day—and become a brainless feeling machine—lashing out at perceived friends and foes depending on which way the wind is blowing. 

The fact that Donald Trump could get elected is not only surreal, but is indicative that the majority of our own population have become frustrated cauldrons of feelings and frustrations. This is not a good sign at all. Seems like there are a whole lot of chronically high levels of stress hormones existing in so many of our citizens; for different reasons of course, but how our bodies and mind respond to chronic high levels of stress hormones is the same regardless of the cause. How all this works out in the near future will itself be surreal—to us, but not to the evolutionary process which I suppose is the only reality that counts. 

The Primary Reason Ghetto Kids Are Trapped

The Primary Reason Ghetto Kids Are Trapped

In a recent study, I believe in Baltimore, 880 ghetto kids were tracked for 30 years. At the end of 30 years 33 of these kids had managed to no longer live in a ghetto. That’s about a 4% success rate for getting out of the ghetto and being able to live in a more affluent area. Now one study can be suspect, but let’s not quibble here and say the real escape percentage is double that, say 8% or even 10% or even 20%. That means that whatever the cause, ghettos will grow in size, especially since the reproductive rate in any ghetto is higher than in an affluent community. In the last 60 years this is precisely what has happened in our ghettos: they are bigger, more dangerous in which to live, and have become a more stressful environment for kids in their formative years. 

Since crime rates and success rates are about the same—no matter whether we talk about black ghettos, hispanic ghettos, or white ghettos we can logically rule out genetic race factors. Ghetto life, for any race, takes a heavy toll. For those ghetto kids who manage to end up in an affluent neighborhood their likelihood of committing crimes of any sort are no different from whites in such affluent neighborhoods. There are more affluent blacks, hispanics, gays, and women than ever before in American history, so it is not like any ‘type’ of American can’t be a successful law abiding citizen. 

It seems a tad absurd to take the view, that those who live and rule (if there is such a thing) in these ghettos have the responsibility to change their own neighborhoods into non ghetto neighborhoods—the standard “they can achieve success just like I achieved success—I earned it”.  But this seems a bit overblown. The stats say that if these ‘earned it’ achievers had been born in a ghetto, only a small percentage would ever succeed to get out of a ghetto by age 30—no matter their illusions otherwise. 

At this point we need ask ourselves “Who is responsible for the existence of these ghettos?” Well, it certainly can’t be blamed on those born in the ghetto: “Look kid, you made bad choices, now pay the consequences, you could have picked different parents, been born into a better neighborhood, gone to better schools, selected better medical care,” and so on. Some insist it is the parent’s fault—they should be better parents, stop having kids raising kids, mothers being crack heads, whatever.  But the stats tell us almost all the parents were raised in the ghetto, so the cycle goes round and round and round and so far it never stops, just gets worse. So just where does the responsibility lie to reduce the size and number and harsh conditions of our ghettos?  The national government of any nation is ultimately responsible for all the communities within it’s borders. It is no wonder that the wealthiest (top 5%) in our country probably sing the national anthem the loudest,  since their income growth since 1975 is 80% while the 30% who earn less than $29,000 have seen their income grow 7% with no adjustments for the cost of living. In reality, the American government since 1975 had geared it’s economic policies to ensure the wealthy can get much wealthier while the middle class and the poor, from whom the money must come, find their income get less and less.

When we see figures that the United States ranks way back in education, happiness, roads, mass transit, etc, we need to realize that we are way back only because in this country the wealthiest have good schools, good health care, private jets, huge houses, and so on. But since 2-5% of our citizens who own 90% of the wealth, there is little money left to raise the living standards of the middle or lower classes. These damn middle and low class citizens ruin our scores in most areas of competition with other industrialized nations. While Scandinavian countries take care of all citizens, we enable the wealthy to become ever more wealthy with less taxation and endless laws to grease their way to even more wealth. The average CEO in America today makes 300 times the salary of the average worker. In a realistic sense, we value CEO’s far more than workers. And as far as our ghettos go, we sort of seal them off, gate them away from more affluent communities and let them fend for themselves. After all, for most of us, we have never done anything directly to hurt, harm, or make life miserable for anyone in any ghetto. 

Having designated the national government as having the designated responsibility for all the communities within its boundaries, we have to still answer why these residents of these ghettos don’t just shape up, take a deep breath, and work their way out of a ghetto into an affluent community. Are they lazy, dumb, evil, genetically inferior—I mean, just what is their problem?  We all know employees who tried hiring the products of a ghetto but they often throw up their hands and say “these kids are hopeless, have no skills, can’t seem to learn skills, have bad attitudes and are lazy.”  Case closed, give them a chance and they blow it. 

However, science now knows that these kids who grow up in ghettos are very often damaged physically, mentally, and socially. We watch ghetto people during local riots and wonder “what kind of animals are these people”? They burn down their own  neighborhood, they commit vicious crimes on themselves and others, they seem to be devoid of empathy toward anyone, and really, they act like animals. To some extent if you raise children like animals they will end up behaving like animals.  This is pure observational and has no scientific basis. But there is plenty of science behind the problem of the ghettos.

It seems, at least to me, that scientific facts trump feelings and simple observations. I know, not today— feelings and ‘alternate’ facts rule the day. If this continues it will also ruin the future for our country. The known science is this: The formative years are crucial for normal human development, especially the central nervous system. When any child (or adult) is subjected to a highly stressful environment the body responds with a typical stress response by releasing stress hormones. I will try to simplify this so the details don’t obscure the main points. These stress hormones are great for sudden acute dangers (flight or fight), but these same hormones are harmful if they are chronically present. What I will try to demonstrate here is that the chronic stress levels in ghetto dwellers have increased substantially in the last 60 years, and this especially damages the children who will be negatively affected the most. What is meant by negatively affected? Well, among other things, a person’s ability to learn can be affected, their ability to remember, their emotional state, their attitudes, their health status, their susceptibility to many kinds of medical problems, their growth, their metabolism in general, their willpower, their ability to stay focused, and their self confidence. Some, but not a lot of children raised in such an environment will suffer minimal damage, often because of parental excellence or genetic factors. The damaged teenagers venture out on their own at the end of their formative years, in many cases, permanently damaged goods. Employers are then exposed to their damaged condition and conclude these ghetto products are bad for the bottom line. They prefer, for the most part, kids that grew up in affluent neighborhoods. 

Here I need interject another point. Chronic high levels of stress hormones can be present in some children in affluent neighborhoods, even very wealthy neighborhoods. Kids of very wealthy or nice middle class neighborhoods can be subjected to pressures of various kind which generate chronic high levels of stress hormones, and they can end up damage goods by the end of their formative years also. A significant number of kids from wealthy parents are problem citizens or workers or whatever. It isn’t just kids from the ghettos, although a much higher percentage of ghetto kids will be permanently affected. 

One might respond to all this by saying ghettos have always existed and the problems were not as widespread as they are today. This is probably true. I know, when I was young, one could ride through any ghetto—urban, suburban, rural,——and the streets and yards would be teaming with people—kids playing games in the streets, adults of all ages out on their porches, neighborhood picnics all over the place, the kids often went to the same schools as the affluent in the community, and so on. These kids didn’t look or act stressed that much. They were just poor. What held them back in those long ago days was the widespread perception that they were destined to handle the more menial jobs in the community. I don’t recall a single black student in the college prep courses I was in, albeit it is possible there might have been one hidden in there somewhere. Skilled workers had to get in a union for high paying skilled jobs and getting into a union back then was a ‘good ole boys’ kind of selection. Some relative or politician had to sponsor you. Thus even though they might not have been damaged much by high levels of stress hormones in their formative years, opportunities for advancement were limited. 

Things have changed substantially in terms of chronic stress hormone levels in today’s modern and much larger ghettos. You ride through these modern ghettoes and it is rare to see any activity—people are all  indoors, often behind barred windows and doors.  Kids are no longer free to wander about the neighborhood playing with other kids. Kids in ghettos when I was a child did not fear being shot in school or on the sidewalk. Ghettos always have had additional stresses but the level of these stresses is exponentially higher these days.

Part of the picture in America today is this: Adults too are under more stresses. Job security is a lot less. Pensions are often non existent or not secure. Computers, robots, and all sorts of amazing machines have replaced work before done by humans. Until the work week dropped to 40/hrs per week the full time work week fell so that people had more time away from work. But the full time work week has been stuck at 40 hrs/wk for decades even though replacement of workers by other means has continued. Wages for all but the wealthy have not kept up with the cost of living and those earning less than $29,000 have been hurt the most. Minimum wages are not tied to the cost of living so today no single person can live independently on lower level jobs. When I was young, people in lower level jobs could make a living with that job alone. Not today, they need two jobs or both spouses need work. At the low end of the scale, unemployment pay is about as much as some people earn when working a full time job. It is far more difficult today than in the past for huge numbers of people to see any light at the end of the tunnel. Unemployment in some ghettos is over 60%. The cost of taxpayer money to sustain these modern urban, suburban, and rural ghettos is astronomical. Even worse, government aid is based on the premise “Give me a fish and I eat for a day” rather than on “teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime. 43% of American adults don’t even earn enough to qualify to pay any federal income tax. Many of the most affluent pay little or no income taxes. Donald Trump calls that ‘being smart”. This picture I paint is brief and not all inclusive, but makes the point. Many adults today suffer chronic emotional pain from the realities of their situations. 

The current heroin epidemic is not a case of bad people just looking for a drug high. No, heroin is the perfect drug to change how a person feels about pain. A young father who does not have a big enough income to support his family or can’t get a job, or has been medically damaged in their formative years by chronic high levels of stress hormones will seek heroin for relief. Under heroin they just don’t give a damn anymore or are not bothered by their circumstances as much. Telling these victims of modern day stresses to just say no to heroin is an absurdity. Just as bad, we don’t even warn them not to take sedatives like alcohol while using heroin or they run the risk of having their breathing depressed and death. Then we say the culprit is heroin in order to scare them from continuing to use heroin. The reality is this: we have permitted unhealthy environments for children in ghettos and adults at all levels of society. There is no cure for heroin addiction short of changing the environment which is the cause of the addiction. There is no cure for the medical damage being done to children in a ghetto short of reducing the stress levels on these children before they become damaged. 

It is not like we have no way of measuring chronic stress in children or adults. The consequences in children are far greater so we start with them. This is for sure: If we can’t treat chronically high stress hormone levels in children, then the adult future for these children is far more likely to be limited. It is a question of priorities. We are the richest country in the world, albeit 90% of our wealth is now in the hands of 2-5% of our population. We need to have the same attitude Teddy Roosevelt had toward the very wealthy and find a way to limit just how much of our wealth they can sequester into their endlessly greedy hands. Sure a few return much of their wealth to the society from which they got that wealth—like Gates and Buffet— but wealth is more often a compulsive/addictive behavior, beyond the reach of any understanding when enough is enough. This is where a huge amount of our financial wealth now resides, and it gets worse with every passing year. Secondly, we need to adjust our military budget to reflect what is needed to protect this country from attack and let go of military bases all over the world and our habit of invading endless countries in the name of saving them from their own leaders or form of government. We have not won any wars since World War II except Granada and the Balkans. Not only that, but many of the 75 million displaced refugees across the globe are from countries in which we have had military interventions. By the time our smart bombs, missiles, drones, etc have decimated the infrastructure of a country, it is left with some sort of mob rule. This altered priority would probably cut the defense budget in half. 

With tons of money now freed up from the two sources in the last paragraph, we can now tackle shrinking the size and nature of our urban, rural, and suburban ghettos. We tend to think of our ghettos as being urban in nature, but widespread poverty levels now exist in most rural areas, and designated areas of our suburban communities. In a very real sense this problem is a national security problem. We, as a nation, cannot allow greater and greater number of our youth be so environmentally deprived as to damage their physical and mental health during their formative years. To put it in more stark terms. When 42% of guns world wide, in the hands of citizens, are in our own citizens hands, we can ill afford nationwide street protests or create a significant portion of our own citizens to choose terrorism as their form of protest. We are, in effect, creating our own genocidal cauldron of discontent. The wealthy may continue to insist that, in a capitalistic system, they can take as much of the nation’s wealth as they wish, but the long term reality is that the needs of society as a whole always trumps the greed of the few. 

For a start every child needs good health care, good schools, good teachers, a safe environment, and every other aspect of a community which reduces the stress level of being in a community. Americans need to sacrifice stubborn selfishness and our national government ensure universal good health care to all citizens, the same amount of money spent to educate every child, the same quality of teachers to every child, monitoring the stress hormone levels of every child, a total revisions of teaching methods so that at least half of learning is done on the computer, and teachers be trained and spend half their time directing their attention to those children with chronic high levels of stress hormones in their system. Parents can no longer be the sole determinators of how their child is being raised. Whatever it takes to reduce the chronically high levels of stress hormones in their child will trump all other notions. 

Clearly the amount of stress in family lives is related to decent wages, employment opportunities, health related matters, safe neighborhoods for children to play in, and perhaps other areas besides these. This means minimal wage has to be a livable wage and rise with the cost of living just as social security does. Our youth are just as important as the elderly. This also means guaranteed employment at the level of one’s skills. This also means enforced responsible reproduction (a goal requiring a whole new musing) Plus, this means sufficient responsible adult role models for every child. Government can do little about a child’s genetic make-up, his ill-luck regarding the community he lives in or the parents he/she has. Life is not fair that way. 

The cost to level the playing fields for all children is steep. But it is just a matter of priorities. It just seems ill-conceived to continually support the cost of military might all over the globe so we can engage in endless invasions which have yet to achieve the desired results. It just seems unconscionable to allow so much wealth to accumulate in the hands of so few. Neither of these priorities will ever make the kind of prosperous and peaceful environment that serves the needs of all citizens.

My career brought me into contact with many young college students whose background often was from an urban ghetto. Those most damaged from the high levels of stress hormones were rarely in any university. What to do with these young people is a real conundrum. The damage is mostly permanent. So the only solution is to not let young people be exposed to these kind of stresses as children.  Even those students least damaged from their formative environment were hardly prepared to function well in a university setting. Many had academic potential, but it rarely was maximized by the many hurdles they faced. Often students ill prepared for college would take a full course load, work a 40 hour week and have huge family responsibilities, all of which weighed heavily on their shoulders around the clock. Ironically, in many cases these young people were extremely cooperative, personable, hard working, dependable, honest, and responsible. While many could be helped over some hurdles, and many were, few ever achieved their full career potentials in life. At some point they just gave up and settled for any kind of employment which would enable them to get out of the ghetto. Few of these students have the genetic willpower of a Terrell Owens or the kind of focus he had instilled in him by his grandmother who raised him. Had a Terrell Owens been in my class I would never have had much contact. Virtually on his own he ran over, around, or through every hurdle he faced in life. But most ghetto kids have no such genetic willpower or learned ability to focus so clearly on the task at hand. They need help and a level playing field and they seldom get it. Naturally, many then call the attitude of a Terrell Owens self serving, inappropriate, and annoying. Who the hell does he think he is? Well, he is a rare product of the ghetto who manages to get out essentially on his own willpower and focus. He had little athletic ability before college so he was not a pampered athlete in his formative years like most athletic stars were.

Ghettos will be reduced in size and sometimes vanish when every child born in these ghettos gets good health care, good schools, good teachers, and have parents who have job opportunities at living wages, plus have ample quality adult role models, and safe places to play, and job opportunities as teenagers. Part of any responsible reproduction program will likely include parents who love raising children and thus will not only raise their own but participate in helping those parents who need help raising their children. There is nothing wrong with volunteer grandparents, uncles, aunts, big brothers, big sisters, and so on. When residents have access to living wage jobs and good health care, there is little need for heroin addictions or criminal acts, etc.  

In the long run everything touched upon in this memo will get sorted out via the evolutionary process which is controlled by the laws created by God (however one defines God). It is not like evolution is about to be tanked. Time stays, We Go. Humans like to create a God in their own image, that being always one in which we as individuals are important and control the future, that no matter how we personally act we can always be forgiven and go to Heaven—if we give lip service to some inherited religion. The reality appears to be that God doesn’t depend on any of us personally for a damned thing. If Lincoln hadn’t engineered the elimination of slavery somebody else would have down the line. The only thing in life we can really achieve as individuals is varied degrees of contentment, and this we cannot do by ourselves. Those who let the inherent human ethical principle of the Golden Rule guide their lives will end up with the greatest contentment. He who gives in varied way to the less fortunate receives as much contentment as those who receive the help. 

While the reality may be that humans, at this stage in the evolutionary process, are incapable of most of the above in this musing, this has no bearing on the eventual future of life on this planet. The religious conservatives of every century were opposed to many progressive changes and insisted the changes would never happen. The earth was flat, slavery would never be eliminated, women would never be allowed to vote, children would always be under the sole stewardship of parents and could work in sweat factories as needed, blacks would never be in desegregated schools, some adults would never be allowed to marry the person of their choice, etc. Yet over time, human society changed and all these things came to pass, at least in our country. 

Many, probably most, still pray for good things to happen to themselves or the less fortunate, but there is zero evidence that God singles out anyone for exemption from His/Her/Its laws which govern the process. What we do have, which is no small power, is to collectively help those less fortunate (genetically, environmentally, good or bad luck) to achieve some success and contentment in their lives. It is of course easier to pray for God to do this and free us to live more self serving lives via family values, patriotic and religious illusions—almost all geared to giving ourselves, or our group, all the advantages possible, with minimal concern or help given to those most in need. 

Despite being outnumbered, those who base their lives around the Golden Rule, nevertheless achieve the most contentment in life, and give us a glimpse as to how things will eventually become, down a distant road, as the evolutionary process weeds out all this self serving and genocidal human behavior.

With all the above as testimony, we can understand that the primary reason ghetto kids are trapped and often doomed as productive law abiding citizens is because governments have not accepted the responsibility for these communities. For this we will shortly pay the piper.     

An Equation Which Generates the Near Future:

An Equation Which Generates the Near Future:

Overpopulation + wealth concentrated in the hands of a few + climate change from human activities + ethnic/religious/cultural intolerance + poor wages for huge numbers of workers + longer life spans costing billions of dollars + limited natural resources + emotional garbage information from internet sources + social media instead of community social involvement + ‘family values’ where only ‘family’ counts + all kinds 

of addictions and compulsive behaviors regarding money, power, sex, popularity, control, winning, et al + global economies with no global controls, + terrorism as an effective weapon for any group, large or small to use + 75 million displaced refugees with no place to go (like what country can really absorb this number of refugees?), + too many 

global leaders who are essentially thugs, mentally or emotionally disturbed ego maniacs about money, religion, power, control et. all + the current age of ‘feelings and alternate facts’ instead of scientific facts + answers to problems today being so complicated that the average person hasn’t a clue or is likely to ever have a clue + the U.S. with the most weapons of mass destruction and the only major power with military bases all over the world whose  citizens own 42% of all the weapons  owned by other citizens across the globe + consequently the U.S. managing to be the most popular target for citizens abroad and citizens at home + an economic powder keg in the U.S. where 43% of adults do not make enough money to even qualify to pay federal income tax + salaries of middle class and especially the poor no longer keep up with the cost of living (only the elderly have that protection) + government income taxes that don’t rise with the cost of living +  only 4% of children born in an American ghetto manage to escape the ghetto by age 30, so our ghettos are getting bigger, more dangerous, and with higher unemployment rates (“We keep countless men from being good citizens by the conditions of life with which we surround them.”) Theodore Roosevelt   =  the next evolutionary apocalypse.

Back in 2003 in a long musing (no surprise), I predicted that things would implode in this country and probably the rest of the world in 18 years if Democrats were in control and in 13 years if Republicans were in control. It is now 14 years down the road and I ask myself do I still think this will happen? Disregarding any prediction of the past, I would predict just such an implosion will occur within the next 5 years and probably sooner and I would remove the word maybe concerning the rest of the world. 

Most everything about our evolutionary situation right now is different. We are the first species to probably cause an evolutionary apocalypse. Our activity, which has grown at an exponential rate the last century, has been detrimental to most other species and now we have reached the point where we are even genocidal to our own species. There are simply too many serious problems coming down from every which direction, and there is no indication that we are capable of disciplining ourselves from individual behaviors which are self-serving and at the same time insufficient for adjusting to a changed environment. The human species is clearly not evolved enough to sustain ourselves at this point in evolutionary history. The necessary traits are there but not dominant enough to prevail in the short run. There are humans today who understand there is a necessity for responsible reproduction. But most still think they alone will determine how many kids they can have and how they will be raised. There are plenty of people who live ethical lives via the Golden Rule which benefits both the giver and the receiver and thus the entire human race. But most people still use inherited religion at their convenience to live a self-serving life. There are plenty of people who strive vigorously for monetary gain, sexual pleasures, power over others, expensive hobbies, etc, but discipline themselves to know when enough is enough. But they are in the minority. There are people who spend as much time or money, or both, on the less fortunate but they are in the minority. There are many people who appreciate racial and cultural diversity and find it easy to co-exist, support, and genuinely like those different from theirselves, but they are in the minority. And so it is—if the right humans had been in the majority the last 60 years, none of the problems in the above equation would exist and the near future would look more like a glimpse of Heaven. 

That things are not now lined up correctly means nothing in the long run for the evolutionary process. Thus, things are operating as they always have, governed by the laws God created to control the process. The problems identified in the above equation, and even more that were not included, will be solved in the long run. In what manner or way is beyond human intellectual capacity.  Abraham Lincoln himself could not have accurately described life in the 20th century—and he had amazing insights about most everything in life. It is, of course, disappointing that progress can’t be finalized in human lifetimes, but then the process has never been about any particular species or any individual members of any species. Humans are the ones who have tried so hard to view life through self serving religious beliefs. “It is not so much God who created Man in His own image, as everyone of us who creates unto himself a God in his own image”. (Unknown) Maybe after an apocalypse the remaining humans will learn from the past. Our species can do that, and we should remember, even today, most of our societies are far more civilized and tolerant of diversity than in earlier years. A lot of human social progress occurred in my lifetime. Maybe a new species will evolve and this species will talk of us like we talk about the long ago Neanderthals that were an older version of us. And of course we don’t really know where our own planet fits it with a universe that seems limitless. Some have, in a kind way, referred to me as Professor Doomsday. That’s ok. Past evolutionary apocalypses have occurred and we don’t today call them doomsdays. They were corrections, and some of these apocalyptical corrections took millions of years.  I reckon I could tell someone that everything looks just fine millions of years from now, and they might reply, “Who the hell is interested in everything being better millions of years from now, we will all be dead.” Exactly. And the dead don’t worry about a dam thing. Maybe that is what Heaven is, not having to worry about a damn thing. I always tell a dying pet that ‘you have had a good life, and nothing bad can ever happen to you from this point on.” Then when the last flicker of life disappears from their eyes I feel a glimpse of the reality that we, none of us, are running this show. ’Tis a good thing, otherwise the distant future would be a tragedy. We are all part of the ‘Greatest Show on Earth’ and we ain’t running it. If we can’t run on gratitude for the good parts of our life we ‘in a heap of trouble’ achieving any contentment. 

One aspect of all this should be clear enough. Patriotism, which is present in every nation, will not solve or determine the near or distant future of humanity. Everyone of us could sing the national anthem every hour on the hour and this changes nothing. The Pope can pray for world peace, and has, for hundreds of years, and this changes nothing. To the extent most or all of the factors listed in the equation, which predicts a soon evolutionary apocalypse to be true, then it follows that, after an evolutionary correction, no matter how long the correction, we will eventually end up with “non-sectarian societies in which the Golden Rule will be the essence of ethics with a non-military culture, global sharing, healing the environment, sustainable economics, self-determination, social justice, economic empowerment of the poor, love and compassion in action” (Deepak Chopra). In this sense, wouldn’t it be nice if we could live forever? Then again, change and diversity drive the evolutionary process, so the same ole, same ole would thwart the process. The process is amazingly mind boggling, and we are dispensable—it is plain enough why others are, but less clear why I am dispensable. In this age of feelings as facts, I feel I should not be dispensable. A little birdie just chirped to me “We’ll see how this feeling works out.” Father Time is closing in on me, my race is winding down, the importance of anything is fading, and the finish line appears to be moving toward me instead of me toward it. Well, I think I will sit for spell, go gently down the stream, and if real lucky, this evolutionary apocalypse will be over my dead body. 

The Soothing Mellowness of Nature

The Soothing Mellowness of Nature

It is as hard to communicate via words about nature just as it is to use words about a feeling like love. And like every other aspect of human essence, there is tremendous difference how either nature or love is experienced by diverse human beings. 

After a week long heat spell I resumed my 5-7 mile wanderings in nature/city environments. It was late afternoon when I took a walk in Morton Arboretum. It is not real forest which would be dense and tangled up with a bit of everything. But in an arboretum there are all kinds of trees and bushes arranged to make everything look so perfect. The sun went down before I got back to my car so I sat on a bench overlooking this man made lake, gazed up at the sky, and listened to the deafening silence while absorbing the daylight giving way to night.  I love these kind of moments because it enables me to forget about the small stuff which clutters up our daily thoughts. We can realize, surrounded by nature, that, in the end, it’s all small stuff. 

Our earth has been around for billions of years, and I myself less than a century. I wondered what the place looked like several hundred years ago when the Indians inhabited the same area. I wondered about how the place looked before humans were even on the planet. And I always wonder what I should really think about life and the planet. We don’t really get factual knowledge from thinking about nature, we get feelings. We are all presently part of the evolutionary process, but with such an insignificant impact on the big picture, that any pompous conceptions we have of ourselves dissipates rather quickly. I wonder what the planet and this arboretum will look like 300 yrs from now? I wonder about the 75 million homeless humans living in cramped filthy tent camps with food we wouldn’t even feed to our pets. I wonder how my life would have been had I been born and raised in a ghetto. It seems every government is responsible for all the communities within its borders. If so, we have surely been irresponsible. Maybe indifferent and self serving are better terms.

Evolution has been a vicious process. There is more sadness than happiness in human societies. It is what it is, and while I see the progress in the evolutionary process, there is no way to shed the sorrow felt for the losers, or the temporary status of every single member of every species around. 98% of all species that ever existed are now extinct, let alone every member of these species from the past. So many times have I looked in the eyes of some less fortunate young person and seen the forlorn hopelessness in their eyes. So many times have I watched the the last flicker of life fade from the eyes of a beloved pet being put down in a veterinary office. Too many times we all see on our media gadgets the endless tears from someone who has been part of some unspeakable tragedy. Too many times most of us must deal with a loss so wrenching to our soul that total recovery is impossible. We all, if we live any length of time, die slowly by a thousand cuts. With each loss, part of us is lost too. All loss is tragic, including loss by changing times. Over time, what once was a good fit is either now a less perfect fit, or no longer a meaningful part of our lives. Yes, we can never go home again. These are the kind of thoughts, amongst others, which alone in nature, cause us to better understand the reality of the world we experience for such a brief period of time.

It is nature which helped me understand that God (however defined) cannot be our personal friend, or willing to alter His/Her/Its laws which govern the evolutionary process—to help any member of any species. At first, it seemed well, then we all are on our own, and should just seek as much pleasure from life as we can before we die as surely we will. But over time I began to realize that pleasure is the wrong word as pleasure can be brief and often become addictive or compulsive——neither of which can lead to personal contentment—and personal contentment is about all we can hope to achieve in our lifetime. Once we understand this, things get a bit clearer, and a bit fairer. 

Survival of the fittest is a concept that works just fine in the lower rungs of the genetic ladder. Only the human species has the inherent mental capacity to more fully comprehend the significance of events in our lives. Our fear of death, for example, is so much more threatening to us than to other species. But even more significant is our power to change our environment so that we can live a better live. Other species, if they can, move to find a better environment. The advanced power of reasoning possessed by humans creates emotional states that have far more depth than those of other species. No other species have a chance against us if we decide they are in the way. As human overpopulation continues to increase at an exponential rate, we are now experiencing the 6th period in evolution of massive species extinction. All the earlier periods of mass species extinction were created by natural environmental events. This time it is being caused by human activities. 

Does God care at all about individual suffering? Clearly God is not saving any particular religious group from life’s landmines. For example, there is no identifiable group who die less from cancer except those who do not receive good health care. There is no identifiable group which has less deaths from automobile accidents except those who cannot afford a car. And so it goes, God is not saving more of any group regarding all the things for which people tend to pray. Maybe God just doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the bad things which can happen. And, if God would really answer the prayer of someone to pass a test, win a contest, etc. while ignoring the fate of 75 million homeless refugees, what kind of God is this? But we overlook what should be more obvious—namely, what the human species has received via the laws which govern the evolutionary process, is to collectively help those less fortunate. We have a choice——concentrate on our own needs or spend the same amount of time collectively helping those less fortunate. This is called the Golden Rule and is the only globally recognized ethical principle. Interestingly enough, there is no other way to achieve personal contentment except through the Golden Rule. The truth is that he/she who gives receives as much personal contentment as those who receive the help. It is not coincidence that those nations who provide good health care, good schools, good teachers, good job opportunities, good wages, good benefits, good vacation time, etc to all citizens have the highest citizen happiness index compared to those countries which cherish individual responsibility in these areas.