The Near Future—The Most likely Scenario

The Near Future—The Most likely Scenario

If Abraham Lincoln had been asked to predict the distant future 150 yrs from his time of death he, nor anyone else, would have had much luck. I guess the near future is a bit more predictable, but probably no more predictable than most NFL games. So why bother to predict the near future of our own country or planet? In my case it is just part of my hobby of pondering all aspects of life. Some sort of advanced day dreaming. This is long, probably best not read in one reading, since a puzzle put together over an entire lifetime is not easy to condense. If anyone else took the time to do this kind of thing their completed puzzle would be different from mine. Realistically, it is totally unimportant to reality just how different our completed puzzle about life may be. After all, despite our self serving attempts to make humans in control of the evolutionary process none of us, singly or collectively, drive the future.  All aspects of the evolutionary process, and God’s connection to this process are fascinating, albeit mostly above human intellectual pay grade. It is clear enough that human societal interactions, here and abroad, are already heading south. I just happen to be in a very fortunate personal situation for all this. I have no immediate family to worry about. I am no longer in my productive years where there would be responsibilities to others affected by this social and dangerous atmosphere being politically or religiously created in societies across the globe. I am by nature a loner, and always have been even when, by necessity, I was a major player in my own little earlier productive ball park. Thus, hermit-hood to me, at this stage, is just the means to let the process work itself out without my involvement. It is true, for example, that Hitler was an evil intolerant emotional psychopath, but there were a lot of people in Germany at the time who were good people personally. I have friends who are good people who nevertheless have bought into the Trump anger at just about everybody and everything. For the time being, I am not financially affected by this social turmoil and am determined not to have endless emotional conversations with others about an increasingly troubled planet. I prefer to think about and observe what is going on in private, as a more genuine hermit.  What is seemingly rather startling about the present time is the number of potentially dire problems coming at us, and just about every other nation, all at once. To me there is nothing in the past to compare to the current situation—in that today no nation is an island unto themselves in ways which were true before. It doesn’t seem any nation at this point in time can simply make good choices by themselves, and everything will be all right in the near future for them. To the extent this is true we have become, like it or not, one huge global community with no real global controls. Blind shallow patriotism today is genocidal for our species, or at the very least for most members of our species. Religious rigidity and extremism is genocidal as well. Failure of our species to employ the Golden Rule as our basic ethical principle is genocidal as well. Allowing feelings and ‘alternate facts’ as an excuse not to employ scientific facts as the means to address huge problems, created by our own species’ activity, is genocidal. Allowing vast percentages of global wealth to be hoarded by a small percentage of the world’s citizens is genocidal, including to the very wealthy themselves. Capitalism without proper regulations and limits is genocidal to our species and many other species too.  

14 years ago, in a lengthy musing, I predicted implosion for our own country in 13 years if Republicans were in control and 18 years if democrats were in control. My reasoning back then was that democrats would manage to keep crucial problems at bay for a bit longer than the Republicans. However, all the dangers seen on the horizon back then, and even some new ones, are now coming home to roost. Neither party has managed to successfully confront these major problems.

The goal here is to start with the bigger picture and then scale down to specifics and in this way reach some conclusions. There is no attempt here to infer that my conclusions about the near future are better conclusions than those who disagree. Frankly, it makes no difference since none of us individually, or collectively determine the future. Humans like to think we have dominion over the whole planet and as the most advanced species, the future is under our control. All human history has been infused with self-serving notions that God favors us, that God made us in His image, that we can communicate with God personally, that God favors certain organized religions, or cultures, or ethnic groups, etc. There is no evidence for this at all, and if God did favor certain religious groups or any other kind of human groups (by answering their individual prayers) it would be statistically evident. 

Let’s say God favors the Southern Baptists or Protestants in general, or Muslims in general, or Christians in general or whatever. Let’s postulate God favors Catholics the best, that this religion best represents the Word of God. We know the kind of things we pray to God about. Thus, on a battlefield there would a lower percentage of Catholics killed, or fewer people in the same area die of cancer who are Catholic, or Catholics get better scores on important exams, or less Catholics get murdered, or raped, and so on. And if this is not true, than why do Catholics then pray for protection or help in these areas?  Humans have been around now for thousands of years, and if God favored any group then the history of that group would stand out in an impressive fashion. Certainly God didn’t favor the Jews during World War II or the Christians in the early Roman Empire, or the Catholics or Protestants in Ireland, or the Sunni or Shiites in the Middle East, and on and on it has gone throughout history. It seems logical that God exists since wherever there is a gift, there must be a gift giver, and that gift giver must be God. There is nothing more we humans can know about God. And certainly we cannot begin to understand how something came from nothing, as surely God must have come first. So I start here with the postulation that the future is completely controlled by the laws God created to drive the evolutionary process. We see things in human years while the evolutionary process operates on evolutionary time. 

The situation today is totally different today than any other period in evolution. Before we start feeling how important any species is, including our own, we need remember that 98% of all species which ever existed are now extinct. How permanent is our species to the evolutionary scene? I have no idea. It is important to realize that particular humans are not responsible for evolutionary changes. That is to say, for example, if Lincoln had not engineered the end of slavery in our country, someone else would down the line. If the first organism which had the ability to live on land had died at birth, then some other organism down the line would have been the first. Evolutionary time is never in any rush. It can’t be, since so much of it depends on chance. But sooner or later, everything lines up right and progress proceeds. Any humans living in the time of dinosaurs probably never envisioned the dinosaurs becoming extinct. But they did. 

The intellectual superiority of the human species has changed the evolutionary process in ways hard to interpret. For the first time it is the activity of a particular species which is causing the 6th evolutionary period of massive species extinction. For the first time, it is human activity which is changing the composition of the atmosphere and creating a climate change which to going to impact on the evolutionary process. We need to remember that it took 50 years for industrialized human activities to change the atmosphere enough to cause the now occurring climate changes. It was a slow process and it will take decades to reverse changes in the atmosphere. So in some sense, to some degree, any changes we make now cannot reverse the situation any time soon. Even today many people simply deny the reality of climate change. One person recently explained his denial of climate change to me by saying ‘weather is weather’ and thought he had made some insightful statement. For this musing I will leave climate change as an event which is here and will get worse. In our country 53% of our population live within 50 miles of our coastline. The icebergs are melting at an exponential rate. The ocean levels will rise at the same sort of exponential rate and not too far off. That’s a whole lot of moving homes and cities inland. 

Our planet today already suffers from human overpopulation. That is to say, there is no way every human on this planet today could possibly live the lifestyle many of us affluent live. There are not enough natural resources to permit this lifestyle for everyone. This is a classic definition of overpopulation. Only an optimistic idiot would claim human population can double in the next 80 years as it has in my lifetime without dire consequences. So far the human species has been incapable of enforcing responsible reproduction any more than we have been able to enforce preventing pollution of our atmosphere. Will evolutionary progress cease? I hope not because the human species today has many urgent changes needed for us and other species to survive. Clearly climate change and human population of the globe are very much related.  We know a bit about ice ages and other warm weather ages and their causes. This is the first time such environmental changes are caused by activities of a specific species. Thus, we have no lessons to be learned from the past in regard to the near future of our planet. 

What is beginning to become more clear is that human social behaviors are starting to take a nose dive after centuries of advancement. It seemed the ages of social cruelty were being beaten back by evolutionary progress. We don’t practice killing people as sacrifices to imagined Gods, we don’t burn witches at the stake, or stone people to death, or hang people routinely, or quarter them alive in a public square, and so on. Tolerance of diversity has been on a relatively consistent advancement. More people have rights today which only others once had, and science has enabled so many more people to survive diseases, injuries, and age related medical events like heart attacks, cancer, etc. 

But the last 40 years have seen some dark clouds appear in such progress. We have 75 million homeless refugees today, more in total number than ever before. We have few ideas what to do with them. More and more countries don’t want them. Overpopulation tends to work this way. This 75 million refugees is about 25% of the number of people who live in the U.S.  And the kinds of government behaviors which generate all these global refugees are increasing at an exponential rate and no one seems to know just how these people can be relocated. I have no idea myself. A major situation which also gets pushed under the rug is the real economic and emotional chronic emotional stresses being placed on more and more people on our planet. Gone are the days when the poor can just live off the land and grow their own food in a quiet peaceful atmosphere.

Capitalism with limits and regulations is a great economic system. Capitalism with inadequate regulations and no limits is a devastating system. Today, the U.S. is exponentially moving more and more wealth into the hands of the already wealthy at a greater rate than any other country in the world——although to be fair almost all countries, democratic or otherwise, are doing the same thing, just not at the same rate or to the same extreme. On top of this someone who earns vast wealth is then entitled to pass it on to genetic offspring for whom, whatever else they can claim, it is money unearned. This prevents earned wealth from being returned back into the same society from which it was derived so that others can then have a more level playing field to accumulate their own earned wealth. Family values is out of control.  “Family values” is more like ‘gang values’ than a any reflection of the Golden Rule. 

It is so bad today that the  “world's eight richest people have the same wealth as the poorest 50%. In the U.S. the top 2-5% of our citizens own 90% of our wealth. When people brag that the U.S. is the wealthiest country in the world this means next to nothing for 75% of our citizens. When people seem shocked that the U.S. is no where near the top in ranking for education, happiness index, health care, and so on, this is precisely because while the top 5% have excellent education, health care, job benefits, etc. the rest of our population have no such excellence in these areas. To make matters worse, our urban, rural, and suburban ‘ghetto areas’ are not getting smaller in size but are getting larger and worse in the conditions of their living environment. When I was young one could travel through any kind of ghetto and the neighborhoods were bustling with people—kids playing games, residents sitting on their porches, block parties, and everyone felt safe enough to do all this. Today, those who now live in these communities are locked behind closed doors, bars across the windows, kids not allowed to play outside, and gangs of this or that sort prowl around attending to their own private battles with rival gangs and feel free to terrorize most of the citizens who live there. 

Most people think, well maybe most do, that any individual can stay focused, do the right things, and become a productive, responsible citizen—if he/she really wants to. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are definite medical implications for most people exposed to intense chronic stress in their lives. The actual medical results depend on genetics, parental expertise, plus the frequency and intensity of the stress. Intense stress produces stress hormones which help the body respond vigorously to the stress (fight or flight) response, but this evolutionary trait is not often appropriate with modern day stresses. The chronic presence of these hormones has a negative effect on almost all body systems, but especially the central nervous system of young people in their formative years. The damage can range from minimal to substantial, depending on the factors already mentioned in this paragraph. These chronic stresses can be present in all economic levels of society, but are far more likely to be found in our modern urban, rural, and suburban ghettoes. Emotional and mental stress (intricately connected) can also result from endless internet input which keeps a person agitated constantly about a particular topic. High levels of chronic stress hormones during formative years can negatively, often in permanent ways, affect a young person’s ability to remember, to learn things quickly, to be emotionally stable, to weaken their ability to empathize with others, to tolerate others, and can facilitate all sorts of medical conditions such as diabetes, being overweight, body growth, mental disorders of all sorts, and on it goes. Many employers, wishing to help the human products of these ghettoes by hiring them, often find out they don’t work out too well. For example they may be slow to learn, forgetful, irresponsible, emotionally stunted, physically not very energetic, and the list goes on. We see the products of these environments in street riot situations or gang activities and we wonder at how they seem to behave like wild animals. Well, you raise kids trapped in homes, exposed to fear in school and on the streets and just about everywhere, and the end result is often, but not always, disastrous. 

Gone are the days when a parent could simply tell a young person, “You better be home by suppertime or you will have to make your own supper.” Gone are the days when the neighborhood was the center of a young person’s social life. The one skill which young people gain early on, no matter their economic or social stratus in life, is surfing the internet. On the internet one’s emotional state can be yanked every which way and reality becomes just about anything a person wants it to be. The paths which your own developing mind can take vary a lot. It is less a matter of good or bad choices but the uncertainty of the outcome from endless choices of paths to head down. Today, compared to the not so distant past, there is far less time to ponder our own life and our limited experiences, or to think on our own. More and more people cannot be left without input from varied electronic gadgets for hardly a minute. I have seen like 20 people in a yard for some kind of social get-to-gether and all but one was on their cell phone. Just weird. There just seems to be endless thought, but mostly superficial transient thought about insignificant matters. We have a plethora of alternate facts, feelings as facts, and less tolerance for diversity. 

For the sake of an effort for brevity here, let it be pointed out that the modern pace and direction of life for more and more people is producing a lot of chronic stress for both young people and adults. There are a lot of people angry and frustrated, for differing reasons, but this anger generates chronic high levels of blood stress hormones and this will invariably generate variable amounts of disruption to all the body systems, especially the central nervous system. If we want to understand a lot of this ‘weird’ or ‘hostile’ or base behavior drenched with violence we need look no further that what all this chronic stress from differing sources is doing to the mind set of so many humans across the globe. And much of this damage, especially produced in the formative years, is more or less permanent. It does limited good to talk about religion or politics or ethics as a meaningful solution. The current heroin epidemic is directly related to a frustrated mental state imposed by the varied chronic stresses endured by more and more people. Few people can give up heroin in the absence of a change in their current environmental situation. How silly to propose to these addicts that they can simply endure the pain of their life’s reality or insist on taking heroin, in which case they just care less about their situation. Anyone who has ever been in chronic pain (physical or emotional) understands how strong the desire is to either get rid of the pain or emotionally just care less about it. Heroin does not get rid of pain—heroin just makes us care less about the pain, to feel less emotional about it. And heroin itself (not talking about synthetic creations which are no longer heroin but a different chemical) is one of the least toxic ‘recreational drugs’ and is not addictive at all absent the pain. If someone is not in emotional or physical pain they have zero interest in heroin. Am I saying that heroin is good drug to take? Not at all, because if you no longer care about your situation, there is far less likelihood you will ever find the focus to change the situation that is causing the emotional stress. Put another way, when there is 60% unemployment in your community and those jobs which are available do not pay a living wage, then common sense dictates that many people who live in these areas will remain on heroin. Drug addiction of any sort, addiction/compulsive behaviors of any sort, are all medical problems, not police/political footballs, and if we want to change things we need medical centers all over the country to help treat these situations and put pressure on politicians to ensure people have employment opportunities with livable wages. 

 Clearly this musing could go on and on and on. It already has. More could easily be written that would fit in here but enough has been written which illustrates why the near future will likely become dire for humans and other species on this planet. So let’s summarize all this thusly: Over population does matter and we have already passed the point when we can make it not matter. Climate change does matter and we have already passed the point where we can reverse it quickly. So we will pay the price, the only question left is to what degree.  Wealth distribution does matter and we have already created the time bomb which is already expressing itself through chronic stress, terrorism, poor education, lack of job security, health insecurity, personal safety insecurity, divorces, hesitancy to get married, local, state, and national debts, mental and physical damage (often permanent) from chronic stress, family values (‘us vs them”) instead of human values, and religious extremism.  All communities and class economic levels do matter—not just the wealthy—as do all communities including our urban, rural, and suburban ghettos. Invading other nations as a foreign policy way of life does matter as we have killed more people and destroyed more foreign infrastructures than any other nation on our planet, and this has created millions of people set on revenge, thus making US. citizens the ultimate target for varied terrorist groups. How armed our citizens are does matter, and when riots break out—the violence and extent of deaths and injuries will rise exponentially. Widespread media gadgets which let people stay communicated round the clock without regards to immediate vicinity does matter since riots and domestic unrest will become more and more common—eventually leading to roving riots well coordinated via these gadgets. 

In the United States we have a unique volatile situation. Essentially we now have three groups—blacks, whites, hispanics—in which no single group anymore has a clear cut majority. This creates real tension, and if these groups cannot quickly learn to tolerate, support, and be kind to each other, then our social milieu will turn sour, and quickly. We could then be headed for a 2nd Civil War, which will not be fought on battlefields with uniformed armies, but from neighborhood to neighborhood, with terrorism, mob attacks, and the kind of ghastly deaths usually associated with religious or ethnic conflicts.  

History will be of little help. Things are totally different today than even 70 years ago. Since almost everything is global now, no individual nation can survive by itself and just go it’s own way. Those days are past. Like it or not, humanity is now a global family without any global controls. Patriotism, religious faiths, political bents, notions of ethnic allegiance, cultural norms—none of this is helpful in any situation where the major problems are all global. Gone are the days when the wise can simply pack up and go someplace else and be removed from whatever crisis is at their doorstep, and live off the land. 

Humans are smart enough to understand probably all of the problems listed above, but our feelings trump our mental abilities. The age of reason has been replaced by a new dark age of feelings, alternate facts, debates via personal insults, polished and effective propaganda which keeps our emotions all churned up until we act on our feelings more than facts or realities. Obama tried his best to get all of us to act according to the better angels of our nature, and tried to help those most in need of financial help but failed, in large part because Congress simply refused to pass any legislation in this direction. More people did get rights, but this only fueled the belief by many that these new people getting rights others already had was one of the reasons their own fiscal situation stayed stagnant. Some want to go back to the ‘old days’ when a certain ethnic group had a clear majority and others knew their place. Most everybody understands in theory that Trump is totally a self-serving liar and focused on his own wealth and power. He has one ethical mantra and has had it his whole life: whenever he is involved with anyone else or group, he makes sure the other person or group gets the short end of the stick. He used his wealth and all the laws created by the wealthy to ensure he could always get more wealth, to further his own wealth. Trump made going bankrupt multiple times a means to increase his own wealth by millions, while at the same time be exempt from paying taxes. But Trump had one thing in common with his voters—he was very angry and made it clear he was angry—and those voters who were also very angry, albeit about different things, decided to vote for someone as angry as themselves. Neither political party has been able to stop the flow of enormous amounts of our country’s wealth into the hands of the already wealthy, or limit just how much wealth any individual could personally accumulate.Thus, for many citizens left in the lurch, they would rather blow up the ship and start anew than stick with what proved not to work well for them. 

It took many years for me to finally understand that God is not protecting anyone personally or causing anyone personally to have misfortunes. God’s evolutionary process did give the human species an ethical nature to help direct this advanced ability to reason and think. But human ethical development has not kept pace with human mental abilities, and this disconnect has made it so far impossible for the Golden Rule to help the least fortunate as well as the most fortunate to maximize the potential for all citizens of the world to reach their highest level of contentment in life. There never can be equality in the evolutionary process because diversity is needed for advancement. So this disconnect between human mental abilities and our ethical behavior will no doubt be corrected down the road of evolutionary progress. The person who invented poker is not responsible for who wins or loses in a poker game. Neither is God responsible for what happens to who in the evolutionary process. The evolutionary process is the center of attention, never any of the individual components, despite human attempts to make ourselves the center of importance. 

While there are too many individual tragedies in the short life span of humans, there is no logical reason to believe evolutionary progress is in danger. But the inability at this point in time for humans to collectively protect the less fortunate is a tough pill for most of us to swallow. When I see an emaciated child in a refugee camp about to die from malnourishment or lack of proper medical care or parenting or whatever, I always feel a little bit of myself dies too. Like everyone else, I genuinely appreciated the good things which came my way, and in a very self-serving way it pleased me. Yet so many people, because we collectively will not share our excess good fortune with them in a time of need, will suffer painfully from our neglect. It is better than it was earlier in human history, but the road to achieve the benefits of widespread adherence to the Golden Rule is a long road. We are, not because we are evil or sinful, simply not yet advanced enough to protect the less fortunate across the board. I don’t really know why, but even as a child, it bothered me to see a pet or other people get the short end of the stick. I have said it before, but to me there is nothing sadder than to see the frustrated hopelessness in the eyes of a young person with too many hurdles to get over, who sees no light at the end of the tunnel—or a pet lose that last flicker of life in their eyes as they are put down. Maybe it bothers me to the degree it does because I genuinely know that any modest achievements in my own life were because total strangers often saved me from myself and my own limitations and enabled me to survive, or pushed me forward into a position where I could utilize the better angels of my nature. This happened so many times in my life that it is no wonder that I am a big fan of the Golden Rule. There is no other explanation other than they felt at the time they would do unto me as they would want others to do for them in the same situation. I used to tell a student who would ask “Why are you doing all this to help me out of” this or that situation, that I was paid to help them out, when I should have told them “this is how the Golden Rule works, and don’t you ever forget it.” 

I have been planning to make some changes in my lifestyle when I reached 80, but with things heading in the direction they now are, at home and globally, I shall make these changes sooner rather than later, and when I do these endless musings will end. Nothing drastic like shoot myself, so don’t buy any party balloons, but just changes to help me live more contented in such volatile and angry social times. There is no need for me to be in the midst of this growing social cauldron of intolerance, refusal to make sacrifices for the common good, and disrespect for diversity. 

Given my approaching age of 80 this musing can be considered some sort of conclusionary treatise after hermit-like formative years, and productive years teaching young university students of all shapes, backgrounds, ethnicities, religious bents, cultural bents, personalities, varied abilities—all with myriad problems unique to their own life situations. Exhausted, and to some degree emotionally and mentally spent by the relentless personally imposed involvements with such diverse populations, I retired to live a more relaxed life of a semi-hermit, wandering solo for l9 years—5 miles a day, and the last two years 5 miles every other day—in nature and various urban neighborhoods—observing, pondering, and seeking to understand this experience called life. 

No one has ever, in any stage of my life, considered me particularly normal, but more odd and mostly friendly/non bothersome to their own lifestyle. Needing a lot of personal private space certainly didn’t make me hostile to others, but it does impose limitations on social interactions and the ability to form close-knit intense relationships with others. Non of this probably carries with it any particularly adjective of good or bad, better or worse in terms of ranking a lifestyle. Diversity of life forms and individuality has always intrigued me and seemed the most notable thing about life—this endless diversity. It took a long time to appreciate the brilliance of the evolutionary process, primarily because there is far more sadness in life than zippidy-do-dah-day happiness. It took most of my life to realize that humans do have the capacity via the Golden Rule —applied collectively, to maximize the contentment for the maximum number of people on this planet. If the evolutionary process were complete this would be a tragic state of affairs. But there is no reason to believe that the evolutionary process is complete, or humans have evolved yet to their own potential as a species. Life forms are where they are in this evolutionary process—proceeding on evolutionary time, not human time. Since 98% of species which have existed over time are now extinct, who could possibly know what this means for our own species? I, like others, am disappointed and irritated that I can’t live forever, but then—given the nature of the evolutionary process, what would be the point? All any of us have is a chance to achieve some contentment in life, but there is no level playing field given the varied genetics and environments and the element of chance which is present every day of everyone’s life. On top of this everyone needs help from others to achieve modest degrees of contentment in life. In the last analysis no particular member of any species is important at all to the process. At most, a particular individual may be instrumental in bringing about some sort of important change in the process, but in reality, if they had not done so, someone else will bring about this change down the line. It is not really accurate to state if Lincoln had not engineered the elimination of slavery that slavery would still exist in our country. We always try to pretend individual humans are really important, and that all of us can be in communication personally with God, and that if we pray to the right God through our inherited religion, that God will, at least sometimes, make us exempt from His laws which govern the evolutionary process so that we can personally prosper. This certainly ain’t so and statistics prove it. All we have is the Golden Rule as the inherent basis of human ethics and we as a species have not evolved enough for our ethical growth to have matched our ability to invent all the gadgets which make our lives more pleasant. But that is okay, or just is the reality, and there are infinite years ahead in the evolutionary process for improvement. 

Despite all the dire predictions about the near future for humans in this musing, things in the long range are not dire at all, just past our ability to comprehend what the future holds. We will, innocently enough, continue to pretend we humans run the show and determine the future, but this is simply poppycock. Feeling more important than we really are, as a species or individuals, is—at the very least—an emotional mistake and only leads to some sort of forlorn “Why God has thou forsaken me?” Well, God is busy with the bigger picture, and we either learn to help each other, or we pay the price. And no, we are not going to exist forever in an ‘afterlife’, not that this is a provable fact, but logic does seem to support this as the reality. For my part I will continue to go gently down the stream and expend no effort to thrash around in any frustrating effort to swim back upstream in an attempt to avoid that last great leap in the dark. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could never be frustrated or disappointed ever again? Actually, we won’t be. The dead are dead. Is that really so bad?  

P.S. As an aside here, it is possible that one major problem could be saved in the near future. But saving one major problem can’t undo the other major problems, so the negative prognosis remains essentially intact. Trump’s major frontal and endless assault on every segment of our society could very well backfire and there is some early evidence it might just do so. There is probably zero chance that Trump’s agenda, if I can use the term loosely, will improve the portion of his economic base who thrive on intolerance of diversity. They are just a part of a large segment of society whose economic situation has been stagnated and/or getting worse now for decades. That segment is hopelessly lost and violent. Trump did not create the situation in our country where three large ethnic groups are large now, while none of the three have an clear cut majority anymore. With Trump on the attack against diversity, these three groups may come to realize that they need to work collectively for any group to thrive. Instead of operating solo regarding the rights and needs of their own group, they may learn to tackle problems together. That is, learn to coalesce and support the concerns of each other, to appreciate the diversity of each other, to cooperate with each other to ensure the most people get a level playing field and can work together to force the wealthy to return a good deal of their wealth to the society from which it was derived. It is not like many members of each group have not already embraced diversity as a good thing. When I wander around in urban and suburban areas I often see groups of young people ‘out on the town’ with a truly integrated composition. Black, white, hispanic, asian, multicultural, the physically ugly, the attractive, and so on, all mixed together having a good time. I never saw much of that when I was young at all. Everybody kind of knew ‘their place’. It is possible with Trump’s blatant efforts to teach just about everybody, for differing reasons, a lesson——that this will force young people, blacks, hispanics, and modern socially open adults of all ilk, to win the battle of how the diverse nature of our society can genuinely work together to meet the needs of all members of our society. When diverse human groups work together in good faith and good will, a healthier, more productive, and more peaceful society emerges. If all this group starts to vote in large numbers, then all this can happen for the better. This is a real possibility, but that still leaves overpopulation, climate change, and so on, all of which require global controls, which are  more formidable obstacles to overcome. The biggest obstacle right now for the brotherhood of humanity to triumph via the Golden Rule is the global economic reversal or stagnation of every economic class except the wealthy. For them the sky is the limit. 

No neat, condensed, cover-all-bases phrase to sum up this musing. End it must, and so it just has, as well as any upbeat prognosis of the near future for the species inhabiting our planet. On the other hand, the nature of the evolutionary process is such that the long range forecast is always upbeat.    

What to make of sexual harassment/assault/improprieties

What to make of sexual harassment/assault/improprieties

If there is any topic more difficult to write about or to reach logical conclusions, it is sex. A lot of sexual matters are outside science or logic. No one, with a particular sexual fetish, can logically explain their attraction via reason or science. This includes myself. No one, in any serious way, spends much time socially discussing their own peculiar sex experiences. I doubt many parents spend much time talking to their kids about exactly what they do in bed sexually as a means to impress on their kids how wonderful sex can be if done just right. I can guess my reaction: “Can’t you just discuss your sex life when I am not trying to eat my oatmeal and then just leave that conversation completely out in the future?”

Of course when it comes to humor, sex is right up there in first place. It is all over the late night talk shows, movies, TV, locker room banter, and a prime focus in fictional novels. Sex, for the most part, gets reduced to one line jokes. Now, all of a sudden, the news is filled with revelations by one person after another blasting people who have committed sexual crimes against their personhood. Hollywood stars are suddenly seeking revenge for those producers who expected sex in return to being given a role in a film or stage act or whatever. Professional athletes and politicians are routinely being accused of forced sexual situations. At the same time, we are inundated on TV, in movies, in plays, in books, and so on as to what an elaborate game sex is. The only firm, straight forward attitude about sex seems to be one that sex is only to be operative as a means for reproduction. Then, I reckon we have a clear cut understanding of right and wrong about sex. Any other use of sex is a sin of some sort. The trouble is, then sex for pleasure is about the only great sin which is a source of constant laughter via jokes. Murder is a serious sin and no one views murder as a source of endless humor. 

Everything else about sex starts to get really confusing. If sex with someone you prefer not to have sex with or regret having sex with, is always a serious crime because it can, for some, produce serious mental and emotional damages, then almost everyone has a long list of people who should be arrested and punished for potential bad experiences. Some people will go to bed routinely with people they do not find sexually attractive solely for the monetary income gained. It is simply a boring way (to them)to make a good living (sometimes). Love and sex get all mixed up together in sort of a “what a tangled web we weave when first we start to” assemble our game plan for achieving sexual success. Books are written about how to achieve sexual success with an object of our romantic or sexual desire. Bars are perfectly legal in which the main objective for most of the patrons is to find some desirable sexual encounter. Of course love may enter the picture down the road, and even marriage result, at least until time changes how both or one spouse feels about each other down the road. With the divorce rate at roughly 50% in this country, the success rate is worse than predicting the outcome of an NFL football game. 

Well, certainly those with the most attractive physical attributes and likable personalities, consequently having the pick of the crop, will have the most stable marriages. I sense if I were Brad Pitt, then I would put together the best possible marriage which would last the longest. Of course the stats are just the opposite. The easier it is to attract the best possible partner the less likely the marriage will last. In part this just reflects how hard the struggle was to find someone you can really love given the pool of candidates your own attributes can have any chance to attract. If the marriage bonding works out tolerably well, then there is little eagerness to once again be out in the desperate search for a new mate given the difficulty of such a search before, for most people. However much sex may be valued by many people, sex quagmired in love, can be a very stressful aspect of life. 

How then, and it does seem important, can we set up logical and reasonable guidelines for sex, love, and the pursuit of either. At first glance it seems easy to just accept what the noble English woman said a long time ago: “I don’t care what kind of sex they engage in as long as they don’t do it in the street and scare the horses.” Others prefer the equally simplistic adage “Thou shalt not commit adultery”—or at various times it was ‘don’t engage in sex or love relationships with people of this or that race, religion or culture’—or ‘just be sure the person is of age’ and so on. But depending on the historical age and culture, the age of a person of age varied. We can probably all agree that sexual practices or love are feelings. So this leaves us with outlawing particular feelings. Now just when has that ever worked?  Jimmy Carter once confessed sinning by saying he has lusted after certain others. But he got this ‘truth’ from a source which indicated the proper punishment was to be stoned to death. I can’t recall a single person throwing a single stone at him—so much for law enforcement. Jerry Falwell, the Moral Majority leader, once said an immoral person can be a good political leader. Huh? This fits right in with the oft stated simplistic but motivational mantra that ‘anyone in America can become President’.  Unfortunately, it happens. 

Then there is the perfectly reasonable enough sounding principle, that any kind of sexual act is ethical if both parties consent. Really? Does this remotely work in reality? Does this make two 12 years old having sex ok? Or legal? And what is to be the punishment? Well, we might say, “They are just not old enough to understand so have broken no laws. They don’t go to jail or be sent away to a juvenile reformatory. But what about two adults who are too stupid to be able to behave properly sexually? I mean, after all, some pretty smart people behave stupidly when it comes to sexual behavior. Sending pictures of your private parts to strangers or non strangers over the internet or via photos seems a bit stupid. Having sex with people whose sexual preferences and acts you have campaigned to keep or make illegal seems a bit over the top. Should we really enact laws which punish stupidity which affects only their own life? If all these are serious transgressions why are they not in jail instead of being elected President or inducted into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot? My guess is that many people, not you or I, have some pretty illogical behavior lapses which we really think should remain private. And if they were to become public, we certainly shouldn’t be jailed for anything which does not affect others. And why is it, that those who preach the loudest about sex and love violations often end up with the most bizarre sex or love situations or even dislike sex? I kind of have more respect for someone who says with exasperation that they don’t understand why they like anal sex hanging from the chandelier or are attracted to feet, or like to be tied up during sex, or watch porno videos 3 hrs every day, etc. The porno industry is one of the most financially lucrative (not to the performers though) industries in our country. It used to be illegal but that only changed where someone got their porno. A Supreme Court Justice ruled, “I can’t define porno, but I know it when I see it”. Well that certainly cleared up the picture and it thus ended up that if a person does not themselves consider it porno, then they can buy it and view it. I am going to take a guess here and suspect that those who watch the most porno videos are mostly in the mass of people who Lincoln called the ‘common folk’ whose physical appearance would disqualify them from being in such videos. In other words, some people have the arousement right in front of them in bed and others have to settle for commercial imagery—at least until 3-D reality visual devices allow us to fit into a contraption which allows us to select a favorite sex symbol and end up being stimulated mentally and physically as if we really are actually having sex with them. That sounds fair enough. Maybe I will try to live a little longer. 

I reckon I could make laws about sex and love which would suit me perfect. But if another made the laws, then there would clearly be imperfections. What is happening en masse, day after day, right now, has me rather confused. Some gal or guy pursuing an acting career of some sort outs a producer who demanded sex in order to get the role. And the aspiring actor agrees, gets the role and goes on to become a very rich and successful actor. Now exactly where is the nonconsensual sex? Sounds more like tit for tat. Many very wealthy individuals have trophy wives. In fact, if a spouse doesn’t match in looks their spouse, the alarm bells go off as soon as we see the couple. But on what basis can we make it illegal for someone to marry someone for the affluent lifestyle and just put up with the sex? Sounds consensual to me. When I was quite young I chauffeured for a very rich widow one summer while in graduate school. One day she asked if I would consider marrying her, could have my own bedroom, and have one night affairs. She explained she was just lonely and needed companionship. Should she have been arrested for sexual harassment or maybe a mental disorder or at least have her vision checked? Maybe I should have been arrested for stupidity in not accepting the offer. Or maybe since the rest of her family was filled with successful lawyers, I might have been eliminated by the mafia. Or more likely this is just one more example of sex/love being an irrational part of life. It rarely makes total sense. 

We all know that if we were a popular athlete with good looks or even the looks of Dennis Rodman, our access to sex with attractive females/guys would be a full plate. Every time these athletes check into a hotel for a game, the lobby is filled with ‘groupies’. In today’s atmosphere it is more than sex on their mind sometimes. They may have on mind to claim sexual assault, or child support, being accepted as a trophy wife, or just bragging rights to their friends might be their motive.  Exactly how is the law to handle this?  Same with date rape—in many cases, probably most, if only the two of them were present how can a juror or judge decide which one is telling the truth? Some people, on looks alone, look the guilty one. I know I would tell the judge up front, “I am only going to flip a coin on this one judge, I wasn’t there so how can there be any proof beyond a reasonable doubt?”  So what am I saying, that a guy or gal can do anything they want behind closed doors and get away with it?  Of course not. That is not acceptable either. For a start, given the ease which, in an inexpensive way, one can wire a recording devise on ones’ person or shoe, jacket, whatever, as ways to garner some proof. So if our boss, male or female, is constantly making unwanted sexual comments in our presence, then we can prove it in a court case. And if this kind of wiretapping is illegal, then it shouldn’t be for these cases. 

And what about sex between couples where one or both are drunk. Is this consensual? If I were a good looking financially secure chap I would probably require a breath analyzing device before proceeding. And if I were just an average Joe with average Joe looks in a bar looking for sex, maybe both being drunk at 3 Am is about the only way sex is going to happen. If I were a Judge I would say, ‘of course you both were drunk, how else was all this going to happen, just go home by yourself when you start getting drunk.”  

All these people making headlines today about improper sexual advances years ago are mostly all celebrities of some sort. The lifestyles of the wealthy and attractive are very different from the lifestyles of the average masses.  It is often true that they can do things in the realm of sex and love that those average people, the common folk, or whatever, cannot do. Yes, I can’t go out and grab gals by the pussy and not be in deep shit. And yes, millionaire Trump can do so and get away with it and brag about it and get elected President. It is what it is, and I don’t really want to be dragged into their world which, in the arena of sex and love, I don’t know much about at all. Would I, if I could, engage in some of this behavior, do so?  How does one know until one is in that situation?  Would I, if rich enough, consider a trophy wife far past my own physical attractiveness instead of Lily of the Valley, a regular down at the local tavern? I don’t even know on the front line of a war battle which way I might run. Maybe I do know, I have never enlisted. I once walked across that battlefield at Gettysburg which was a major battle in the Civil War. I am pretty sure of one thing: my ass, if it is going to be in line marching across that field, it would have to be in the rear line—the last one to be exposed to bullets and bayonets. 

Someone once said that God must have a sense of humor or sex and love would not exist. We should be like other animals—hormones suddenly, at the appropriate time, flood into our blood, and we then commence to have sex with the nearest possible mate and have sex in a very prescribed way, usually lasting but a minute, and then be done with it all, again and again, until the hormones go away. So yes, God must indeed have a sense of humor. And if we use sex as the basis for so much of our humor, why wouldn’t God see it the same way? I doubt if God would laugh one minute and then prosecute to the maximum the next minute. After all he set the whole show up.  I would guess God would be more like a parent who tells their offspring “You better proceed with caution when it comes to sex and love, you go down some wrong paths here and you will pay a steep price.”  Good advice is all well and good. But when it comes to love and sex and all the diverse feelings that come with it, there is no other aspect of life that we have so little control over. If anyone reading this thinks there might be some answers lurking within, here is the answer: there are no answers, there never has been any answers, there probably never will be any answers. There is my answer. Chaos rules. It is now the age of raging feelings spurred on by input from our varied media devices which allow all of us to find those who feel like we do and get maximally aggravated, over and over, every day, and I guess more and more people get to the point where their feelings are so strong that when they are driving and spot a crowd, they take a sharp turn and join the new sport of seeing how many strangers they can kill before they have to give up their own life. 

It just seems everything about sex is risky, a loose cannon filled with emotions of the moment, and these feelings are all individually unique with little commonality. It is not clear how unwanted advances can be correctly handled in a court room short of the classic out of the blue rapes which occur mostly in public encounters with strangers. The spouse who goes along with a particular sexual act simply because their spouse demands it, is this rape? I suppose one could argue that one spouse wanted one kind of sex and the other another, and one gives in. Both have a personal decision to make. One gets fondled by the boss on a job or a relative. Am talking about adults here. If we don’t report it then we leave the impression to the perpetrator that there are no consequences. It is no wonder then that after one victim comes forward that many others follow. I think many young people, in their formative years, wonder why some guys, for example, can pretty much get their way sexually with a lot of girls in a forceful way while if a different guy attempted the same forceful approach there would be holy hell to pay. What about a male or female, married, who has sex at a party with someone they always found attractive and only the next day are upset at what they did. This was certainly sex against their wishes, but only the next day. On top of all this, sexual drives are hardly equal. John Kennedy had a high sex drive built up partly because of endless availability for sexual encounters. Jackie Kennedy apparently found relief that this drive was not relentlessly focused on her and just wanted the flings by Jack to be done discretely. Bill Clinton was obviously motivated to find sex on the side and clearly did. Monica Lewinsky was willing to play that role. Both are adults. How do we rationally place blame only on one participant? The real crime here was a personal one between Hilliary and Bill who had marriage vows. Why would anyone else or court want to get the middle of something like this?

Parents often drill into their offspring that they are responsible for their sexual choices and behaviors. In too many cases, and this is hard since all cases are different, suddenly it becomes another person who is solely responsible for the behavior. A lot of sexual behaviors are simply tragic situations for the person exhibiting the behavior. If a person can only get maximal orgasms by being tied up during sex and physically abused, who, in their right mind, would like to have the same kind of sexual drive? The physically ugly have almost impossible chances to find sex with an attractive person. So maybe they need pay a prostitute. Do we really think the person should go to jail or be arrested for resorting to a prostitute? Or the prostitute be punished for an act of kindness (for money of course)?  A wealthy person with a trophy wife is certainly paying for sex and that is legal. In cases like this maybe the gal willing to have sex with the ugly guy is some sort sex angel. Is satisfying someone else’s sexual needs really a crime? Every which way we analyze human sexual activities we end up disconcerted and devoid of few logical bearings.  How many times, in matters of love or sex, do we frustratingly ask ourselves ‘What the hell is going on here’? Then, if it ends up in court, it is the same question. For example, why do you fondle women in the workplace or in social settings? The answer often is “because I have done it many times and never got in trouble over it’. “Why do you find making love to feet erotic?”  “I have no idea, but if a person lets me I like to do it”. I am not aware of too many accusations by someone that some person at some point fondled their foot. How can we explain the really varied emotional response to being raped?  Some women are severely traumatized, even for life, and others move on with about the same lasting effect as having been robbed. Why do some men want gays to be illegal for fear they will be come on to by a gay person when women are expected to fend off unwanted sexual overtures as part of their daily life?  Are males less able to protect themselves from unwanted sexual advances? 

This will end here simply because no pathway here seems to lead to any end. It seems more lives end up in turmoil about sex and love than virtually any other aspect of life. Maybe those who have no interest in sex are the luckiest. Tiny Tim was happy just to tip-toe through the tulips. Only the tulip bed owners get riled up about that.

Thoughts to Ponder from Chris Hedges (U.S. Foreign War correspondent)

Thoughts to Ponder from Chris Hedges (U.S. Foreign War correspondent).

In no particular order and without comment are some interesting thoughts to ponder from Chris Hedges. 

Thoughts on students in wealthy private schools: “I saw how obscene wealth and privilege fostered a repugnant elitist, a lack of empathy for others and a sense of entitlement.”

“This is what it means to be poor in America. You don’t get a chance while the rich get chance after chance after chance. …they know how to take care of their own. And it does not matter how mediocre they are.”

“Friendship for the rich is defined as “what’s in it for me”.

As a reporter “I consciously put myself in places where I could amplify the voices of the oppressed.”

“There is a class of reporters—they show up in every war—who rarely go into the field. They dutifully report what the US Embassy and the military feed them. These courtiers made up the vast bulk of the press during the First Gulf War. They go where the military tells them to go. They report what the military tells them to report. They want press restrictions. The more the better.”

Israel lies: “They lied. Constantly. They claimed not to target civilians while using their air force, tanks, naval gunshots and heavy artillery to obliterate civilian neighborhoods. Their dishonesty is quite breathtaking.”

“Truth is always the first casualty in war.”

“Hemingway was blinded by his celebrity.  He was a terrible reporter. His journalism during the Spanish Civil war was centered on his ‘manly’ experiences in combat….He was a victim of his own propaganda. He never grew up. He was a perpetual adolescent.”

“The moment you need adulation you’re finished.”

On Bernie Sanders:  “He restored the good name of ‘socialism’ to our political vocabulary.  He spoke openly about income inequality and corporate greed.  He did not toe the rigid party line on Israel. And defied the corporate financing of campaigns.  These are important steps forward.”

“If we don’t get control of the military spending we’re finished. We’re being hollowed out from the inside like every other empire. We have expanded beyond our capacity to sustain ourselves. Our infrastructure, our public educational system, our social services—everything is crumbling for a reason, we don’t have any money for it. It is being consumed by the war machine.” 

“Even if Sanders had somehow become president, his hands would be completely tied. The centers of power lie outside the system of electoral politics.”

“The least worse paves the way for the worst”

“Plato warned that a failed democracy lays the foundations for a ‘democratic’ despotism.”

“Ninety percent of the American electorate did not vote in the primaries.”

‘The desire for good paying jobs leads to a Christianized fascism”

When”there is high unemployment and hyperinflation, rage ripples through a country. Scapegoats are sought. That’s when you get ‘ancient ethnic hatreds’.

Alabama being filled with Confederate memorials: “You know, most of these statues and what not went up in the last ten years, in other words during the economic decline. You lose hope and you retreat into a mythic narrative of the glorious and tragic past.”

“We are not immune. When a society disintegrates, as ours is disintegrating, when you acculturate people to speak in the language of violence, you eventually get violence. I don’t know how far it will go.  But it will get worse.”

“Trump didn’t create this reign of intolerance. He made it more blatant.”

Is massive blood shed inevitable in this country?  “Something of this magnitude would only occur in the midst of a huge crisis, one caused by the total collapse of the economy, severe effects from climate change, catastrophic cases of domestic terrorism, something of that nature.  Once we have system breakdowns, anything is possible.”

Can Trump’s constituents be won over to the left?  “No. Trump does what all fascists do.  He blames the vulnerable—Muslims, undocumented workers, feminists, liberals, and intellectuals. It is not a tactic the Left can co-opt.”

“These people on the far right have migrated to a non-reality based belief system.  We will not argue them out of it.”

“I argue that the only way too top the rise of fascism here is to re-integrate these people economically into the life of the country. Otherwise we are doomed. When you disempower people, then the only power they feel is embodied in a self-constructed mythology and state violence.”

“When it comes to this kind of violence, we’re not really talking about blue-collar workers.  We’re talking about the dispossessed underclass.”

“Every totalitarian regime understands the violent potential of those cast aside by society.”

“We see this today, in the way that the self-identified liberal establishment deifies the US military. They sacralize our war machine and our ‘fighting men and women.  It’s a big mistake. They’re flirting with their own destruction.”

“No revolution is successful unless large sections of the security apparatus defect or refuse to defend the elites. The Right has retreated into Christian fascism. It celebrates the gun culture.” 

Prerequisites for revolution (Crane Brinton): “discontent that affects nearly all social classes, widespread feelings of entrapment and despair, unfulfilled expectations, a unified solidarity in opposition to a tiny power elite, a refusal by scholars and thinkers to continue to defend the actions of the ruling class, an inability of government to respond to the basic needs of citizens, a steady loss of will within the power elite itself and defections from the inner circle, a crippling isolation that leaves the power elite without any allies or outside support and, finally, a crisis, usually economic.”

Last gasp policy in Vietnam War: “Kill anything that moves”

“The sexualized images in porn, or from Abu Ghraib, reflect the wider racism, callousness and perversion that define our predatory, capitalist culture. It is the language of absolute control, total domination, racial stereotypes and humiliating submission.  it is, in short, about reducing human beings to commodities, to objects.  Corporate culture, neoliberal ideology, imperialism and colonialism strip people of their human attributes and celebrate domination. They banish equality, tenderness, compassion and love. This is also the goal of rape. Absolutely power over another, as I saw in war, expresses itself through dehumanization, violence and sexual sadism.”

“We can serve justice and truth or privilege and power.  The more we make compromises with those who serve privilege and power, the more we diminish our capacity for justice and truth.  Better, as an intellectual or an artist, to always be a heretic.”