Heroin epidemic, fentanyl, and Drug Abuse

Heroin epidemic, fentanyl, and Drug Abuse

The following was sent to me and since I taught a course in the Physiological Basis of Drugs and Drug Abuse for years, I felt obligated to respond. To be fair, it should be noted that I have been retired now for 21 years, a genuine old fuddy duddy.

Sent paragraph:

“The poppy’s power, in fact, is greater than ever. The molecules derived from it have effectively conquered contemporary America.  Opium, heroin, morphine, and a universe of synthetic opioids, including the superpowerful painkiller fentanyl, are its proliferating offspring. More than 2 million Americans are now hooked on some kind of opioid, and drug overdoses — from heroin and fentanyl in particular — claimed more American lives last year than were lost in the entire Vietnam War. Overdose deaths are higher than in the peak year of AIDS and far higher than fatalities from car crashes. The poppy, through its many offshoots, has now been responsible for a decline in life spans in America for two years in a row, a decline that isn’t happening in any other developed nation. According to the best estimates, opioids will kill another 52,000 Americans this year alone — and up to half a million in the next decade.”

My Response:

“The poppy’s power is greater than ever”……this is simply wrong. Poppy is not fentanyl or any of the other new synthetic drugs. Poppy refers to heroin/morphine. Period.

The United States has one of the absolute worst records when it comes to recreational drugs of abuse.  As a consequence we have used the domestic ‘War against drugs’ as a major contributor to the decline of our inner cites—plus more recently our rural and suburban ‘ghettoes’. One might think we would have learned our lesson after the fiasco of Alcohol Prohibition. Drug Abuse is a medical problem, not a political or police (criminal problem) problem and when it is not treated as a medical problem and allowed to be a political and and criminal football ever since the late 60’s, we end up right where we are today. 

The sent to me paragraph illustrates exactly how firmly entrenched the political and criminal control over the problem still exists. There are several problems in the paragraph itself which demonstrates the disingenuous nature of this warning:

First, it is a mistake to lump opium, heroin, morphine and drugs like fentanyl together as if they are essentially birds of a feather.  Heroin, which is converted to morphine by the body, are natural body opioids, and attach to the same receptors as the natural opiates the body produces under certain circumstances. With precious few exceptions, our natural  body opiates and heroin/morphine will not kill anyone and have the least toxic effects of  any of the ‘recreational drugs of abuse’. Heroin used together with alcohol or any other depressants can cause breathing to be inhibited enough to cause death. When has the government ever spent any time or effort to drive this point home to heroin/morphine users?  Instead when anyone dies with heroin/morphine in their system it is always listed as a heroine/morphine overdose. The goal has never been to prevent deaths but to frighten heroin/morphine users. 

Until recent years hospital patients had to beg for morphine and were told no, if you get more you will become an addict. Finally, after decades to pushing this lie, patients are now given a button to press which will give them as much morphine as needed to dull the pain. Heroin/morphine is an absolutely wonderful drug. It does not eliminate pain at all—it just changes how you feel about the pain, your emotional response to the pain. Any drug which eliminates the pain would be useless for medical purposes. Doctors need to know when pain exists. The pain which bothers us less can be physical pain caused by damage to cells in the body (an operation) or emotional pain which is caused by psychological factors. Thus, patients with physical pain and people whose lives are filled with psychological stress both think heroin/morphine are wonderful drugs. 

But ‘wonderful’ here comes with a caveat. When someone takes heroin to lessen the psychological pain of their life situation, they are essentially removing the main impetus to make changes in their lives. When a high percentage of Vietnam soldiers on the front lines in Vietnam were taking heroin to lessen the stress of their situation, the common belief was that when these soldiers returned home we would have a massive heroin addiction problem with them. The truth is that only 3% of returning soldiers continued to use heroin after they returned states wide and these soldiers probably had bad life situations once returning home.

To lump all the new synthetic drugs created in laboratories together with heroin/morphine is simply an absurdity. They may attach to the same body receptors and be used for the same effect, but they are simply different drugs. Of course this has always been how politicians and police have always treated drug abuse. And this attitude is exactly why, with 5% of the world’s population, we have 25% of people in jail globally, in our jails. Treating recreational drug abuse as a crime simply ensures the problems will get worse. We don’t need jails, we need medical drug addiction centers available to all our citizens. It costs around $30,000 to keep people in jail and all this does is ensure most of these citizens will never be productive members of society. Most of these people are young nobodies peddling drugs for a living in areas where unemployment hovers around 60%. Today, heroin use is growing exponentially because the number of people very dissatisfied with their lives is growing exponentially. 

Of course we should be shocked that drug abuse is becoming a national epidemic. What we prefer not to admit, and certainly our politicians and police never mention is this: More and more people in our country are finding their lives so dead-ended and stressful, with no light at the end of the tunnel, that they turn to drugs which will help them care less about their situations. And all the politicians and police do is tell them “just say no to drugs”. That has zero chance of success with most of those using these drugs. When almost all citizens have decent schools, good teachers, a safe neighborhood, job opportunities with livable wages, good medical care, and access to addiction centers for all kinds of addictions, then and only then, will this crisis of drug abuse end. Making a drug like heroin illegal makes it possible for drugs like fentanyl to get peddled to drug users. Paragraphs like the one at the top simply ensures that people using heroin are led to believe that the synthetic drugs are just as good or even better drugs to use to dull their emotional or physical pain. They are ignorant because our government, politicians, and police peddle the ignorance. In some sense the government loves new synthetic drugs like fentanyl because maybe these drugs will scare people off heroin. It is totally disingenuous. You don’t find these drugs like heroin, fentanyl etc being used in countries where almost all citizens have good schools, good job opportunities, good health care, safe neighborhoods, etc. having any such drug problems as we do. As long as we are wedded to capitalism with no proper regulation and having no limits, we get exactly what we have now with 2-5% of our citizens owning 90% of our wealth and 43% of our adults not making enough money to even qualify to pay federal income tax. Then we say to them: “Just put up with your emotional pain about your lives, don’t take heroin or any other drugs to alleviate the pain—just shut up and make something of yourselves.” After 50 years of  having seen how this works out, maybe we should begin to realize the monster we are creating as part of our society. 

And worst of all, many of these ‘trapped’ citizens have been permanently damaged physically by their life situation via the effects of chronic stress hormones which act negatively on almost every body system, especially during the formative years, and much of the damage to the body, including to the central nervous system, is permanent. So we have a problem alright, but the paragraph at the beginning of this email does absolutely nothing to alleviate the problem.  Drugs like fentanyl should be treated as dangerous poisons and anyone who produces these drugs should be treated for murder. Sadly, getting rid of fentanyl will do nothing to treat the basic causes of why people turn to heroin. Our democracy is failing badly across the board right now and anyone who doesn’t see this has got the world’s best pair of  rose colored glasses. 

If heroin addicts had medical addiction centers to go to where the doctors were knowledgeable about heroin and drug addiction, then for once the addicts, the doctors and the government might all accept their role for this situation and attack the root cause of the addiction. The addict, by him/her self  often cannot change their community environment by themselves. If their environment does not change, their emotional pain cannot be relieved. God, if we can all agree  God exists, then we can then agree that His laws which govern the evolutionary process also managed to thus generate the human species which has the innate ability to collectively address the needs of the less fortunate in life, to meet their basic needs irregardless of parental quality, location of community, financial status, and genetics——so that all citizens have a more level playing field to develop their innate potential, no matter how great or small that potential. If we cannot do this, and shun our collective responsibility to do just that for self serving reasons, then our species will have failed ourselves and pay the price. That’s an overstatement in that individual members of any species die off, and the future will not include them. We can reject the universal basis of human ethics (the Golden Rule), but it will impact only on ourselves as a specie, not the evolutionary process itself. A person can only achieve meaningful contentment if they live as best they can by the Golden Rule. One can live by the Golden Rule and be titled, rich, poor, handsome, ugly, have power over others, or no  power over others, or have piles of money or little money, live in a city or rural area, and so on and still be contented. One thing is for sure: no addiction or compulsive behavior can maximize contentment. Period. Just ask Donald Trump. He is the poster boy for having all the stuff in life which is often purported to bring contentment and yet who could be more discontented round the clock than Donald Trump? Andrew Carnegie had it right: “I would as soon leave my son a curse as the almighty dollar.”

Gun Violence and Miniature Sherman Tanks

Gun Violence and Miniature Sherman Tanks 

President Trump says he is a genius. I am not the one to be the best judge of that so we’ll let it go as a given. It just seems if we are going to arm teachers in preparation for any shoot-out at the OK Corral High School—well, we ought to do it in a way which will protect both teachers and students. I used to be a Professor and am not sure I would want to be the designated first target for Deranged Honschnivel from La La Land. It seems the most likely scenario here would be: BAM, the classroom door flies open and in a blink of an eye, what to our wondering eyes should appear, but Deranged Honschnivel firing his first shot in less time than our blink, at our teacher. “Okay, teacher is down and dead, the rest of you can now begin your scramble.”  Oops the teacher is armed and will shoot Deranged Honschnivel. Really? It takes 1.19 seconds to draw a pistol from a Holster (Assuming there is no protective strap to be removed first), then .59 seconds to raise and fire a pistol. This in the best of situations like when one is waiting for the signal to do all this. My guess is that it would take at least a second for the teacher to realize what is happening. Deranged Honschnivel certainly already knows genius Donny T. has armed the teacher, so as soon as he breaks into the classroom he shoots the teacher first. So much for genius. More like the world of dumb and unhinged.

So, I think we need to design a miniature Sherman Tank and let the teacher teach from high above in the turret of the tank. But there is only one small problem here. Deranged Honschnivel and his growing army of clones would then realize the best place to take these kids down is when they are not in school.  Like when school is over and certain streets are loaded with students walking home, or buses filled with students make their first stop to let a student off, or students are at a football game, or just playing a game in a league on a field or gymnasium, or at any number of sites for a prom, or maybe lined up at the Apple Store to get the newly released whatever, or….or…or whatever. It is not clear that kids have a preference as to where they get massacred.

So the President of the United States actually thinks arming teachers will put an end to mass student shootings. We made the planes pretty safe with all sorts of security measures, and terrorists just used used different scenarios. Perhaps geniuses can be naive, but current terroristic attacks with military style guns, homemade bombs, cars, and planes, are just scratching the surface of possible terroristic means at any place where people gather  in suitable numbers.

Common sense (I know, hard to define this) seems to dictate that the more people armed, the greater the gun deaths will be. As for those other geniuses who recommend all students be trained in hand to hand combat, the kind of hand to hand combat untrained students have today in school when they fight is damaging enough to the participants. If all students get training in hand to hand combat, we now have created another harmful sport besides terrorism. This sounds like just a fairer, but no less dangerous game, than the knock-out game already in play now and then by adults, only now it would be taught to young kids.   

Maybe we should  try an approach that has more chance of success. Just write down the names of those advanced industrialized countries who have the least gun deaths. Then copy what they do because, it can’t hurt to try. Next, come to grips with another reality: we do not have a homogeneous society here in America, not ethnically, not by religious affiliation, not culturally, and have the widest discrepancy between the haves and the have nots. With essentially three large ethnic groups, none of whom are any longer a clear majority, either these groups learn to genuinely appreciate their diversity, and each group learn to help the other groups with their problems—or matters of safety for anyone will be a lost cause. It is no coincidence that those countries which score the highest in polls of individual happiness levels, are also the countries with the least gun violence. There does not seem to be an abundance of contentment in America right now. (“Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.”) Rene Dubos

Maybe we should concentrate, not on more missiles, smart bombs, military bases across the globe and begin to ensure that all our citizens have good medical care, good schools, good teachers, job opportunities with livable wages, good pensions, adequate vacation times, and safe neighborhoods. That’s the kind of environment which makes the most citizens contented.  (“We keep countless men from being good citizens by the conditions of life with which we surround them,) Teddy Roosevelt

It is doable but not likely considering today’s toxic political environment, if we engage in capitalism that has adequate regulation to keep the playing fields level, and limits to prevent too much of our wealth from amassing in the hands of the top 2-5% of our citizens. Fair taxation is needed too. Contented citizens at all economic, religious, and ethnic backgrounds do not create terroristic acts. That leaves the mentally and emotionally ill, and they need to be properly identified and receive adequate mental health support. Seems like a country which, with huge effort and focus, could get to the moon first, could tap the wealth being sequestered away by the top 2-5% of it’s citizens and use that that wealth to provide all its communities with means for them to be responsible, safe, and at least minimally prosperous citizens. Other countries manage, maybe we could catch up with them rather than engage countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc in which, over time, our own culture becomes more and more like theirs. Violence is a way of life in these countries too. Everything is about revenge, religious intolerance, ethnic hatred, with roving thugs taking turns controlling neighborhoods—much like many streets in our own nation which we would never meander around.   

It will still be true that smart-asses who write endless musings as a public nuisance might still need a miniature Sherman Tank to ride around in for protection.  I guess this sounds unpatriotic, but if we constantly demand “God Bless America”, then maybe we should start doing some things that deserve blessing—unless we mean that God is the cause of all these problems and should therefore correct them.  “Oh what a terrible tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”

The scariest part of all this gun debate is that we may have already gone too far with guns as a means of achieving results we personally, or as a group, desire. One side is hell bent on teaching certain other groups a lesson, and the other side, to varying degrees, sees the Golden Rule as the basis for achieving more positive results.  I learned early on, teaching diverse college students, that the best way to disarm potential conflict is to be a friend. Any latent hostility melts away and it becomes a pleasure to work with them to achieve successes academically or with personal hurdles. (“Hard to dislike a chap who likes you, isn’t it?  Well, there’s your peace plan.”) Unknown.

In the big picture, as long as human overpopulation continues, there is no hope for peace on our planet. Overpopulation always turns a species on each other as they compete for more and more precious natural resources. 

Postscript: Here is a quick attempt to get a handle on expanding the happiness index in our country for all our citizens via an equation.  Increasing the contentment level for all citizens = returning the income tax rates and estate taxes upon death to the levels of when Eisenhower was present + doing away with property taxes as the basis for funding education and have the Federal government give local school boards the same amount of money per student nationwide + doing away with most tax breaks, tax shelters, and work towards ‘this is your income and this is your tax +reduction of military budget and most foreign military bases, shifting all that money towards infrastructure repair, good education for all, good medical care for all, good pensions for all, livable wages for all, job opportunities for all, a 30 hour work week to replace the 40 hr work wk (so there will be jobs for all), plus a tariff on all goods produced abroad via slave wages (in other words we could only buy foreign goods if these goods were made by a livable wage for the country in question) + a foreign policy bereft of meddling with the internal affairs of other countries. Our good intentions have not panned out with any of our invasions or support for certain political groups in the Middle East, Africa, South America, and so on. This rushed equation needs a lot of tinkering, but we need to start somewhere to figure out how to maximize the happiness (I prefer contentment) level for all our citizens. When we can do this, violence will go down just as it has in countries which have already gone in these directions. Are changes too late? Maybe, maybe not. But at least we could try. 

Questions Unanswerable: Part 1

Questions Unanswerable:  Part 1 

Wherever there is a gift there must be a gift giver. Our universe’s gift giver is God.  Ok, I get that. BUT, either God created us individually or God created the laws which govern the evolutionary process. So God had to come first either way. So God came from nothing? How can anything come from nothing? No further comprehension is possible at the human level. 

At the end of the Super Bowl all the winning coaches, quarterbacks, and owner were all thanking God, Who they said made it possible. Now really, how self serving does someone have to be who really thinks God will engineer one team to win a football game and ignore 75  million refugees living in tent cities, many of them starving? That level of retarded idiocy is really remarkable. Or they are praying to a really cruel God. 

Now why would anyone watch a football game if they thought God was determining the winner?

Where is it logical after Trump states, when he gets the urge to grab a pussy, he just does so and then his followers claim all the women who say he sexually abused them are liars? Trump a liar? Let’s not get ridiculous.

Why is a trophy wife legal and paying some gal for sex illegal?  Isn’t someone who marries for money (lifestyle) just an expensive prostitute? Then again how can a government make it illegal for two consenting adults to bargain over what conditions they will mutually agree to have what kind of sex? Isn’t “If you will have kinky sex with me, I will star you in movie” just the “Art of the Deal?” 

Why do people who can afford to pay for their own meals get involved in a game of taking turns buying meals?  In fact, why are we so determined to buy gifts for friends or family when they are not in need of any gift and often end up giving them money to buy a gift for themselves or, even crazier, they go out and by the exact size and model of whatever we say we want as our gift from them?  Wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone just bought gifts for those in need of a gift? People I like the most may never get a gift from me, or I accept gifts from them. They are not my friend in order to get some gifts unless of course it might be a perfect house or new car, or at least a cat which pays attention to what I say. 

If we love football we talk about it in great detail; if we go on a trip and enjoy it we talk about it to others in great detail, sometimes have them watch a slide show. Sex is very important to a lot of people but when, in a social setting, does anyone talk about in detail their most exciting sexual orgasms, let alone provide a slide show? I like to offer ten dollars for anyone who will do just that at the family Thanksgiving Dinner when they give thanks to God before dinner. Or is God only engineering winners for football games and not best orgasms? Maybe the same people thank God after a great orgasm. And if your greatest orgasms are not with your spouse, do you still thank God? Will we get to the point where we have our own sex chamber where we put on a complicated head set, select from the menu exactly the celebrity or image we wish to have sex with, press the button and in 3-D we will be able to control the kind of sex giving us the perfect orgasm about every time. Maybe then marriage would be entirely about something other than sex or is marriage without sex an oxymoronic thought? 

Why, after all these years, where people pray for the same sort of things from God, we do not yet have clear evidence as to what group of people God is saving from these sort of things? Like most soldiers pray to God that they don’t get killed in battle but where are the stats to show just which group of soldiers get killed less in battle? If a group of devout Hindu’s or Catholics or Jews or whatever take a course together will everyone get an A on the exams via prayer? Which God protected group dies less from cancer? At best, absence such stats, God must only rarely interfere on anyone’s behalf via prayer and alter the laws which govern the evolutionary process to protect them from life’s landmines. Faith may be comforting, which is no small thing, but then bam, a horrible thing happens, and what then do we do to be comforted?  “Why god, hast thou forsaken me?” 

Every New Year’s Eve the Pope prays for peace. Where is the evidence that wars tend to end after New Year’s eve? 

When devout religious believers of one faith accuse other religious faiths of being uncivilized monsters committing acts of brutal murders on certain people of other religious faiths, it really gets confusing. History is filled with burning at the stake, offering human sacrifices to God, quartering ‘bad’ people in the public square, beheading people, hanging people, drowning them, torturing them to death or near death, cutting body parts off for souvenirs. and the list goes on. Which religious sect, maybe excluding the Quakers, have not been guilty of many of these things now or in the past? Are they really just doing God’s will? 

On what ethical basis would so many people insist it is ok for the guy, who pushes a wheel barrow around all day at work, to pay a greater percentage of his income in taxes than someone who just shuffles papers around speculating? 

While most people lose their shirt in bankruptcies, some of the wealthy actually become millionaires via bankruptcy, and become multimillionaires via a series of bankruptcies while at the same time pay no taxes because of these bankruptcies. Is this fair taxation? In the state of Washington voters once rejected the very wealthy from paying more in taxes. Go figure that. Some of the wealthy, who pay no or little income tax would readily accept a 10 fold increase in taxes. 10 X 0=0. 

Why do we insist poor people make the effort to amass their own wealth and yet declare the wealthy can give their excess wealth to create a genetic cabal where the genetic members can receive massive amounts of unearned wealth? Isn't this a form of welfare? I thought the American way was for every adult to earn their own wealth? Shouldn’t the excess wealth anyone earns be put back into the society from which it came upon death, so the playing field is kept more level for everyone trying to make a success of themselves? How can so many people state all humans are God’s children and then insist it is ok to just ensure their children get all the advantages in life? Somebody is disingenuous here somewhere. If all children are God’s children then God must be furious with us right now. Except me. “Reid is just being Reid”. Next case. 

If we create a nickname for someone or some group which they feel is insulting, on what basis would we not refrain from using the name unless we simply don’t care if they are insulted? What is the big deal here? The Golden Rule is so simple—do onto others as you would have them do unto you. Maybe this universal ethical principle is to too complicated for some, especially the ‘darkies’, the ‘spics’, the ‘redskins’, the ‘honkies’, the ‘skin heads’, the ‘queers’, the ‘fat slobs’, the religious ’nuts’, the ‘couch potatoes’, and so on.  

If half the things I am saying here are true and I can’t pass mustard on some of them myself, how can I not follow my own advice?  I know, unanswerable. 

On what basis is it fair, in a particular state, for some cites to have casinos and others cannot? If it is a good income source for them, why is not just as good and legal source of income for other cities? For that matter, maybe someone wants to put out some machines in their backyard and have a gambling party. 

There now exists a prototype for an ‘air taxi’.  It is capable of a vertical takeoff, fly at twice the speed of a helicopter, then make a vertical descent to drop off the passenger. It is said to make about as much noise as a swarm of bees. I guess all this is well and good, but it just seems strange to actively deal with ways to lessen human congestion and make no efforts whatsoever to have global control to deal with human overpopulation. With ‘air taxi’s’, where do you find a nice quiet neighborhood to live? “Is that a naked, by the hour, rented, trophy sex partner that just got out of the ‘air taxi’ on Honschnivels  balcony at 2:00 AM?”  

I thought the American Flag represented, in part, the freedom for peaceful dissent. Now if someone (a bastard of some sort of course) protests something by kneeling during the anthem, isn’t what they are protesting about what they say they are protesting about, and isn't it illogical it illogical for someone else to deny that, and claim they are disrespecting the flag? Maybe we are disrespecting the flag or national anthem by using sport events to pretend everyone is there to show respect for the flag or national anthem. How many people would attend if the purpose was to sing the national anthem, recite the pledge of allegiance, honor patriots of varied sorts, and listen to speeches about what the flag and national anthem stand for? There is something disingenuous about the way we use sports as the bait to pretend people are there for patriotic reasons. I always feel like a dumb ass fool, when before the first horse race at a track, everyone stands with their betting card selection in hand and continues to try to make up their mind on which horses to pick and continue to chat with others sometimes, and all this is suppose to be showing respect for the flag or national anthem? It’s no big deal, but it is disingenuous, a bit silly, and trivializes what the flag and anthem represent. Is blind patriotism really a good thing anywhere? Quite a lot of people get killed as a consequence. Ask Germany. 

Some cities are now experimenting with a sealant that goes on top of asphalt which reflects solar rays instead of absorbing them. It reduces street temperatures on hot days by about 10 degrees. Is this a good idea? Maybe, maybe not: it costs $25,000 to $40,000 per mile. There are roughly 4 million miles of paved asphalt streets in the U.S. The math seems pretty high here. Also, that much light being reflected back up makes it rather uncomfortable for pedestrians. Maybe everyone could wear protective goggles and make a mad dash from place to place. The slow just become blind.  

In the 1960’s, businessman John Jay Hooker teamed with country singer Minnie Pearl to launch a chain of restaurants bearing her name. Initially a success, there were nearly 500 locations at one point. I wonder if the waitresses and cashier’s were required to give a robust “Howdeeeeee” to customers? I would hate the  job after one half hour. 

Since anyone can go on the internet to a porno sight and select a high definition big screen sex video from 50+ different kinds of human sex acts, are peeping Toms still in existence?  Well, at least we have solved that problem. One problem down, hundreds more to go., or does it just mean the peeping Tom population has grown exponentially? Remember when, if you got a hold of some grainy sex video with vanilla sex between partners wearing masks with no high definition or close ups,  it attracted tons of friends to some basement to drink and watch the video? Whatever became of all these naive childish comrades? I mean, besides Trump?

End of Part 1. I didn’t realize there are more unanswerable questions than answerable ones. Last one here: Is anyone totally sane? Besides me and you? Sometimes I wonder about you. 

Why Emotionally/Mentally Disturbed Individuals Are Not Reported To School/Work Authorities

Why Emotionally/Mentally Disturbed Individuals Are Not Reported To School/Work Authorities

President Trump has encouraged people to report emotionally/mentally disturbed individuals to authorities. That seems a good idea except it rarely works. This musing will speak to school situations rather than work situations since I spent my productive years in Universities. 

Individuals who commit mass shootings, bomb plants, vehicle crowd assaults, are rarely any surprise to those who know these individuals. I could list dozens of such individuals who were University/College students during the years I taught. Back then they were more likely to target a single individual or a small group of individuals, whereas today they are more likely to consider mass shootings. 

I will start with a few personal examples. My first year at one university the Chairperson called my office and asked if I would advise a student for course registration and sign off on her course selections. So I said ok, and the gal showed up. The courses she wanted to take seemed appropriate except for a biochemistry course which she had already taken and gotten a B. “Why are you taking this course over?”  “I want to get a better grade in the course”. “Well, why don’t you take courses you haven’t had and wait until your senior year to take any courses over.”  “I want to do it now while the material is fresh in my mind.” So I signed her registration form. Several days later the Chairperson calls me and says “What the hell did you do?  Why did you sign her up for Biochemistry, she has had the course”. “I didn’t know there was a rule against taking a course over and she was very insistent.”

“Look, she took that course last year and tried to shoot the Professor. I sent her to you so she would have a neutral advisor.”  A student tries to shoot the Professor and she is still in the University. Seemed odd to me.  And the solution was to give her a neutral advisor?

Another student, a bright and eager, ever with questions, student in my class started sitting way back in the corner and had no more endless questions. I called the student in my office and asked why he was sitting back in the corner and so quiet. Only with pressure did he confess he was scared some local gang members would try to kill him since he witnessed a brutal crime against someone by the gang. He sat in the back corner so no one could spot him from the window in the door.  He feared if he reported it, they for sure would kill him or his mother or all the gang members would claim he committed the crime. I told him to give me a day and come back to talk again. No young person should be caught in a trap like that. The crime, whatever it be, was a done deal and I simply wanted the student out of a very unpredictable situation. He had an uncle in another state and I talked with him and arrangements were made for the student to transfer to that state to go to college. I did not report a thing since I, on purpose did not know exactly what the crime committed was, and my job, as his Professor, was to get him in a safe environment. Period. He was traumatized enough.

Another time a faculty member in another department, a nice middle aged female Professor, said that a student would sit in the front row of the classroom and expose himself to her. She was a nervous wreck over what she should do and feared the student might hurt her if she reported it. She wanted to know what I would suggest she do. We went through the possible choices. But in the end I told her she had to go to her Department Chairperson since any course of action I suggested, if she did it, and it didn’t work out, all the blame would be aimed at me since when did I suddenly become the person to deal with such matters? My job was to teach physiology. I really don’t know what happened since we rarely crossed paths and since I assume she went to her Chairperson, and it seemed inappropriate for me to stay involved. Maybe I am just a coward. But the reality was that no one would ever agree that I was the one to take matters into my own hand in this case. If we can’t win, we shouldn’t play. 

The examples over the years are numerous, but I will now create a hypothetical but most common scenario. An instructor finds a very emotionally/mentally unstable person in their class. He/she acts out his disturbations (invented this word) and by every logical angle, the student needs to be reported. But, the student is like a junior, and no one else has reported him and the instructor does not want to end up being the target of this disturbed person’s mind. If the student is reported as dangerous to the Chairperson, the Chairperson will call the student in and who reported him become a matter of record. The Chairperson will be no more eager to be the target of this disturbed person than the Instructor, so the Chairperson will turn it over to the Dean. Somewhere along the line some kind of faculty committee will be formed, or attempted to be formed, but chances are no one will agree to be on such a committee. Perhaps the case will be turned over to law enforcement but, having no detailed account of specific acts committed, law enforcement is stymied. All they have is a vague suspicion with no individual willing to press charges. Then one day the student goes nuts and starts shooting others on campus with an assault rifle.  All students who knew the student and all the faulty who did, will unanimously comment that “they are not surprised this student did something like this”. 

I imagine workplaces are even worse where the deranged worker has the same bosses year after year. In a university a Professor just has to keep the deranged student from becoming unhitched during his/her time in their course for one semester. 

I had a neat Chairperson. She would call me in and say, “You have student X enrolled in your course. He/She is an emotional time bomb, not a good match putting him/her and you in the same classroom.  

So she would find, usually some local intimidating ghetto attired student another Professor was fretting about and switch sections for the students in question. There are not a lot of advantages being a bit off the wall with one’s personality, but in these cases it worked out well for me. Give me a ‘thug’ over a emotionally/mentally disturbed student any day. Trying to have a conversation with someone whose mind is such you have no idea how they will process what you are saying, is a very shaky situation. Reason or logic will not rule the day. 

So when politicians demand others report these emotionally/ mentally disturbed people to authorities, they have no perception of what life with these people is like on the front lines. In almost all cases, those with the biggest titles and highest salaries are aware of these students or workers and their mental state. Let them turn in these people and personally make the case against them. 

It is not going to happen. The bottom line—no one wants to be the one who becomes the target for any anger from the deranged suspect. Another problem, can we really commit someone who has never committed a serious crime before? The whole issue here is fraught with indecision and unpredictability. 

So what is the solution? Maybe someone should get the military budget under control. Producing more bombs and amazing weapons of mass destruction is inane. We haven’t won a war since Korea (and that was a draw) with vastly superior weapons of mass destruction. We went from being somewhat more powerful militarily to becoming more powerful than all the other industrialized countries in the world. And yet we haven’t won a war since Korea. War has changed and victory is not won by uniformed soldiers on battlefields. 

At any rate we need money for infrastructure rebuilding, and among other things, more  money for treating mentally ill people instead of just leaving them loose in society until they snap. Perhaps all faculty and bosses, and workers should be required to turn in a secret ballot in which one question is asked about each student in a class or worker on a job as to whether they seem emotionally/mentally disturbed enough to snap and hurt a lot of people from their rage.  When the flag hits a certain level the person is then given adequate mental health attention until they are safe to be out and about in society. 

Do we really think that most instructors or bosses, with family of their own to support, are going to individually turn in an emotionally/mentally disturbed student or worker and thus play Russian roulette with their own lives?  It doesn’t seem to happen too often does it?  Most of us have known plenty of these emotionally or deranged individuals and how many of us take it upon ourselves to have them hauled in for questioning? How many deranged persons live in a building or work on a job or attend a school for years without anyone being willing to step forward and personally demand they be removed?  No, we all tippy toe around, being polite as hell to the time bomb in question hoping someone else will put their foot down and get rid of them. More likely, the day will come and bam—the person in question snaps and kills/wounds one, two, or dozens of innocent people. Not a very good game we have going on here. 

Of course the bigger question is: Why is this becoming so common around the world at this point in history? I am pondering this right now. If one likes to ponder matters, this current age is like endless Christmas presents. 

The New Form of Slavery in the U.S.

The New Form of Slavery in the U.S.

Human Overpopulation, Climate Change, Protection of the environment, massive species extinction, and the accumulation of wealth amongst a small segment of society are all the major global situations which will determine the future of our planetary life, and yet none of these significant situations are driving elections. Democracy and all other forms of government are now failing because no leaders can see the forest for the sake of the trees—or, if they can, have the power to really address these issues in any meaningful ways and stay elected or in power. This is the overriding reality of our times. 

It may seem strange that at a time in which more and more Americans are slipping into economic regression and job instability that someone like Trump, the ultimate example of driving more and more of our country’s wealth into the hands of the 2-5% who own 90 percent of our wealth already—AND,  are still not satisfied. This additional wealth cannot come from the poor—they have nothing left to give and so it must come from the middle class which will just push more of them into poverty. Trickle down economics has been proven a total failure every time it has been tried. Any reversal of wealth dispersal toward a more reasonable dispersal is not likely as long as the wealthy have control of all three branches of our government. In other countries with autocratic control of government the grip on protecting the wealthy is even more firm. 

Our urban, suburban, and rural ghettoes have continued to grow in size, joblessness, with poor schools, poor health care, and personal safety. The latter have forced residents and children to stay confined inside and fearful of being hurt at school or on the streets. This is producing chronic stress syndrome for more and more children in their formative years. This means they have chronically high levels of stress hormones in their blood and this has negative impact on almost every body system and especially the central nervous system. Many of these effects can be permanent for a good percentage of victims. Then we ignorantly wonder why, as teenagers or adults they don’t act civilized or normal. To compound ignorance, it is then blamed on race when the fact is any ethnic group raised in such ghettos behave the same way. 

The following is based on several premises. First, every government is responsible for all the communities within it’s jurisdiction. This notion, that less government is best is nothing more than a smoke screen to ensure the affluent can flourish while the poor are left on their own—at best,  permanent welfare wards of the state.  Another premise is that the benefit of the industrial revolution is that people need to work less hours a week and have more leisure time. This worked for centuries as work hours per week were reduced, working conditions were improved, child labor was restricted, and so on. Somehow when the work week reached 40 hrs per week it got stuck at that point. The next premise is that certain aspects of our economy cannot be left up to political chicanery. That means not only should social security rise with the cost of living, but so should minimum wage and taxes, and the money spent to educate students. The next premise is that for society to be ethical and prosperous for all citizens, and especially young people, citizens need to be guaranteed good schools, good teachers, the same amount of money available to educate all children, good health care, safe communities, job opportunities with livable wages, good pensions, and generous vacation time. Some countries do this today, but the United States does little of this, calling it socialism. It is no surprise that when polls are done to find which citizens are the happiest it is alway the countries which do the above that score the highest. 

For decades the United States encouraged illegal immigrants because their slave wages enable many products and services to be inexpensive for legal citizens.  These ’slaves’ tended to accumulate in our ghetto areas and given the current ’shithole’ nature of our current ghettoes many people blame these illegal immigrants. Of course it is only right that illegal immigration be stopped, but having encouraged this for decades it becomea unethical for those who have been law abiding citizens for decades to be deported. Of course the problem here, which is just a part of the bigger problem, is just who is going to do this ‘slave wage’ work if they are gone? The wealthy, through Trump as their pawn, are now coming up with an insidious policy which will do the ‘trick”. If minimum wage had gone up with the cost of living since 1955 it would be around $22 today. That’s a far cry from the $8 minimum wage in some areas of the country.

With all this in mind, all sorts of changes need be implemented so that we no longer have 42% of adults earning so little money that they don’t even qualify to pay federal taxes.  Certainly that so many people in any society should be living in poverty, let alone in the richest country in the world, is a travesty. This title of richest country is currently very deceptive. What we really have is 2-5% of our citizens living well with 90% of our total wealth, while an increasingly larger portion of our society sinks to lower and lower levels of economic hardship. We score poorly on education, health issues, etc compared to other industrialized countries not because the wealthy are not doing exceptionally well in these categories, but because so many people are so deficient in these categories.

The mentality behind this musing is simple. As long as we cannot globally address the major issues listed at the beginning of this musing, all else is just inane distraction.  If the human species cannot control itself from human activities which are detrimental to human prosperity in the future on this planet, then our Achilles Heels will precipitate another drastic evolutionary correction. Continued nationalism, religious battles, ethnic conflicts, class conflicts, and so on will be our downfall. It doesn’t do any good for everyone to say “well, none of these major problems can be corrected via global control, so why waste time on them?” 

Let’s examine here the concept of global minimum wages. This not a new problem. One of Trump’s ‘shit holes’ (Haiti) found out the kind of vengeance lack of minimum wages can do to damage human existence. When one of the slaves in Haiti, on a sugar plantation, organized a slave revolt and won—defeating Spain, France, and England in order to eliminate slavery on the Island, the victory was rather hollow. The slave was Toussaint Louverture. His personal history is quite intriguing, but for here let’s just say he was well organized, manipulative to achieve his goals, and rather intelligent. He was not interested in killing the white planters or even getting rid of them as planters. After Toussaint was driven from power, his successors did kill all the white planters (many escaped out of the country).

Haiti, back in the days of Toussaint (today too), had no industry to speak of except sugar plantations. No working conditions anywhere were worse than the working conditions on these sugar plantations. Death from various diseases were rampant, the work was inhuman, only a small percentage of slaves were female, so family type relationships were nearly impossible, and on and on it goes. But once the slaves were freed and the government, now black, the question became “Now what?”  Freedom became just another word for ‘nothing left to lose’. The slaves had no real skills, there were no other industries besides sugar plantations. So, in theory, each former slave from these large sugar plantations were free to grow their own sugar and sell it. Except it takes a huge amount of capital to have a large enough sugar plantation to be profitable. Sure, a black planter was free to pay workers a decent salary but then he would have to sell the sugar at a higher price. BUT, all the other countries which produced sugar still had slaves for the labor. Few of the freed blacks were about to return to the sugar plantations under the same hours and conditions as before. Most of the slaves just tried to grow coffee on a small amount of land and just grow enough food for subsistence. Most were poorly educated, couldn’t read or write, in poor health—in short as about as helpless to make a better life for themselves as could be. They were trapped as workers by the same principle which exists today:unless there are global minimum wages workers in most occupations are trapped. These former slaves were in the same position many American workers are in today. As long as there are people in other countries providing the same products or services at slave wages, then our workers making the same product or services cannot get decent ages. 

This is why the Trump administration is vigorously pushing the principle that only those who have a job can receive any welfare.This essentially forces the poor in our rural, urban, or suburban ghettos to take a job at slave labor pay. Then after working the worst jobs long hours, they can then get a welfare subsidy so they can manage to survive, if having poor medical care, no land ownership, poor schools, a violent environment in which to live, no pensions, no livable wage, is really having any kind of life. So in deftly constructed cruelty we will chase out the illegal immigrants who served as our slave labor force, and they will be replaced by legal citizens forced to work as our slave labor force. And the bonus for these doers of evil is that they can boast that the number of minority citizens have record low unemployment rates. Then just to rub dirt into the wound our President will add—and “these are good paying jobs too”. Naturally, which is his specialty, there is not a grain of truth to this. 

The actual reality is this: until our poorest (a number growing at an exponential rate) earn enough money to pay taxes and spend money in our buying market, there will be no prosperous society any more except for those at the very top. And it almost guarantees organized (via smart phones) eventual roving street riots in every community across our land with a population now becoming (again at an exponential rate) heavily armed with weapons of mass destruction, including automatic weapons, homemade bombs, sniper incidents, vehicles, infrastructure damage, and the list goes on. Terrorism is already becoming our new national sport—year round and almost daily. 

Slavery in any form is wrong. Every citizen deserves a job at the level of their skills and health, a job that pays at least a livable wage and rises each year with the cost of living and has decent benefits and job stability if performed well. Only those who refuse such livable wage jobs should be denied welfare benefits. And those who work livable wage jobs will no longer need welfare and will buy things and this, from the bottom up, will stimulate our economy and make life better for everyone. Actually, whenever amassing wealth becomes an addictive/ compulsive behavior no contentment is possible. Addictions and compulsive behavior cannot, by definition, lead to contentment. Would anyone remotely consider Trump’s behavior one of a contented person? I don’t t think so, the poor guy suffers from 24 hr angry fits about just everyone and everything all the time. Those who live by the golden rule and have learned when enough is enough regarding money, sex, power, titles, and whatever, are the contented citizens. The nice thing about the Golden Rule, a universal ethical principle, is that those who give get as much contentment as those who receive. 

 It is a good thing God’s evolutionary process, controlled by God’s laws to govern the process, is an ongoing process on evolutionary time, not human time—and thus the mess the human species is now creating will get resolved, not by our species, but by the laws which govern the evolutionary process.  The long term prognosis is great, the short term bleak. If this short term trend moves any faster maybe it will be time for me to check out early. The dead never have a damn thing to worry about, ever. And if, by some remote chance, there is Heaven, probably those who have lived by the golden rule, will be the first in.