Current Well-Being of the United States
Introductory Note.: These are the strangest, out of the pale, sui generis times in the United States/globally. It feels like the decade preceding our Civil War. It would be some comfort if all this was generated simply by the existence of Donald Trump, but Trump is just the product of a huge festering anger by roughly half our population. We could vote Trump out, barely it seems, and all the festering anger would still exist in half our citizens, now emboldened by Trump. Trump did not create all this festering anger, all this intolerance toward various groups of citizens. All his hatred, his boorish behavior, his ghetto style verbal assaults on friends and foes, his distorted or misplaced values, his obsession with wealth, his sexual indiscretions, his admiration of dictators globally, his need to play the bully, his abysmal ignorance on the issues at hand—all are cheered on by his angry fans. Even those fans whose personal behavior never approaches his, will, with reluctance, if pushed to do so, only go so far as to wish he would tone down his tweets. As Trump himself has stated: “I could kill someone in public and my base would stand by me.” He probably, for once, is telling the truth. Their defense of his killing someone would be something like: “Well, the guy he killed was from Baltimore, and if you just killed at random someone from Baltimore they probably deserved to be shot for something or other.” Most musing topics are challenging and fun to analyze, this one was not so. It is depressing. It makes my hermit-hood a good choice at this stage of my life. It is long (19 printed pages at last count), not best read in one sitting. If, after a few paragraphs, it is not something you care to stomach or think about, just proceed no further. It is human nature that few ever change their minds about their inherited religion or their politics. It is similar to the chances that I would ever agree certain sport writers did not punish Terrell Owens for essentially minding his own business (willpower and focus on his own achievement)—too much so. Even if the following musing is something of interest to you, just read a small portion daily until you get to the end. The Presidential campaign will go on for many, many months but I have condensed my thoughts about the current well being of our country into this one singular musing. I feel no desire to waste my time chasing illusions which deny the writing on the wall. There are endless other areas of life that attract my attention—I will write about them, and given my age now, they will just be relegated to my storage site. My writing skills and reasoning, like every other youthful skill, are surely in decline. My personal life is peaceful enough, mostly uneventful; the people with whom I am in contact in daily life, including a small army of medical personnel, are all very kind to me, and my beloved legs still get me around, so I go gently down the stream to oblivion, very grateful for all the luck which came my way during a perfect era in which to have lived. Many of you—just as lucky, should never be whining about inescapable trivial stuff and the inevitable frailties that come with old age. No one can ever go back upstream. I don’t even try. Time stays——we go.
Current Well Being of the United States
This musing is a real challenge. It is easy enough to list the varied problems we face, but it is quite another matter, with any degree of accuracy, to detail reality and where we are headed. For example, one could say if we do this or that, a lot of money could be generated or saved, but often exactly how much is simply beyond my means of understanding to be accurate. Others, with more exact data and expertise in the area, would be obliged to do that. This musing, at best, is a well reasoned overview that illuminates the complexity of human interrelationships, and incorporates all of that into evolutionary perspectives. The problems are real and global. Practically all the major problems facing humanity today are global—and to date there is no real likelihood that any global unified cooperative solutions will be enacted until it is too late.
We do have expert scientists and economists who have the data which enables solutions, but every solution requires massive global participation and a willingness for the general public to sacrifice considerably to ever enact the solutions. Right now we are in the midst of the 6th greatest evolutionary period of species extinction. This is quite different from past extinctions which were caused by massive environmental changes, and humans played no part. This current species extinction is being driven by human activities. Given the limits of our natural resources and limited space for a reasonable and needed number of species to thrive, human overpopulation is an underlying time bomb, which is already a driving force for many of the dire situations we face today as a species.
Next, we need understand just how violent our species really is. We are a plague on our own species, other species, and our natural resources. We, as a species, have little tolerance for other species or even segments of our own species. Add our abuse of the natural environment and the picture looks hopeless. But we need be careful about the word hopeless. Perspective is everything here. We all have the tendency to think of our own species as the ‘creme de la creme’ of evolutionary history. Every man-devised religion places man front and center with a God who interacts directly with humans as individuals. It is hard to imagine just why we think evolution has reached its planetary peak with our species. Neither science nor logic generates any such conclusion. But in today’s societal milieu our views need neither science nor logic----feelings rule the roost. Many of these, often strong feelings, overrule logic and science as means to push aside reality, and pretend all is well if we can just make enough others have the same feelings. It appears as the blind leading the blind, while in reality it is more like lemmings making an insane mad rush to the edge of an evolutionary cliff. The reality is that 97% of all species which have existed in the evolutionary process are now extinct. I suppose, way back when, humans assumed dinosaurs would never become extinct. They did.
Most of human behavior is self serving and always has been. This trait is found in most of the higher species in evolutionary history. Many really believe that the founding fathers of our country created a society in which all men are created equal. I guess if all men are defined as white, land owning, Protestant Christians it might have some truth to it. It took a Civil War to establish that some of our citizens were even legally human. Throughout human history humans have always created some sort of self serving religion which will get them to some imagined Heaven after death. It is interesting that modern day religious sects were all created by prophets who lived about the same time in history, and the bibles they selectively follow were all written by men who wrote the scriptures years after the prophet was dead. What a weird way for God to select which humans get to Heaven (inherited religion). Given the complex and time proven laws which govern the evolutionary process, human comprehension, even that possessed by the most intelligent of us, cannot possibly enable us to conceive the essence of God. I can, and do think (if I can use the term loosely) that God (however envisioned) created the laws which govern the process. But then, where did God come from? At some point we are left to admit something came from nothing, and at this point I personally give up, and fold my cards in any serious search for ultimate understanding.
We are now living in an age when all organized religions are losing active members in large numbers, albeit there remain the right wing literalists who still believe their bible is really the word of God speaking to them, though even the best of the literalists simply choose what words in their Bible to follow. The rigidity and inability of all organized religions to let go of historical absurdities within their scriptures, in the face of modern day standards of science and logic, is behind a good deal of the mass exodus of active church participants. The greater the exodus the stronger the literalists dig in, circle the wagons, and detest non believers who, of course, they believe are all going to hell, something which they are certain God has assured them personally one way or the other.
In reality, national, racial, economic, cultural, and religious patriotism become the main blocks preventing global cooperation and the unity required to face the many serious global issues coming at our species from multiple directions. We are all, in varying degrees, so prejudiced in so many ways toward the diversity of our own species, that we would rather die defending our own irrational prejudices than provide the sacrifice and willingness to expand any Golden Rule behavior to other groups, outside our own group cabals, in order to collectively prevent global catastrophe for humans and other species.
All of the above is less a question of who is right or wrong on particular viewpoints as it is widespread failure to accept logic, science, and the Golden Rule (as the universal basis for human ethics). “We have met the enemy and it is us”, not the singular existence of a Donald Trump or any other leaders of such ilk. While the global picture cannot be ignored, the topic here is the well being of the United States at this time in history.
As Lincoln stated: “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do and how to do it” It just seems our country (or the world) cannot continue to progress if we continue to let prejudice, ignorance, and gut feelings drive our collective actions.
It is a huge mistake if we allow ourselves to think that getting rid of Trump will end this road to the domestic implosion toward which our nation seems headed. A sizable portion of our citizens think much like him, behave much like him, have the intolerance he has, have the same prejudices as he has, and are as angry and discontented as he is. It is perhaps good to remember that in theory, the best government is government which allows the greatest percentage of its citizens to achieve the maximum amount of contentment with their lives. The form of government is only relevant to the extent that form is able to achieve this. Let us stop using the words socialism and democracy. These words have become meaningless since people differ widely as to what they exactly mean when they use these two words. We don’t have a democracy. We are lucky if we sometimes get 50% of the people to vote. The use of primaries to select candidates ensures that maybe 30% of the eligible voters determine the candidates for office. The word socialism is even harder to define since again people define it anyway which suits their purpose.
Thus, in this treatise, everything is judged on how well a particular policy will enable the greatest number of citizens to achieve the greatest amount of contentment in their lives. The goal of government is not to make all of us equal. Human diversity makes that impossible. The goal really is to make the playing field more level and to let the universal ethical principle ‘the Golden Rule” be the basis for our collective and individual ethics. When everything is judged by the Golden Rule in politics, and in our personal lives, then major progress in achieving the greatest amount of contentment for the maximum number of citizens will be achieved. To the extent that competing man-devised religions can be eliminated, and everyone everywhere use the Golden Rule as their ethics, our human species will then, and only then, have a chance for survival. The problem here is how realistic is it to think our species, rooted in self serving genetic and learned prejudices, can remotely achieve this ethical status?
Of course I cannot answer that question, and from a practical standpoint, it is not relevant to the subject matter of this musing. The above is just background framework for the bigger picture.
Good government starts, using the ethical principle of the Golden Rule, with a genuine effort to ensure that all it’s citizens, especially all children, receive good health care, decent housing, good schools, good teachers, adequate nutrition, a safe environment for their formative years, and good opportunities for employment in their teenage and young adult years. This is where it all starts if we expect to maximize the degree of contentment in an adult population. This is the real purpose of government and how achievable is moot. Those governments which succeed the most with this goal will be the governments which will be the last to implode upon themselves in the near future.
A common and widespread opinion prevails that the U.S. cannot afford to govern by the Golden Rule, and that it is the American way to pull oneself up by our own bootstraps if we wish to succeed, no matter the environment in our formative years. And we have examples to prove this can be done, and if some can do it, all others can too. This is like saying that we know some humans can run a mile under 4 minutes and we have examples to prove it, and therefore everyone, with the right attitude, can run a mile under 4 minutes. Yeah, sure. The vast majority of our citizens grant that children are important and precious to our society. Some concentrate on banning abortion and then walk away from any further duty to consider the welfare of the already born. Others simply dump the blame/responsibility on the parents, as if all parents are equal to the task in any remote way. And if the parenting is poor, apparently the blame falls on the child for not having selected better parents. The logic here is pitiful and of course unethical—a throw back to the days when good Christian parents were encouraged to stone wayward children as dictated by their scripture. Today we can get stoned in a different way, and perhaps with good reason.
If the richest country in the world cannot afford to provide the above care for its citizens, then which country can? It is simply a matter of money. The most recent PISA results, from 2015, placed the U.S. an unimpressive 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors the PISA initiative, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science. There is no need to quibble on the accuracy of the above stats. If we truly are the richest country in the world we should be first. For starters, the above stats are misleading. The children of the affluent in this country get a good education, maybe the best. That is because property taxes pay most of the cost and affluent parents can send their kids to private schools or their community generate taxes for good public schools. Those kids raised in our ghettoes have poor schools and poor teachers. It is estimated that about 100 million Americans live in impoverished communities or near impoverished communities. That is roughly one third of Americans. So when the scores of students living in our impoverished communities are mixed in with those living in affluent communities it drops the United States to such lowered rankings. It also need be noted that those minority students who are raised in affluent communities test as well as the white students in those schools and have no more propensity to commit crimes than the white students. So we can eliminate race as any genetic factor. It’s the environment these kids are raised in which makes the difference. And this includes parenting.
How true is the claim by so many that our government cannot afford to provide all its citizens with basic needs? If we have the wealth to provide all our citizens with all the services in question above, where is this wealth? For starters, just 3 people in our country own as much wealth as the bottom economic half of our citizens. In essence we essentially are claiming that 3 people are entitled to have all this wealth, that their greed tops the need for half our population to have better schools, health care, etc. When 2-5% of our population own 90% of our nation’s wealth and have increasing control of Congress, the Presidency, and now the Supreme Court, while not surprisingly the wealthy people want even more wealth, where is this more wealth to come from? It can’t come from the poor, they have nothing left to give, and so it comes from the middle class causing more and more of the middle class to fall into the lower economic class. Does anyone rationally think this kind of maldistribution of wealth will not cause this country to implode? Historically, when empires implode, the have nots win the battle when they take to the streets, as the ‘haves’ try to protect their property, but the ‘have’s’ cannot during an implosion. The police and army cannot be everywhere at the same time.
Not only does the U.S. have the wealth to provide the services in question, but the wealthy are very short sighted in not realizing their greed will be their own economic downfall, if not to them now, then to their offspring down the road. If one pays any attention to the current rhetoric in politics, this confrontational implosion is well on the way to happening, a kind of civil war that will make our last civil war seem tame. Since the 50’s, the salaries of the poor have barely budged, while the salaries of the middle class have moved, but not enough to keep pace with inflation, all this while the income of the wealthy has grown in exponential fashion. Yet the majority of citizens continue to feel this is ok. Huh?
What is amazing is how voters vote in the present economic situation. In the State of Washington when there was a proposition on the ballot to increase the tax rates of the wealthy, it was defeated. Wow, how dumb is that for those in need of more income? All the wealthy need do apparently is throw the word socialism around and they can dupe the public. Those in the bottom half of our economic population are angry enough, see the anger gushing from a Donald Trump—-who revels in telling off the establishment, and just like that plenty of the angry poor, and the religious right, vote for the angry guy, the one one who excelled at becoming wealthy via stiffing his contractors and investors in legal schemes, invoking bankruptcy loopholes for the wealthy, that left him not only wealthy, but exempt from taxation on that wealth. Well, I guess the poorly educated can be excused as being dumb, and the religious right are desperate enough to vote for a candidate whose unethical behavior can be tolerated as long as such a candidate appears before them and says,”tell me what religious beliefs you want to be the law, and I will deliver if you vote for me. And they did vote for him in large numbers. If there are any two people who differ more from each other in behavior and values than Trump and Jesus, it would be hard to find. These are the strangest of times.
Let’s start here with how much the U.S. values its education by using the percentage of our GNP spent on education. The highest percentages globally start around 10%. The United States spends 4.9% of its GNP on education. On the other hand, the United States spends more total money on education than any other country. Despite spending a lot of money, according to data from the Programme for International Student Assessment, 15-year-olds in the U.S. ranked 31st on OECD standardized mathematics tests, and their test scores were far below average in reading and science. Again, this score is deceptive since scores of those attending schools in affluent neighborhoods do fine. The basic problem is we don’t ensure that the quality of education is the same for all children. Part of the problem is the discrepancy on how much money is spent per pupil. But there are other factors that come in to play also. Sure parenting is a sizable factor, but children don’t get to choose their parents. Good government does not hang these children out to dry.
When one walks into a suburban affluent school one sees an entirely different physical environment than in a rural or urban ghetto. Every child today needs a good lap top computer. If a child has one, fine. If not the government needs give them one. The Golden Rule governs this. Since my younger days, ghetto environments have changed dramatically. Back in the fifties and sixties, most poor neighborhoods had kids playing all over the place, including the streets, while people in the neighborhood knew each other well, would sit on front steps chatting, had picnics in their back yards, etc. The kids did not feel someone might shoot them outside their home, or in school, or on the way to school, or coming home from school, or a stray bullet might find them a target. It is totally different today. Poor neighborhoods often look abandoned with streets empty of people except a few isolated persons heading quickly to the bus or train stops. Some of this fear exists even in affluent neighborhoods today.
Medical science dictates that children need long formative years for their body to completely develop, especially their Central Nervous System. When children are raised locked up behind windows with bars, doors with bars, and limited areas in which to feel safe from harm——they often end up with chronic high levels of stress hormones in their system. We should monitor all children for the presence of chronic high levels of stress hormones periodically, but we don’t. Even affluent helicopter parents can create a fear of endless diverse groups. Science has known for years that the presence of high levels of stress hormones interferes negatively on the development of the body, especially the nervous system. This can lead to nervous system damage which includes impaired learning, impaired memory, impaired ability to reason, inappropriate emotional states, extreme obesity, abnormal behaviors, phobias, increased likelihood of diabetes, blood pressure abnormalities, and the list goes on. By early adulthood many of these situations are irreversible. The potentials these unfortunate children once had are often gone with the wind.
This chronic stress on children in urban, rural, and suburban ghettoes cannot be relieved without changing the nature of our poor communities. We have already pointed out that poor communities were not always drenched in such extreme fear of safety for the residents. Our ill-advised war on drugs designed by, and carried out by police and politicians, has been an unmitigated disaster driven by the idea that massive prison terms would eradicate the black market drug industry, now the second biggest industry in the country. Marijuana should never have been made illegal as it basically has kept the black market so financially rewarding. The era of alcohol prohibition should have taught us a lasting lesson, but it did not. Actually, across the globe, whatever recreational drugs are used by the majority are always legal. Politics drives this, never science or reason.
The next factor that created the unsafe dire conditions of these ghetto communities was the failure of minimum wages to have kept up with the standard of living costs. We protect those on social security with yearly cost of living raises. For more than 50 years we ignored cost of living rises for the poorest workers. Gone are the days when a single person at the bottom end jobs can actually live off the salary. Then add the fact taxes do not go up with the cost of living, coupled with the reality that most politicians cannot get elected unless they promise to reduce taxes. We have waged endless military ventures (well over 50 in the last 50 years) by borrowing the money for these ventures. The general public has wanted a lot of things and yet never wants to really pay the costs, and our national debt keeps soaring. Republicans, especially, have campaigned against a soaring debt and yet it was under Reagan that we went from the world’s biggest creditor nation to the world’s biggest debtor nation. And this has continued with every President since including Trump who is setting records in this area. When it comes to the national debt, the more things change the more they stay the same.
For a start here taxes should automatically go up with the cost of living. After all, government costs go up too. Then we should make all military actions be paid for through tax increments and military engagement only be carried out when the people vote specifically to engage in military actions and are willing to pay up front. Then, we need adjust our priorities. For example, there is no real reason to have over 700 military bases all over the world. It doesn’t make us safer, it just makes the CEO’s of the military/industrial complex very, very wealthy. In fact, we spend more money on military matters than the next top ten of the major industrial powers combined. And all of this is purported to make us safer and more successful in military engagements. Really? Is there any country out there who seriously considers directly attacking the United States? It would be suicide for them. And what military engagements have we won since World War II except Reagan’s attack on Granada, and perhaps some of the Balkan countries more recently. By won I mean this: we always claim we are invading this or that country or supporting rebels in this or that country so the country in question will have democracy and prosperity for their citizens. What country in which we have engaged in military actions since World War II has ever achieved any prosperity and common togetherness for its citizens after our invasion? Our engagements are always the same: go in, destroy the infrastructure via bombs, create a few ‘green’ safe bases within the country for our soldiers, kill like ten times more citizens of that country than they can kill our ‘peace soldiers’ and then, after X number of years we declare ‘victory’ and leave.
The results of our ‘invasions’ have merely created the worst hell-holes imaginable—like in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, all the Latin American countries we have meddled in etc. We have intervened in Haiti dozens of times and they just sink lower and lower as a prosperous nation. Why do we continue to think military intervention solves anyone’s best interest? I doubt Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc could possibly be any worse off than they were before our interventions. Using other countries for target practice as the means to create huge financial gains for our huge military/industrial complex is a white collar thug operation. If we want to help citizens living in deplorable conditions we could start with our own citizens living in our urban, rural, and suburban ghettoes. I know, that does nothing to make the Cheneys and Rumsfelds super rich.
The next thing we can do is retain capitalism but put in adequate regulations (including ending all the endless tax loopholes), add the necessary regulations to keep the playing field level, and put limits on monetary gain. When Teddy Roosevelt pegged the top tax bracket at 90%, and put heavy inheritance taxes on the wealthy, the rich did not disappear, and what followed was the best economy for all the economic classes. It is totally unethical for any form of government to allow 3 people to own as much of the national wealth as the bottom 50% or let 2-5% of its citizens own 90% of the nation’s wealth. If the majority of our citizens cannot understand this, then all hope is lost.
In the first debate for the 20+candidates running to gain the Democratic Party nomination for President, the candidates spent a lot of time talking about women’s rights, black rights, immigrant rights, climate change, gay rights, etc. All this is fine and good, except until people at the lower ends of our economic strata earn a living wage at whatever 40 hr week job they hold, these people —who have suffered economically with their wage buying power for some 60+ years now—are not prepared to lose sleep over all these other rights for various groups. Even those candidates who really want to start by providing living wages for all our workers are overshadowed by the extended time all candidates spend talking about specific human rights still not enjoyed by various groups of citizens. The point here is simply that until we help all our workers earn a living wage, a good percentage of them will remain hostile to expanding human rights to other groups. Our country, to varied degrees, has made good progress with minority rights, gay rights, prison reform, etc. but have made no progress in making sure our workers, at all levels, make a living wage. The democrats have lost much of their base, who they assumed would always vote democratic because of the fine speeches expressing concern for them, but the dire truth is: nothing has improved economically for workers at the lower end of our economic stratus, and they legitimately feel that little changes, no matter whether it is a Republican or Democrat as President. They switch to Trump simply because Trump is very angry, at just about everyone and everything, except the very wealthy, and that is mostly limited to his own obsession with his own wealth. So those struggling economically to make ends meet vote for the angry candidate. Of course Trump could care less about these people, and has done absolutely nothing for their wages, so they will soon just go back to not voting. If the democrats don’t nominate for President someone who clearly puts wages on the front burner, then they run the real risk of losing again. All these other civil rights issues are important, but the reality is that their chances of being further implemented are very much dependent on the worker wage issues. When people have livable wages holding one 40 hr/wk job they then, and only then, are they sympathetic with all these other social issues. Until then, many of them are riveted to the basic feeling: “Well, what about my life, don’t I count at all?” It just seems after 60+ years of rising costs and stagnant wages, this vast population of our citizens have a good point. To them, at least Donald Trump makes everyone except the rich and religious fundamentalists (which he himself is not) feel themselves under attack. A case of misery loves company.
We have identified several serious global problems bearing down on the U.S. and other countries across the globe and the solution involves individual sacrifice, global cooperation, toleration for diversity (needed for cooperation) and the expenditure of considerable amounts of money lodged currently in the hands of the top 1-5% of populations across the globe. In the case of the U.S. we have identified exactly where vast amounts of wealth are currently sequestered.
But any topic concerning the current well being of the U.S. is dependent on the social and ethical culture prevalent at this time. We briefly mentioned the high level of violence that has always been part of our American history. If fact, a whole history of violence dominates the history of both North and South America since Columbus landed. Unfortunately, for South America, the extent and level of violence by the Spanish was far higher than in the French and English Colonies. Thus the high level of violence still exists today in South America as a normal way of life. Columbus and a whole cabal of South America Conquistadors established a culture in which violence against other groups in a society is acceptable. The United States now has our own modern version of a Conquistador whose daily tweets encourages violence, disrespect, and vile anger toward others, others diverse in nature from those angry, and seen as a proper expression of their manhood, especially for otherwise cowards. Tilt this modern conquistadorian President and he would fall like a beached whale. To a difficult extent to measure, our endless prolonged wars with Middle Eastern nations, long known for intense hatred and violence as a basis for their history, has simply generated much of their violent and revengeful nature into our own national psyche.
Americans have managed, up until now, albeit slowly, tone down the violence and intolerance between various groups, with the Civil War being a notable exception. Fortunately this was a war primarily fought on battlefields between uniformed soldiers. Even so, the death total was huge and the total deaths about equal to the total deaths in all our other military adventures, of which there have been many in the last 70 years. No other country comes remotely close to the U.S. in terms of killing foreign citizens on their own soil after World War II. The military/industrial industry is the biggest industry in our country, followed by the the ‘War on Drug Industry” which has pretty much crippled vast areas of our larger cities, turning them into ghettoes which have grown in size and depravity every decade in recent times.
Terrorism, which has grown at an exponential rate globally, has now gotten a good foothold within the U.S., and is now growing exponentially here at home. So far it is mostly been by mentally disturbed individuals, most of whom needed mental health attention. Anyone who has taught in high schools or colleges know students whose emotional stability is dangerous, and yet no one wants to confront them individually or report them for fear they become the target of the student’s emotional instability. No area of area of reporting is so riddled with fear of reporting than charging emotionally disturbed citizens as being dangerous to our society.
What our government fails to realize is just how many millions of citizens, and the numbers increase each year, who are feeling more and more like their backs are up against the wall and thus see no light at the end of any tunnel. Many of their problems are economic, many of their problems are medical, including widespread chronic high levels of stress hormones in the blood of children living in our urban, suburban, and rural ghettoes. When these young people turn to selling drugs or using drugs (this latter includes many older adults) we simply arrest them, put them in jail with mandatory sentences (at a $30,000 cost per year) while year after year politicians get elected by vowing to put even more in jail—-even though with 5% of the world’s population we have 25% of people globally in prison in our own jails right now. We have always been good at waging military adventures and putting our own people in jail. We have been horrible at creating community atmospheres which maximally generate contentment among the citizens of the community.
An inherent problem in assessing the current well being of the U. S. is that we are hardly a nation in which the vast majority of citizens on the same page. True, a good percentage of Americans have genuinely shed any feelings of racial, religious, and ethical intolerance. They have learned to appreciate diversity and include all sorts of diverse citizens in their social or workplace interactions. This is more apparent with the younger generation at most every level of society. It is not unusual, while observing a group of young people out for the evening in an urban entertainment setting, to see the interactions amongst their diversity. These young groups, in years past, tended to be quite homogeneous in nature—all white or black or hispanic, all affluent or poor, all of similar attractiveness or unattractiveness, all gay or all straight, etc. Today, when I observe these groups out on the town for the night, the groups are often quite diverse and yet actively interacting with each other in a positive way. At the same time, a large percentage of Americans are seething with various degrees of hostility toward groups not mirror images of themselves. This is especially true for those mired in economic distress which impacts on their feelings about others. It becomes a situation where they genuinely believe certain other groups are the reason for their economic woes. This becomes especially strong toward any minority group who has steadily been granted rights they did not have in the past. Simply put, many people—in no small numbers—deeply resent all the political attention civil rights for minorities gets from the media. Those feeling trapped in economic hopelessness also deeply resent an entirely different lifestyle possessed by the affluent in our society. Our judicial system is hardly riddled with fairness, which is not to say it is not better than in most countries. The biggest race situation we face right now is the race to the bottom or the race to the top.
It seems that widespread tolerance for, and appreciation of diversity, depends heavily on improving the economic welfare of the lower economic strata in our country. That essentially means finding a way for all workers who work a 40 hour a wk job, to receive a living wage which goes up each year with the cost of living. Of course this is not 100% achievable, but the more progress we make in this area, the more tolerance for diversity will become widespread.
We have already mentioned the medical damage done to young people in their formative years who grow up in our urban, suburban, and rural ghettoes. In many cases, the damage done to their developing nervous system is irreversible. That essentially means they will never become employable productive citizens. And this problem grows bigger every year as the deplorable environment which exists in these ghettoes gets more deplorable with every passing year.
Another impact on our national societal well-being is the internet. The nature and extent of these media devices is still to be accurately measured. But we at least know it is not the neighborhood, church, school activities, large family gatherings, etc which have the same impact as in earlier years. Today, most people’s social life is primarily on their cell phones and internet. This, by itself, tends to limit tolerance for diversity or dependence on facts for our widely differing opinions on so many matters. People with ‘gut feelings’ or irrational emotions can find others with the same ‘gut feelings’ or irrational emotions, and with both as the ‘experts’ proceed to become more and more convinced their feelings are facts, the real reality, and anything else is ‘fake news’. President Trump does this all the time, goes with his gut feelings about any topic, and pays no attention to those who spend their lives professionally studying the matters at hand. He dismisses any attempt at rational discussion of proven facts essentially by giving anyone who attempts such discussion a derogatory nickname which in his mind, settles the question. There is, for example, no climate change taking place because he sees with his own eyes that sometimes the weather is hot, sometimes it is cold, and so on and weather is always changing so that is what weather does, and climate change is fake news. He claims the largest inauguration crowd ever in American history because he was there and saw with his own eyes that people were everywhere. This kind of mindset is gaining momentum and making rational discussion impossible. Science is out, feelings are in. Science is fake news, feelings become facts.
This leads us to the question, “exactly what is the current mental health status of American citizens? Of course it varies, but there are some dangerous trends which are quite troubling. Emotional stress seems to be climbing to crisis levels. One of the reasons I gravitate to increased degrees of hermit hood is because it is depressing to be drawn into the lives of so many who are driven more and more by frustration, depression, and helplessness. Suicide rates in the United States are the highest since World War II. Among our military personnel suicide kills more of our soldiers in Afghanistan than death in battle. Wow. In 2017, 47,000 people died from suicide and there were 1. 4 million suicide attempts. From 2000-2006 the suicide rate increased by 1% each year. From 2006-2016 the suicide rate increased by 2% each year. In other words it doubled. We know that mental health problems reveal themselves via suicides, depression, crippling anxiety, substance abuse, schizophrenia, and senseless acts of terrorism. All of these mental states are on a significant rise on a per capita basis. The brilliant response so far by government is to allow everyone to be armed so as to protect themselves from their fellow citizens. Some states have even gone so far as to say ‘if you feel threatened by someone else, you can stand your ground and shoot them.” And then there is this: Suicide is the second leading cause of death by 10-34 year old young people. Not good. The tendency today is to put troubled, but most often sane people in jail and leave those with clinical mental conditions out loose in the community because the cost of treating them in controlled environments is too much.
A few countries have made the well-being of their citizens a primary goal. New Zealand, for example, spends 15 times more than our government spends via its Substance Abuse and mental Health Services Administration. England recently decided they are going to start measuring people’s well being. Earlier in this treatise I mentioned that we need to improve the percentage of our workers who earn a living wage before we can expect further progress with civil rights. But we need to remember that materialism centered around the feeling that ‘enough is never enough’ can end up leaving 90% of a nation’s wealth in the hands of 2-5% of the citizens and where 3 people can own more of a nation’s wealth than the bottom 50% of it’s citizens.
The list so far is long and highly negative on the well-being of the U.S. as a nation. We have mentioned massive species extinction underway due to human activities, climate change bearing down on us due to human activities, human overpopulation due to human activities, sinking/stagnant wages for over half the American population, 2-5% of citizens now owning 90% of our nation’s wealth, a huge expenditure on military adventures despite not really having won any wars (unless killing more citizens of other nations than any country is some sort of win), an exponential rise in domestic terrorism, an exponential growth in rural, urban and soon suburban unsafe deplorable economic ghettos, a doubling of the suicide rate—especially for young people, a failure to put in realistic regulations of capitalism, a failure to put limits on capitalistic greed, and a national debt exponentially soaring out of sight. Based on the cost of our foreign ‘empire’, the absurd concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich domestically, and lack of security for workers on many jobs (haven’t mentioned that but now have)—-we find ourselves having met the three historical reasons why empires implode.
But in addition to all the above, our nation is fast splitting into various groups which genuinely hate each other. Maybe this hate is not yet at the level of our President, but it may get there. About half (this is a guess) of our citizens genuinely try to practice the Golden Rule, have respect and appreciation for diversity, indicated by their support for all groups to have the same civil rights. Yet the other half currently circle the wagons around their own particular group, whether it be economics, race, religion, blind national patriotism, sexual preferences, and so on in nature. What is interesting here is that when Obama first ran for office diverse groups energetically supported him because they all realized he cared about them/their group. Then, over time, they began to realize he was helping certain groups of citizens who they personally opposed. They then began to dislike him, expressly because he tended to genuinely like all diverse groups—he just would not make life more difficult for the poor, certain races, certain religious groups, gays, the wealthy, or endorse the attempt by any group to make life more miserable for certain other groups. Giving their group a fair deal was not enough to please some, he had to make life more miserable for certain other groups to keep their approval. Obama did fail to curtail the accumulation of wealth into the hands of the 2-5% ers, but to be fair that requires both houses of Congress to be democrats to a veto proof degree.
The last brings up another dire situation. Unless both houses of Congress are of the same party as the President with 2/3 majority, nothing substantial can be passed. Congress has become almost useless, unless the ability to pass nothing is considered an accomplishment. Things change over time and without meeting these changes with better policies, bed things happen to those who cannot change with the times.
How empathetic, helpful, co-operative, and friendly various groups in our multi ethnic/religious/economic/etc are with each other depends on the extent to which citizens follow the Golden Rule as their ethical behavior. It seems like half the country right now at least attempts to follow the Golden rule and the other half are genuinely at war with, and intensely dislike certain other groups. While Trump is not the cause of the intolerance, he has made it easier for hate to be acted out. Unfortunately, violence begets violence. There probably is no escaping another civil war at this point. I suppose if somehow most of our citizens had good schools, good health care, good teachers, a safe formative environment, good opportunities for employment at living wages, etc. then the Golden Rule could be easier to grow in practice. Our country now consists of three large ethnic groups—whites, blacks, hispanics, and none of these group have a clear majority. All three groups, and indeed most all groups everywhere across the globe now have terrorism as an effective weapon to cause most any society to implode. Groups either become tolerant and actually each group helps other groups solve their problems, or all groups are going to find themselves in a civil war not with uniformed soldiers winning battles on a battlefield, but enraged bands of this or that group waging neighborhood terrorism everywhere. Modern gadgets make it possible for controlled roving riots—the sort of thing perfected in the Middle East, thanks to our endless invasions—and could even be more effective in our society in which more and more people are becoming well armed with assault weapons. It is simply legal insanity.
We would do well to understand that throughout history, when a society implodes on itself, the have-not’s alway win over the have’s. It is very simple, the have’s try to protect their possessions, while the have-not’s—with little or nothing to protect—are free to roam about creating terrorism in roving waves. The police and troops cannot be everywhere at once. They would be forced to establish ‘green areas’ within our country to keep themselves safe, and everyone else would be on the front line of attack by the angered masses.
The problems are easy enough to identify, Naturally the question is whether these problems can be solved and an implosion of human societies globally and in this country be avoided. Only the big picture on evolutionary time, from a global perspective, can begin to give us any clear concept of our current wellbeing in the United States providing we realize that no one country can possible avert the global disasters bearing down on our whole planet. The real human hurdles which block solving our problems are time, greed, intolerance, lack of willingness by the majority to sacrifice for the good of the entire human society, ignorance/the complexity of these global problems beyond the reach of most humans to comprehend, religious/racial/political/cultural/national patriotism, poor living environments, and a declining percentage of people willing to accept the Golden Rule as the driving ethical force for their behavior. We can no longer fake it regarding the Golden Rule and simply use faith in any inherited religious scripture as the camouflage for ethical behavior. That game is up as is misplaced patriotism.
Without responsible human reproduction globally, there is no hope. Overpopulation brings with it dire consequences. Period. There are no exceptions for any species. The only legitimate patriotism is patriotism for the entire human species. All other patriotic impulses are self destructive, especially at this point in human history. The only good government is one which brings about the greatest contentment for the greatest number of people. Without the willingness of citizens everywhere to pay for all the things they want government to do instead of borrowing money to do these things— national debts doom economies. Until workers working a full time job earn a livable wage, ghettoes will continue to become more and more deplorable. The purpose of invented machines is to do the work humans before these machines had to do by human labor. The full time work week at this point in time should be 30 hrs/wk in order to reach full employment. Full employment at livable wages means welfare costs would be minimal. With such full employment at livable wages the amount of tax money going to the government would rise astronomically as the 43 percent of adults in this country now earning so little money they are not eligible to pay taxes, would now be paying taxes. With everyone earning livable wages, they would have money to spend and this spending would stimulate the economy. With global full employment at livable wages there would be no immigration problem. If any nation allows a majority to destroy the homes and make resident minority groups (religious, racial, cultural or political) flee from a country, that country would need to be punished by all other nations via trade restrictions, etc. There is no way to stop desperate people, unable to live in their own country, from finding ways to get into other countries as illegal immigrants. In fact, statistics are of little use. If someone successfully gets into a country illegally how could that person be included in any statistics about how many are getting in? Building a wall is simply moronic. In this country, for example. one of the largest entry points is visitors who just never return home. Most illegal immigrants pay others who have the means to smuggle them in. These means are as variable as ways to smuggle in marijuana, and we all know how totally unsuccessful that was. Citizen cards of some modern day form are the best defense, but most people don’t want to have so much personal data registered with the government. One way to protect worker salaries is to make it illegal for any goods produced elsewhere by non livable wages (based on pt of origin) to be sold in our country. We should not be allowed to buy things made by ‘slave’ labor. Period. If we need do with less, so be it. Maybe we don’t really need a huge TV in every room in the house, or a house the size of a small castle. Wealth is fine, up to a point, and that point is when the greed of a few makes living comfortable impossible for the lowest on the economic ladder. No government responsible for all its citizens can tolerate this.
No more military invasions of any sort should be permitted without our citizens voting to engage in such activity, and if they do vote to invade, then the total costs must be paid at the time via an increase in taxes to cover the costs. Domestic terrorism can only be limited by increasing the percentage of people living contented lives which involves livable wages again. Ghettoes and the medical damage inflicted on young people living in these ghettoes will only shrink in size and become more safe and livable when all children (and adults too) have good schools, good teachers, good health care, opportunities for employment at livable wages, and those children stuck in poor family situations receive intervention by the government to protect these children. When more citizens earn livable wages, have good health, and live in safe environments, only then will drug abuse go down, especially heroin use. Once we stop putting people in jail for drug abuse or selling drugs, this frees up an astonishing $30,000/yr/prisoner to provide medical facilities to treat drug abuse. Then maybe our country, with 5% of the world’s population will end up with only 5% of the world’s prisoners in jail compared to the current 25%. To ensure workers stay with livable wages once this is established, then these wages rise each year with the cost of living, just like social security does. And taxes should rise each year according to the cost of living too. Get the politicians out of this stuff as much as possible.
Clearly there is little indication that much of the above has any realistic chance of happening any time soon. Human Time is not on our side. So implosion is a reasonable prediction for the short term.
The only positive point I can dredge up here is that the future is very difficult to predict. So, of course all this above could be wrong, or at least be solvable in peaceful ways. What can be far more predictable is that the evolutionary process, no matter how dire a correction required, has always, for millions of years, sometimes after set-backs which last thousands or millions of years, ends up bouncing back with more complexity and an improved planet. Thus, all is well that end’s well, and in the mean time (evolutionary time) millions of the less fortunate, as always is the case, will suffer the consequences. Whether we like it or not, none of us individually are being protected by God (however we envision God) and it is the evolutionary process created by God which will determine the future via those laws which govern the process. We humans do have the ability, via the universal ethical principle of the Golden Rule, to make life more contented for a far greater percentage of human beings, especially the less fortunate. So far, as a species, we don’t have a very good track record here. It is what it is, that’s that, there you are, so be it, that’s life. No one gets out of this world alive.
But in the last analysis Evolutionary Time is probably right on schedule to continue its ever upward spiral. Great things, beyond our comprehension, lie ahead in the grand scheme of things.
Addendum:
If you got this far take a selfie and try to recreate the expression on your face when you saw the word ‘addendum’. Smile.
This musing may have created the notion that contentment is solely related to a livable wage. That, not surprisingly, is not true. Studies have shown that wage has a strong relationship to contentment up to around $70,000 and then it fades away as to any strong relationship. Probably best to look at living wage as a starting point for contentment. Below I will attempt via common perceptions or sayings to complete the picture. That is: a most successful society’s result in maximizing contentment for the greatest number of citizens when most of the citizens practice the following in their personal lives:
“Violence begets violence” is true for nations as well as individuals
“Enough is as good as a feast” Those who cannot accept this in their personal lives end up like Trump, a highly discontented soul every waking minute of the day, and night.
The Golden Rule—even with a livable wage, contentment depends on following the Golden Rule. Mario Cuomo reflected on this when he said “All around us we have seen success on this world’s terms become ultimate and desperate failures. Teenagers and college students, raised in affluent surroundings and given all the material comforts our society can offer, commit suicide. Entertainers and sports figures achieve fame and wealth but find the world empty and dull without the solace of stimulation drugs. Men and women rise to the top of their professions after years and years of struggling. But despite their apparent success, they are driven nearly mad by a frantic search for diversions—new mates, games, new experiences—anything to fill the diminishing interval between their existence and eternity—the way to serve ourself is to serve others; and that Aristotle was right, back then, when he said the only way to assure yourself happiness is to learn to give happiness.” Serving others can involve giving the less fortunate our time, direct face to face efforts, setting a good example for others, or giving some of our earned money to the less fortunate.
Only earned money carries with it any assurance of contentment. Inheritance is not earned money —the receiver understands that, thus they really can’t fool themselves nor others. Governments make a big mistake when they allow large amounts of money to be passed on to a genetic cabal. Excess wealth of any degree should be pumped back into the society from which it came, so others have a more level field toward achieving their own success for some wealth. “I would as soon leave my son a curse as the almighty dollar” (Andrew Carnegie). People who, for one reason or another, are given so much material advantages in life (called spoiled brats) are rarely happy campers. They seldom ever learn how to acquire much of anything for themselves in their lives. My dad told myself and my brother that “after 18yrs of age you are on your own”. In my case, it was the best gift he could have given me. Whatever modest achievements I garnered in life were made possible by that realization.
“Love when you are ready, not when you are lonely.”
Never miss a chance to eat well or stay physically fit. Good health is directly related to these two aspects of life.
“Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.” (Lincoln)
Our ability to achieve our own highest level of contentment is directly related to how well we can learn to tolerate and appreciate the diversity of human nature/potentials. To the extent we can contribute to the achievement efforts of others, whether in the role of parents, teachers, bosses, friends, or far distant individuals in need of help—all of this will determine the level of contentment we ourselves ever achieve. Illogical rigidity, often expressed via ‘my way or the highway’ is to stunt the growth of our own potential and that of those we are in a position to serve. We need individually, and collectively, to encourage every young person at the end of their formative years, to reexamine all of that which they have been taught during their formative years, let it tumble around in their own mind, extract misguided prejudices, and reach their own conclusions of how best to become a productive and valued citizen of their society. The best way to teach others is by example, never by trying to force feed our own particular lifestyle, prejudices, and values down other people’s throats, whether they be our own kids, students, workers, neighbors, or distant nations. Of course there are limits—values and individual actions which take advantage of others, or harm the welfare of others are crimes which need to be punished. Individual freedom has boundaries. Misguided overprotection leaves our victims fearful and distrustful of others and those different from themselves—prime candidates to become members of a mentality which dictates ‘circle the wagons and defend ourselves from ‘heathens’ who invariably are different from the mirror image of our own selves’.
My personal belief is that God’s evolutionary process, via the rules established to run the process, will, in evolutionary time, sort all things out in such a manner that progress in all of the above areas will be worked out. Short term things look bleak, with many individual victims, but long term the process which has gotten things to the present status, will continue to move in a forward direction, albeit with the usual necessary corrections. We all can derive some personal satisfaction that once dead, we will never again suffer stresses of any kind. If absence of stress is the definition of peace then permanent peace of mind will come to all of us. Myself, always a gentleman (smile), will be pleased to allow others go first until the planet is empty, then I will follow and close the door, with some last words: “To all a good night”.
Soon I will have no enemies at all. When asked how I managed that my reply will be simple: “I outlived the bastards”.
