Social media can be entertaining. It has largely become a place to exchange videos of cute animals and proudly stupid people who have nothing to do with your “friends” who furthered the cause of the originator in search of “views” (attention?). It’s a great way to keep track of the lives of those you give any degree of a damn about, but don’t get to keep in touch with regularly. I guess that was its original intent? It has become a source of zombification too. I call the people who walk down the street or through the train station with their eyes glued to the “phone” screen on a collision course with another cyber zombie “drifters”. They just drift this way and that with no clue or regard for who and what is around them. So does social media remove people from the world around them in this way? Or does it connect them more deeply and immediately with the world not around them? Or both? Ah, the great debate. Oh, and I say “phone” parenthetically because, let’s face it, these are hand computers, not phones. I really like my hand computer with all its abilities and functions (and hope I figure out how to use it to its fullest before it is obsolete – not likely). As a phone, I miss my good old flip-phone. But I digress from my original digression about social media users. Many of them become addicted “content” creators in addition to viewers. Do I need to know what you had for breakfast, what mood you’re in and what you’re wearing (revealed in your hourly “selfie”) in addition to stressing over whether you’ll deem me unworthy of being your “friend” if I fail to share your post or respond to your quippy little game question with one word in the allotted time? And then there are the ones who post their emotion-driven mini-philosophies (or borrow some unknown authors with a colorful background and share it). Yeah, this is the point that gets me back to the original point from which I digressed from a digression from. (Sorry, I digress often.)…
I don’t find my daily activities or my thoughts on the world to be all that important and don’t wish to clutter anyone’s facebook wall (is that what it’s called) with such stuff. If anyone finds me that interesting, let me know so I can have you admitted to… I mean, thank you for caring. While I don’t want to force my ramblings on anyone, I do believe it’s healthy to get stuff out of your consciousness and into words on a page. I highly encourage it. I just, personally, don’t really need anyone to read it if they don’t want to. And so I’ll vent in the comfort of this little niche nestled somewhere on a cyber dust spec in cyberspace. It’s sort of like a diary. People keep them and write in them dutifully, but are horrified at the thought of someone reading it.
Some of these were constructed with the idea that they could be the basis of a blog, if anyone does that anymore. Some of the subject matter could become too quickly antiquated and irrelevant for that kind of conversion though. It will probably remain a one-sided ranting and if anyone chooses to read this (maybe as an extended profile page?), enter at your own risk.
Were it to be presented as a blog and welcoming to interaction and dialogue…
GROUND RULES
“With utmost respect for all who engage, accept that the concepts are bigger than any one or all who do engage. Ideas belong to all beyond the area or time in which the individual resides. Check your ego at the start. If flaws of human nature taint your offerings (as they probably will at one time or another), be open to the possibility and to others honest suggestions of its existence with a spirit of solid introspection and self-awareness. Be poised to recognize that knee-jerk, defensive reaction. It is the ego needing to be checked. I personally find the ability to pull this one off (recognition of it even more than admission of it) very admirable and indispensible. Every one of us has some small or large bit of value to offer the universal experience in hopeful betterment and constructive evolution of the dialogue and general growth thereafter, and this can most effectively be achieved with the purest of honesty.”
“Don’t steer off the course. A variety of forces may compel you to enter into an alternative topic of conversation. There is, in all fairness to the dialogue, an obligation to establish a legitimate connection between the topic being introduced and the currently respected topic. This new information must always shed light on some aspect of the conversation in support of or criticism of an accepted element of the dialogue or a previously not introduced concept that is presented to assist in defining or increasing focus on the respected topic.”
“Don’t assume you know the speaker beyond what they have voluntarily proposed. Be careful of stereotyping and endowing characteristics to a mindset or position based on pre-established perceptions that you may bring (aware or unaware) to the conversation.”
“Don’t get personal. Ad hominem is a blight to the dialogue. It shrinks the scope of the conversation to an insignificant size. This is true regardless of the accuracy of the assessment of the assessed conversationalist. Stick with the ideas and honestly establishing or diminishing their legitimacy and value to the whole.”
YIKES,THE CONTROL CRAZE!!
Like many things, it’s easy to see intelligence as both a blessing and a curse. The greater our intelligence, the more torturous is the consideration of those things we cannot fully comprehend. Humans just have to know. At its most primal explanation, it is probably the instinct for survival which demands knowledge of one’s environment. Such “knowledge” is fabricated where nothing concrete is available so to complete the process as best as the intellect can upon demand. But it is also the unwavering and obligatory course that life has been propelled onto from the start - the driving forces of growth and propagation.
Religion encapsulates the universe into understandable human-based stories and files every remaining question and unexplainable under the category of “God’s will or God’s plan”. That contains all the unknown and prevents it from being unleashed to form a surrounding and unsettling chaos. It also bolsters the sense of safety in the acceptance that what is not personally under control is, nonetheless, under the control of a benign master who is not my enemy so long as I continue to affirm my allegiance. Many profess that the origin of and motive behind religion are the need for those in power to exert control over the controlled by providing a clear set of guidelines for behavior, adherence to ensured by the fear of punishment of an almighty. The controller, thus, acts as the necessary liaison between the masses and the almighty to be always respected, feared and catered to. This is certainly a logical theory, but I don’t at this time have the research of ancient societies that would support it. Regardless of origin, my consideration involves fueling of such belief out of a need inherent on an individual and social level. Control of one’s intellect, not control by the state – but a need for control just the same.
Medicine by its broadest stretch of definition continues to provide a constant flow of “discoveries” of answers, or even just the hope of a strong possibilities, and mini-controls over this ailment or that flaw or discomfort. Dietary supplements, exercise routines, emotional and worldview “choices”, and all other daily practices are offered as prescriptions which purport to prevent or alleviate some undesired development. How many gold-paved have we been alerted to that suggested (to someone whose observation is blindly accepted as with merit) could well lead to the cure for cancer? It is the suggestion that by choice and action we can seize with inescapable grasp our own fates, like an elusive and slippery fish in the water. The likelihood that misfortunes (and even fortunes) are the outcome (no, that suggests it is the end result of things singularly focused) of countless, incalculable and unfathomable factors is not acceptable. That acceptance would encourage only hopelessness and inaction which defy the nature of life. As for an identified condition being an outcome, or result – any such thing is just a drop in the flowing river of existence. The drop doesn’t cease to exist, but it is no longer a drop once it becomes part of the river. It is unidentifiable. (Digression alert!)
How about relationships? Hmmm, relationships. I guess this is more about expectations and illusions than it is about the imposition of “control” over another by one of the participants with an unhealthy need to exert power. Once one is committed to any kind of relationship, there is an implied set of spoken and/or unspoken elements to the agreement. When these implications vary in the minds of the participants, both in definition and very existence, this can be its own world of chaos. But the desire for solid partnership, romantic bliss and the security of knowing that someone is “with you” in every respect may be a breeding ground for less than honest assumptions and characterizations of a situation. All that to ensure a sense of control with which one can protect that painted picture of perfection. One’s reality with respect to the relationship may differ from the other’s, but the investment in that reality must be protected. Taking control of it will ensure that is maintained – even if it is yet another illusion. (Mind you, this is not about the one who knowingly is dishonest in order to derive personal gain from the relationship. I’m talking honest players here. In some ways that’s a scarier scenario – the power of believing one’s own fantasy at the expense of both.)
Here I’m thinking, again, of all the angry and accusatory speech fired off at those who are perceived as prescribing in full to some distasteful ideology based on one comment regarding one issue or even one event. How does the loose-tongued attacker know with absolute certainty every detail of an event they weren’t involved in? More amazing, how do they know every aspect of the thought process and unspoken motives of all parties involved, whom they have never even met? I’m not hesitant to say I couldn’t possibly make confident conclusions from afar based on sound and sight blips. (Consider any example of any “first look” crime reporting – especially involving a cop or cops. Those will work just fine.) What “facts” are revealed over time on a case-by-case basis or irrelevant to my point here. Just take note of the conviction and emotion with which a position is resolutely dug into, it seems, impulsively. Are people so averted from any exploration of the event or the issue that they grab their weapons in defense of the control (“I know what’s going on here!”) and against the chaos (“what insight and information might others have to contribute to the understanding of this chaotic event in human experience?”). I find this to be an embarrassing and disgusting weakness in intellectual practice that is, unfortunately, giving strength the time and consideration it is allowed. The childish tantrums keep getting the toy to appease them (control) and no one is any the better for it.
Nothing reflects the control craze more than the practice of labeling. Once labeled, a thing is contained in concise definition and prevented to joining the chaos. This simplification subjugates it to the labeler. Sadly, that pride and fear of exploring the chaos as a collective (or individual) intellect can only stunt our growth. Baby steps, maybe? Maybe the control craze is just a necessary safeguard for a cautious stroll along the path of discovery and growth. Or maybe pride is an ugly by-product of intelligence, and it won’t allow us to acknowledge the uncontrollable chaos of non-comprehension.
I HATE YOU BECAUSE YOU’RE A HATER (WHOEVER YOU ARE)!!!
Social media, blogs and other commentaries are rife with what seem to be knee-jerk, fast-flung accusations. I would think such things as “hate” and “racist”, among others, are universally considered to be pretty serious allegations. But with the countless examples of these impulsive, snap-back accusations being made by strangers against strangers in these online (or offline) “debates” and “discussions”, I am left to wonder what deliberation these accusers put into their commentaries leading up to the judgments and declarations made.
I saw a Facebook post which displayed the photograph of a starving child, laying on the street in the fetal position. The caption beneath read: “A SOCIALIST sees this and thinks ‘nobody should live like that.’ A CAPITALIST sees the same thing and says ‘some people deserve this.’” (I’m guessing the originator would align themselves with a socialist philosophy.) Wow. How casually delivered was this summary of damning accusation. Incidentally, this was re-posted by an intelligent and proudly ultra-liberal FB friend which just confirms for me how susceptible we all are to the seduction of some form of poisonous and divisive propaganda.
This was a facebook friend’s response to a headline which read: “Virginia shooting: House majority whip shot at congressional baseball practice” (yeah, some angry nut opened fire on Congressman at an off-duty baseball event.) Response: “Hate to be the one to say it, but maybe this will help motivate ALL of our elected officials to vote with the average American’s best interest instead of their own pockets’. Can you be scared into moral virtue?” So, here we have justification of attempted murder because policies espoused by the victim were declared their own form of selfish, immoral and heinous attack. (No, I never “unfriend” someone who posts something disagreeable or unsettling. I like to see everyone’s thoughts and this particular person is bright, caring, thoughtful and interested – which is the more important aspect of all this. It is the casual and sane acceptance of hate against hate.)
Considering the unequivocal wording and emotion I read into these accusations, I find myself coming to one or both of two choices with regard to the commenter. The first is that they have successfully been sold and indoctrinated into the labeling, communal acceptance and assumed and unquestioned origin processes of legitimization with respect to a definition of another. (Thankfully, this poison hasn’t accomplished survival of time yet, I think.) Based on comments of a red-flag nature, their conditioning is such that they believe they complete the entire profile of the commenter in an instant and place them neatly onto the “red” team (the others) or the “blue” team (my team). As loyal members, they engage the enemy with full emotion and chest-pumping. The second is that the nature of the crimes alleged (hatred, racism, etc.) is not so serious to the accuser after all. One wonders then how easily it would be for this accuser to engage in such practices or emotions, being not all that heavy or dangerous an item to wield anyway. What is relevant to this commenter is not the crime of virtue but who it is committed against. If it’s against my team, how dare you. If it’s against your team, it’s acceptable because your labeled kind deserves it.
TEAM COLORS – THE MOST PREVALENT SPORTS METAPHOR IN PRACTICE
Sports competition is satisfyingly simple, unambiguous and with definitive ending. One team wins, the other loses. Period. There is no value placed on the merits of one team’s performance as compared to that of the opponent. There is no opinion of matter regarding those two performances or choice as to which appealed more to the subjective observer. There are no degrees of victory or loss. The intended result upon beginning is inevitably the result taken away in the end. One team is the winner and the other team is the loser – zero/sum.
If any motivation exists for an observer to observe, it is the desire that your team is the complete winner and the other team is the complete loser. This is that necessity for exercising our competitive, survivalist nature in a world which might often present challenges to our very existence in a metaphysical way, without actual loss or infliction of damage to other seeking what is wanted but can’t be shared.
This must have become such an obsession among humans that we seem poised for combat in the face and any and all engagement with others in which communal sharing is not the pre-determined goal (be it love, laughter, a large meal or what have you).
This rigid structuring of those engaged in the team coloring necessitates the utilizing of “packaging” practices. The other (red team) must, by definition, embody everything which is in direct opposition to me and mine (blue team) achieving the goal we are conditioned to seek. That goal is the establishment of our team, embodied by a very certain set of concepts and labeling, upon the victor’s throne while the other team wholly does not, and cannot, occupy it. The Blue Team must be the BLUE team and the Red Team must be the RED team. Any allowance which might invite liquefying of those solid identities would nullify the purity and definition of the competition and the engagement cannot be realized.
This practice, of course, reflects that powerful control craze. The basic structure of the team colors in competition is easy to grasp and operate within. No dangerous uncertainties. There is no exploration of Purple, or other shades of colors, on the field of competition. This does not move us toward the comfortable end zone we are obsessed with from the outset. Right is right and wrong is wrong. (Is pride one’s conviction that he/she actually has this control?)
Now let’s consider the “packaging” process that goes on.
Labels have already been created for the Red Team’s players. We simply need to wrap them each quickly and neatly in those labels, like uniforms, so that we know how to treat them henceforth. And we do effortlessly and even unconsciously once it is recognized at the slightest hint that one encountered is of the other team. The package is the set of characteristics we apply to the Blue Team player in defining him or her. (Mind you that there are no specifics here assigned to Red or Blue characteristics and they are purposely used interchangeably when referring to this side or that side. The point is that they represent two clearly and completely defined types and an observer is conditioned to prejudge another to exist within those definitions.)
Let’s say a stranger on social media makes this simple comment: “Corporate greed dictates government policy and this will continue to keep down the poor and make their lives unlivable without that government’s primary focus becoming a concern for the well-being of the people over the selfish interests of the wealthy.”
We know absolutely nothing about the person making this statement but those absolutely subscribed to the rigid team colors view of the world might say something like: “Why don’t you just sit take your food stamps and welfare check that we paid for and sit home with your 8 kids from 9 different fathers and watch your politically correct TV shows on the cable that the government also paid for while the rest of us work, you love Hillary-loving cop hater!” (a whole lot to glean from a simple statement, but I have often seen it done with conviction and without hesitation.)
Or how about… “Border security is the first priority of the executive branch of federal government and the complete ignorance of immigration law and procedure and inability to monitor who enters the country is irresponsible and dangerous to the American citizenry.”
An assumptive response to this focused proposal is usually along the lines of: “You are a Trump-loving, Confederate-flag waving, white power racist who fears Muslims and probably cheers when cops kill another innocent black motorist! Go back to your trailer and stop hating Mexicans who do more for this country than you do!”
This commenter has just laid out a pretty complete profile of the Blue Team player based on one particular comment about one specific issue. But isn’t the package just an uncontrollable tangle of assumptions that no one has time for the trouble of untangling? Just paste the labels over that knotty glob of strings and call it all a package. Call it the Blue Team. Call it the others.
The support of your Red Team is strengthening, affirming and stabilizing and makes facing and attacking the Blue Team so much more sensible. If the other is this, he/she must also be that, so and such. It is not necessary to confirm those assumptions. They are pre-confirmed by our identification of them as the Blue Team – and we know exactly what the Blue Team is and what it seeks. We have already successfully been conditioned to accept the logic that one characteristic is to be associated with and related to others. It is simply a matter of packaging that characteristic, once displayed, with the others under the established larger label. They are all, after all, inherent in the type of person who is the Blue Team player.
Do you ever find yourself running to the sidelines for support when you realize you have found yourself in the middle of a field of competition with statements, both agreeable and not, whizzing around your head from every direction? Do you feel comfortable with the Red Team quickly adopted and that you know the players on that team whom you have never met?
IT’S YIN AND YANG, YOU YING-YANGS!
I remember hearing someone try to clarify Yin and Yang with the statement, “in all good there is evil and in all evil there is good.” Huh? Any moralist or religious practitioner worth his or her salt should have a problem with that statement, as an understanding of the terms “good” and “evil” should share some basics across all borders. Good is the order. Whether this order be planned and dictated by a supreme being or the logical and natural harmonious structure which, uninhibited, flows as it will. Evil is the collective inhibitors. It is that which acts to thwart, circumvent or destroy the order. These are not two equally-matched teams who go head-to-head for dominance. Evil is defined by good because it is that which is anti-good. Light and darkness are probably the best metaphors commonly used, but within the model of vision. Light shows us the order. Darkness is not something that opposes light; it is nothing, the absence or removal of light. If we imagine a battle between two forces, good and evil, and evil “won” this conflict, the world would not be an “evil” place, it would not be at all. So, back to Yin and Yang, there is no evil in good and no good in evil. Just stop that. (Evil is a product of human choice but I’ll probably ramble about that some other time.)
Think complements, not opposites. Yin and Yang are complements. This is really an awesome and juicier concept to ponder. There is no more worthwhile example than woman and man as human. Woman is Yin; Man is Yang; together they compose the complete and perfect circle. These are two distinct components, each with naturally-endowed over-sufficiencies and under-sufficiencies (preferable to strengths and weaknesses) which mesh to complete humanity. Ahhhh, isn’t that smoochy nice? “You complete me.” Well, yeah, I guess it sort of is. If humans look at the male-female relationship as an awkward clashing of opposite sexes that nature compels us to endeavor to deal with (or, more and more, wave off and decide is unnecessary) we’ll never understand, appreciate and profit from those relationships.
“Opposites attract.” No. Opposites oppose. See that? Complements attract. This is an integral force of nature that keeps the flow going. The order. Good.
TALKIN’ ‘BOUT MY G-G-G-GENERATION
The useless and illusionary concept of “generation” appears to have completed the process of legitimization. I am reading a published and archived document which lists identified generations by their universally recognized names. These are rigidly defined by the span of years which, it has been decided, they encompass. It reads like this:
-Gen Z, iGen or Centennials: Born 1996 and later
-Millennials or Gen Y: Born 1977 to 1995
-Generation X: Born 1965 to 1976
-Baby Boomers: Born 1946 to 1964
-Traditionalists or Silent Generation: Born 1945 and before
Is creating this quantifiable location within which to place ourselves and everyone else part of the control craze search for definition of identity? Are we uncomfortably lost without these affiliations? Does it offer us positive characteristics we are allowed to embrace as members and negative ones we can ascribe to others as mirrored by the generation types designed by the authorities?
Whatever the motives or perceived usefulness, this stratification of human experience into types is clearly absurd. Did the experience set awaiting and personality type of a baby born on January 1, 1965 abruptly and dramatically change from the baby born the day before? Of course not. The world changes moment by moment in a fluid and evolving way. A twenty-year span beginning at 12:00 a.m. on January 1, 1965 is 1 minute different from the twenty-year span beginning at 12:01 a.m. on that date, and so on. This is not to mention all the environmental, cultural, demographic, etc. differences separating any one person from any other.
We can choose to pretend that the onset of certain technologies, political movements, musical and clothing styles and youthful lifestyles and attitudes happen in clean and momentary sparks (ignorant of their evolutions) and that there is roughly a cohabitations of these on a timeline from a thousand foot view. We can further choose these as markers for a certain era. We can further imagine that a specific collection of people within a certain age group which correlates with these markers from that same thousand-foot view form some unit we can call a “generation”, but what’s the point?
If one is sold this same nonsense and chooses to wear the characteristic set accompanying the prescribed generation, how might it affect that individual’s self-image? Is generation characterization selling the individual short? These manufactured and agreed upon concepts may make some conversations about history or culture flow more smoothly, but let’s admit that there is no such thing as a generation in the broad reality. This term might only be identifiable on a family tree as laid out on paper. But the bigger the family, the more blurred this layering becomes until obscurity washes it away completely.
THE FLAME METAPHOR AND LIMITED RESOURCES (?)
Someone suggested to me a theory regarding love. Not the relationship-based love, like a parent for a child, but that love that inexplicably and unexpectedly draws one human in that visceral way. This is a thing that burns like the metaphorical flame, maybe gaining and losing intensity. Before the spark it didn’t exist and once extinguished it is gone forever. Any fire needs a spark to ignite and fuel to continue. The theory suggests that each of us may have a limitation to the amount of passion of experience each is capable of within a respective lifetime, even if the spark itself is something we do not control or initiate.
What if Victoria (sounds like a good name for a paperback romance character), for instance, happens upon a spark and enters such a relationship. A combination of Victoria’s choices; events and circumstances which come to frame the relationship; and the intensity of the partner’s engagement make it such that this fire is steady and conservative – (good for slow boiling a small pot of water but not some pagan dance ritual involving live sacrifices or anything). This relationship runs its course, fizzles out and Victoria moves along without any serious burns or heat exhaustion and lots of wood left in her shed. Our protagonist could continue through a long lifetime settling down to many such fires if she is never so compelled to pile on the logs or partnered with a firemate who is, likewise, unwilling (or unable) to lump the wood on there.
(Suddenly considering the sad chapter for this metaphor where one partner simply stops putting fuel on the fire, takes his or her marshmallows and leaves while the other obsesses over the flame and continues wasting his or her wood lonely and stubbornly feeding a fire that no one else is observing or using or even noticing. But that’s a bleak digression from the theory… let’s get back to the marshmallows…)
Then there’s Lance (c’mon, that’s a paperback romance name). Bang! Spark! Pile on the wood. An inferno seen for miles and seemingly outrunning the reaches of time. But, alas, this relationship after years meets with disaster and collapse. Lance is devastated and his world, redefined by the relationship so long ago, is in disarray. What to do, Lance? Will he, can he regroup and someday rekindle such a blaze?
Let’s not kill the magic of the metaphor with stiff, plastic mathematics but… X logs burning for Y amount of time = Z passion of experience. If we consider that (Y) time-related factors (commitment of unreclaimable time out of one’s; comfort of familiarity; etc.) will have an accumulation amount equal in passion experience to some accumulation amount (X) of contributed fuel (trust; exposure and vulnerability; effort to know the other; effort to help the other; etc.), then X and Y are equal in value (although different factors) for the sake of the formula; therefore 2X logs burning for Y amount of time = 2Z passion of experience.
Although each person’s capability for passion of experience may vary, it is, following this theory, possible that a person’s history of passion may reach a point at which engagement in response to a spark (X and Y or effort and time) may fail to provide an already spent passion of experience.
If Victoria and Lance choose, of course, they can get more fuel and have at it some more. Time and effort are yours to give by choice. But consider the two-way nature of the formula. If Z becomes zero, this must effect the other side in reverse. In this way, X (effort) is effectively worth zero even though Y (time) will continue accumulating for as long as Victoria or Lance allows. The effort is forced, obligatory and uninspired. This is the nature of answering a need for basic companionship without passion.
But maybe this theory and this formula are flawed and overly simplistic (not to mention a grim reality, if a reality in fact). Maybe the applicable formula is one in which the increase in X and Y amounts actually increase the amount of Z potential. Sort of the way good lifestyle can increase the natural lifespan (or so it’s said). Maybe this intensely positive relationship experience can fundamentally alter the person so engaged. (Yikes, could the opposite of this be true then?)
It could be that a speed factor is unaccounted for in the formula. Maybe the passion of experience potential isn’t decreased but the ability to get the “passion ball” rolling off the line decreases with every launch. This could simply be a process with slows with age like most others. Can experience bore us of experience. Is the enthusiasm for relationships more easily prompted by the freshness and illusions of youth?
Maybe this theory is all nonsense and if older people choose to embrace the spark and engage with all their X and Y they will find a passion equal to or greater than any they’ve ever experienced in a relationship unique unto itself. Maybe the only real tragedy is in having engaged blind to one’s own healthy wants and needs and to what, of value, the other is able to contribute. Maybe continually using the wrong set of muscles to stoke a flame leaves them torn, weak and hesitant to perform while the right set has atrophied with neglect. Maybe one great, long inferno which set off a major fireworks of passion of experience and developed all the right spirit muscles to their peak leaves one really never in need of it again.
ART AND ENTERTAINMENT: FOR ME AND FOR THEM
Before heaping praise and adulation on art, artists, the pursuit of art and the necessity of art, admit one thing for me. Art is selfish. Not a very honorable or compliment-worthy characteristic, is it? It’s OK though. Recognizing the nature of the beast won’t necessitate a diminished appreciation for it – maybe just the opposite.
Art is expression and expression is born of selfish motivations. Something inside, very personal (a spark of the spirit) must come out like a sneeze or a fart. This expression (not the sneeze or fart usually) is framed, colored and textured by the intangible and visceral mechanisms which make up the individual human psyche. Others who witness the expression may experience a connection to it. We are all human after all. They may inexplicably, sometimes powerfully, be subliminally stirred by it. If this experience is sought and chosen for its effect, it is entertainment.
Art is the human source calling out by whatever means compelled into service with no other conscious purpose. Entertainment is created and designed for the purpose of eliciting sought-after effects in the observer. Art is determined only by source and his/her choice to express. Entertainment is determined by the receiver(s). Art doesn’t care if it entertains. Entertainment doesn’t need to know its source. Art is for “me” and entertainment is for “them”.
When the artist becomes in touch with those sensibilities which, through an observation and learning process, which he/she comes to recognize reach and stir the recipient internally, tools are gained. These are tools for creating quality. This practice may be scorned as unoriginal exploitation of the tools, lacking the puity and honesty of motivators which are not pre-meditated. But that doesn’t mean it is without value. Don’t we all love to be entertained? I do.
PRE-K HEY! AND HUMMER LIMOS
I never attended kindergarten so 1st Grade was, in fact, the first grade. I don’t know if “Pre-K” even existed then or if my parents were neglectful of this fundamental necessity for my healthy childhood experience because they were busy parenting. I assume it was just more accurately titled “daycare”. As with many institutions, those in the know saw fit to change its name along with the perception of it. It is no longer glorified baby-sitting. It has a name of importance which must mean it is an important phase in the educational development of the healthy little member of society. I don’t recall ever hearing of a daycare graduation either. But there are Pre-K “graduations”, it seems, so to mark the accomplishment of the novice student as he/she proudly carries this noble achievement onto the next intellectual challenge – Kindergarten.
Let’s fast-forward to high school. No, not graduation. Those have been around for a long time with more meaning. It meant you have actually completed your legally-obligated quota of education. This used to mean you didn’t have to go back to school but by choice. Whoopee, that’s a big deal. But no, I mean proms. Yeah, proms. For some, these have become voluntary hemorrhages of money in exchange for something resembling the lavish displays of celebrity exhibitionism we seem so obsessed with. One guy proudly told me of the Hummer limo he rented for his daughter along with other extravagances pushing his bill into the 4-digit realm. A prom?! We washed and waxed my friend’s old Duster in exchange for him throwing on an old tux and “chauffeuring” us to the grand event. The obligatory corsage cost enough. (Thanks, Mom and Dad.)
What is the motivation for all this? Is it the ritual evolution of a society accelerated by the influence of reality-TV culture? Guilt or overcompensation for something the parent(s) consciously or unconsciously believes they are depriving their children of (quality time?)? Is it the “Keeping-up-with-the-Joneses” effect that so drives the herd? Is it a bit of all that and more?
The elaborate and overblown grandiosity hung on really rather commonplace events that don’t involve any real sense of accomplishment or importance seems a bit ridiculous? Is all this somehow desensitizing for the celebrated and accomplished identity-seekers, creating expectations of attention that are even detrimental to the developing adult’s strength of character.
Will a token of recognition for some major contribution to the good of one’s community or major job promotion seem ho-hum? Or is all the pomp and circumstance saying more about the established mindset of the parents and not really a threat to the developing mindset of the youth. (Maybe they’ll just forget it anyway.) But I really want to know what the spend-crazy prom parents and prom-goers do for their weddings? That bar is awful high now. Ch-ching.
LAZINESS – BOOOOOO!
Through the entrance there are stairs directly in front of you which ascend to the second floor. The other option is to go left, push a button, wait and take the elevator to the second floor (or any other). I’m always paused by those who actually opt for the elevator to the second floor. Maybe laziness is a relative term, but this choice is L-A-Z-Y to me.
All children appear to be energetic and eager to move everywhere and all the time from the moment they are capable of crawling. What is this despicable process which transforms that human into someone who develops a love affair with the couch, drive a car to the mailbox and take that elevator to the second floor?! A character flaw has been allowed to set seed and develop – and it must be stopped!
Lazy people are boring; uninterested in themselves; uninterested in the world around them; unreliable in a crisis situation; and lack any great effort to produce or contribute. (OK, those fleeting moments or days of therapeutic and regenerative laziness are allowable. This is often a necessary provision of the one-step-backward-for-two-steps-forward strategy for both physical and mental functioning.)
Oh and don’t think these ridiculous dietary maneuvers, like drinking diet soda (yuck) and counting calories (petty and time-consuming), are somehow cancelling out your laziness. Somehow you’ve allowed yourself to believe that these are herculean, life-altering healthy choices. Basic wise dietary practices are age-old and not rocket science. None of that eclipses the fact that movement is the most important health consideration one should address. Saying “no” to croutons on your salad while you sit on your ass and scroll through facebook posts does not forgive all.
Research how many “learned” people describe aging as largely the loss of mobility. Use it or lose it. We were made to move. Good for the body and the mind and it’s what life asks of us.
We’re not here all that long. Both quantity and quality of life are gained from movement. The repulsion with it seems irrational and, frankly, kind of disgusting to me. Just move around, damnit.
“TO INFINITY AND BEYOND”: ARE PHYSICISTS LEADING US ASTRAY?
I have done a little bit of reading on quantum physics and theories set forth regarding the structure of the universe. If I say I was able to grasp with confidence a third of what I’ve read, I’m probably being too generous to myself. Sometimes I feel the way I remember feeling amidst the din of adult conversation as a child. You feel like you get it for a bit and then you get tired trying and all the chatter devolves quickly into the nonsense garble of adults from the Charlie Brown cartoons (Wa wa wa wa wa). In the end, I’m left to focus on the big conceptual gaps in the picture which render the whole of their wisdom and insight barely useful, if at all.
Then (maybe in a desperate attempt to hold my pride together) I ask myself, “If I’m not smart enough to grasp what they’re proposing, how can I be sure that it is even a sound proposal and not complete nonsense?” Sure, they seem to agree on some basic profundities which lends some credence to their legitimacy at least. But maybe they’re saving face among peers. Maybe that shallow pool of peers minimizes the potential for enough useful scrutiny to reveal the relative idiocy of some of these ideas. Anyone in the world could point out the flaw in considering the square a better shape on which to base a mode of transportation than the circle. There’s some physics we can all jump in on. But consider the operative characteristics of quarks; light as waves vs. particles; and the blind application of Planck’s Constant and who all is quick and loud to chime in?
Here are two ideas that hung on my small mind like boulder-sized apples on a spindly sapling: Time is a 4th dimension (of the 11 or so they’ve identified) and Infinity is a factor in so many of these brilliant equations. This is the sound of my tricycle wheels spinning in the mud while those monster trucks just blow on by…
Is the whole concept of time really even valid without space and matter? That is the space within which matter may operate (aka “move”). Movement is a constant flow of causes and effects as the universe evolves (perhaps only to then devolve to whence it came). Without movement, with everything “frozen” or stationary, is there measurable time? If not measurable, is there time at all? (Actually if all movement ceased, including brain activity and perception, we would never know it even if it happened a thousand times for every measurable second – but I digress.) So, does matter move and processes occur within time or does time simply measure the observable movement of matter by whatever random increments humans have chosen? Is it, then an actual “dimension” of existence or just a way of aiding our perceptions of processes?
What the hell is “infinity”? I just thought it was a cool way of saying something exists fooorrreeevvvveeerrrrrr. What’s tantalizing to a point of obsession about forever is that we can’t really comprehend it. Anything at our disposal to be used to construct a model is finite. We are largely visual thinkers and we can’t see something that has no ends. We can see part of it but then it just keeps moving or growing. I’m frustrated already. But I stand corrected. All the geniuses whose genius we are too dopey to confirm can, it would seem, can comprehend infinity. So confident are they in their recognition of it that they plug it into their fancy formulas at will. “Elementary, my young fool. Go and fetch yourself some ice cream.” But as I’m patted on the head I desperately retaliate. “How can you quantify it and just stick it into a formula when, by definition, infinity is unquantifiable? Isn’t it?” A stoke of the beard. A puff of the pipe. “Chocolate or vanilla?”
Hope all those who count themselves among the mathematically and physicsally anointed had fun there at my expense. Now I’m gonna go check the time for the infiniteth time.
TABOO OF THE “DYSFUNCTIONAL”
This is another on a growing list of terms corroded over time with negative connotations to a point where it is nearly unusable. I find that to be a real shame. When you really think about the word, its perfect appropriateness and non-derogatory nature become so obvious. If a thing or a process can be identified as having a function within the working of the whole, then any impairment or incomplete ability of it to function as meant to can be fairly described as a “dys””function”. Right? Simple enough.
The problem arises in that the term has been applied to human function clinically and traditionally. The application can still be logical, but now there is a human response which gets involved with such application. Human response has the power to conceal logic like a sleight of hand magician with the quarter and introduce misplaced sensitivity and a conjured sense of derogation.
This whole rambling will particularly involve views of homosexuality, but I’m sure the same reasoning could be applied to any dysfunction for which the application of that term stirs some perception of offense. The key seems to be in that the subject who perceives offense largely equates their very being with the process to which the dysfunction is applied. Due to this, the “dysfunction” definition can easily be translated into a summary judgment of their entity as something with no worth or place in the structure of humanity.
The experience of offense or derogation seem to involve definition of identity and the freedom of choice that comes with identity. The offense and derogation are null if the affected lacks the wherewithal to recognize the application of the dysfunction diagnosis. Consider a child with sever Downs or autism. Recognition of dysfunction and associated pity are OK here because the affected did not “choose” this nor are they aware enough to experience offense. Illogically, the nature of derogation is subjective then, not objective. Consider a cancer victim. Dysfunction of the processes and body parts is an acceptable characterization because the cancer is an invader, a true affliction, not part of the identity of the afflicted or a choice.
Erectile dysfunction is an OK and acceptable use. (I’ve seen it on those late-night commercials for blue pills.) My downstairs unit doesn’t work but he doesn’t define me. I work, it doesn’t. The soft scoop isn’t my “choice”. You get the point (even if I can’t give it – Oooohhhh, I’ll stop. And, by the way, it’s a hypothetical. My soldier salutes, thank you very much.)
Part of the problem is the human muddled redefining of the function of sexual attraction as expression of love (and love is OK) as opposed to driving force behind propagation of species. Sex does not equal love, nor is the drive a matter of choice. (It’s a distracting nuisance more often than not.) Who measures an individual’s capacity for love by their desire for heterosexual activity? This is absurd. Logic would support the idea that sex is pleasurable to ensure the drive to propagate the species (a force that is universally so much greater and more important than that of an individual’s desires). It would further support the idea that heterosexual sex is the only thing that matters to nature and function for the same reason.
Both erectile dysfunction and homosexuality would constitute stumbling blocks for the function of propagation. Aren’t they then, by definition, dysfunctions? So what’s the big deal. If the guy/girl experiencing erectile/performance dysfunction or the guy/girl experiencing homosexuality have made their peace with that condition and it doesn’t affect their ability to achieve happiness, is there a problem? If it’s not a problem for that person, it’s not a problem. It’s interesting that we never hear a homosexual complain that their desire to reproduce is thwarted by the configuration of their sexual drive mechanism. Instead we only hear about “pride” in “choices” by larger voices complaining of oppressions of some form.
Should the question be why do some people choose to define their very identity by their sexual inclinations?
It seems sort of ironic that the refusal to accept the application of “dysfunctional” establishes more of a rationale for viewing those with illogical sexual proclivities as “something else”. Consider that the attraction to a mate which is not conducive to propagation is just a dysfunction to that process like dyslexia is a dysfunction to the communication process and the inability to create white blood cells in a dysfunction to the process of personal health maintenance. Where is the logic in characterizing the term of “dysfunctional” as derogatory when so applied? It is declared by the one whom the dysfunction affects – by choice. It is non-emotional, non-judgmental of character and restricted to the boundaries of that particular function considered. Is it a disease or an affliction? If the affected is not feeling “uneasy” due to the condition then, no, it is not a “disease”. Stop all that and let’s all just get on with our lives without fabricated, overcompensating “pride” and an obsession with sexual drives as a definition of identity.
Now there tends to be an impulse for labeling and packaging when it comes to talk and talkers daring this subject matter (referring to homosexuality with other than cheers and bliss). Such packaging largely involves religion and terms useless terms like “unnatural” and “sinful”, but no religion is infused in my treatment, nor will it be. Just take it as is please.
TO COLLEGE OR DIE! AND THE OXYMORON OF “ATHLETIC SCHOLARSHIPS”
Consideration of the college prospect, when that time arrives, should not be treated as a given, obligatory progression but as the first major investment one will need to decide on. As with every investment, all aspects of the deal need to be weighed. The lifelong impact of this decision should shine a respectful light on it as something not to be force-fed as the mounting pressure of the gotta-go-to-college trend moves to present it.
Recognizing the importance of this decision, it stands to reason that all available knowledge and resources should be called up and used in the process. It seems to me then that Career Counselors or Advisers should take their place among the most respected and trusted aides. I mean right there with your doctor, your lawyer, your psychologist and your stock broker. One needs to recognize, likewise, the expansion needed in this role if the prospective student is to be best served by him/her. A short list of the most current knowledge a counselor should have in hand would include: market trends; regional mapping of opportunities within various business sectors; cost-of-living in these regions; outlook for personal growth in each sector; defining of aptitudes and a grasp of the true strengths and passions of the student (failure to properly define could lead one to a misleading perception of where one fits in the world – glamorous fantasies and what not); educated guesstimate of the salary prospects and rate of upward mobility potential; true cost of a degree from school to school; the level of profile of schools of choice compared to the potential suitor employers for whom what school choices are seen as favorable; some formula for best calculating when any loans may be paid off with respect to the likely available job profiles upon graduation; what potential employers are to be courted for educational partnerships (more on this); etc. In summary, the growth and significance of the Career Counselor would equal the seriousness with which prospective college goers would, and should, take on the endeavor of career-specialized, advanced education. They would be instrumental in the long-term strategizing and career planning, not just finding out what school “has a really good program for what you like”. What a booming industry that would be by itself! This “counselor” could be more aptly recognized as a career “agent”, even helping secure contracts with both universities and employer-partners.
The increasing development of automation promises and threatens to change the entire structure of the workforce. This will likely leave many suddenly out in the cold with no clear path back to the comfort zone of gainful employment. Keeping tabs on the emerging prospects and trends for both career profiles likely to vanish and those poised to blossom would be a priority of our proposed career counselors.
Although the scouting and funding model employed by colleges to secure talented athletes may be philosophically misplaced, why isn’t it more readily embraced or even entertained by corporate hirers similarly seeking talent to assist in their endeavors?
Corporate recognition of a high-school academic’s potential based on that employer’s experienced of aptitude could strongly suggest a path for the young hopeful and encourage him/her to follow it. The promise of money will do that. This is no truer for a prospective athlete than it is for an engineer or chemist. The encouragement of a corporation in some direction would be wise and honest as anything less would be a waste of corporate time, effort and money. As we know, a successful corporation is a mechanism whose very existence decries output without profit.
So a corporate scout would court the high school prospect. If all seems beneficial to both parties, the corporation would fund the first year of college with stipulations. An agreed-upon minimum GPA must be maintained. If it is, year two is paid for and so on until the degree is achieved. The student-turned-employee gives in turn, say, 15 years of service to the benefactor at an agreed-upon salary subject to re-negotiations (like a professional athlete) as worked out by the student agent and corporate agent. But what poor high-schooler could afford an agent, you ask? Since they would only be paid either a flat fee or a percentage of future employee’s salary, not a dime would be needed upon this initial negotiation. Maybe the corporation would agree to pay the upfront fee to be reimbursed from employee’s salary later. (For all those professional women who claim the corporate world doesn’t treat them fairly when it comes to salary negotiations, why not have this agent retained to handle such matters with a deft hand at navigating through the bullshit of any gender, race or other perceived injustices?) For the student, this is all far less expensive (and interest-free) when compared to the astronomical numbers seen in the obscene borrowing model currently being perpetrated.
This transaction would mark the first weighty decision a 17 or 18-year-old would make in a series of many to be presented by life ahead. It is one which would require research, counseling, planning and self-exploration – a true coming-of-age point on the journey.
Many employers offer financial assistance programs to their employees who attend school while employed in the hopes of improving the crop of internal candidates for management. This is not the same as nurturing a long-term relationship through scouting and recruitment right out of high school though.
Reasons why this won’t happen: No incentive for a corporation to change a reality in which the education of their future workforce is already being paid for by gullible and willing students themselves via insurmountable debts; “Obligated” parents believe their offspring must go to college to compete and survive; The government readily and dutifully throws tax dollars at this “human right”. The result: Corporations can choose from among already academically proven prospects desperate with debt without spending a dime – a buyer’s market; Not to mention (or to mention) lenders and their lobbyists would discourage it at every turn.
What would need to change: More emphasis on the logic that the number of degree-wielding and debt-bearing graduates far outweigh the existing job openings requiring these degrees insisted on by everyone; More emphasis on the reality that careers not requiring expensive degrees are passed over and not considered, popularly viewed as beneath one’s abilities and purpose but for someone else to do; This change in perceptions would involve a focus on aptitudes, honest self-evaluation and recognition of personal opportunity and the assistance of true and thorough career research and counseling; The encroachment of government on personal decision-making through destructive, misleading propaganda campaigns equating higher education with higher value and handouts of taxpayer dollars.
Oh, and then there’s Athletic Scholarships. Kind of an oxymoron, isn’t it? Is there anything athletic about being a scholar? Is there anything scholarly about engaging in athletics? And what is the purpose of colleges? Isn’t it to provide (sell) education to those desirous of the tools needed to pursue a career necessitating this knowledge for its function. A portion of the money taken by the institution for this service is then given to those deemed to show a desire, talent and aptitude for athletics, regardless of their desire, talent or aptitude for scholastics. But this hand-out is called a “scholarship”.
The response I get when I bring this up is almost always the same. It’s all about money. College sports generate revenue for the business and so, as with every money-maker, capital must be invested into the greatest assets available. (Since men’s football and basketball and, maybe, women’s basketball are the only college sports anyone really watches, I guess the Title IX fairness mandates associated with federally funded scholarships explain why money is diverted to more questionable investments.) Entertainment seems to have become the more important product sold by more notable institutions, not education. The celebration of college sports entertainment is a tradition we’ve created that will not likely be dissolved easily – nor will the lure of money to it.
What bothers me about athletic scholarships is the idea of some gangly, uncoordinated and weak youth with a hungry and brilliant mind somewhere in the inner city with no resources beyond his or her cranium who holds the potential for discovering the cure for cancer, yet will never be able to realize it because the funds which may have provided the pathway through the necessary education were squandered on delivering and showcasing the next Walter Payton or Michael Jordan.
The selling point for an institution of learning should be the value of that product which it promises to deliver and for which it came into existence in the first place – education. The pride an enrollee may share in of a school hall-of-fame featuring a who’s who in the world of sports and pre-game party potential for a bowl contender or “Final Four” team should not. (Does Harvard even offer athletic scholarships? Probably. I don’t feel like researching it and, either way, no one pays attention to their athletic program unless their basketball team makes a short-lived appearance in the NCAA tournament.)
If advanced education was not considered obligatory and those with scholastic potential and drive competed for the opportunity to further themselves in that way, how much better would the end-product be? I’m thinking of the youth in Asia who dream about the prestige that comes with admittance into a world-ranked university, probably as intensely as our kids dream about hitting the winning home run in the World Series or scoring triple doubles while wearing Nike shoes bearing their names. Don’t they have pride in accomplishment and what they are able to provide society with their work and education, rather than in a team playing a game?
(It occurs to me that women may not have that problem so much. Well, good for them. They only have the propaganda of the last 20 or 30 years urging them to be self-sufficient and not dependent on A MAN! This, of course, must include the empowerment of a college education. Ch-ching.)
EXPONENTIALS AND GATHERING MOMENTUM
Social movement of every type proceeds at an exponential pace. Until it stops, it constantly gathers momentum. Consider technological advances over a timeline. We don’t discover this and then discover that and then another. We discover this and build that. Then discover that, that and that and build that, that, that and that as derivatives of the original discoveries and constructions. More possibilities to mix more ideas and wisdom with the assistance of more and more constructions don’t add to but multiply achievements and utilites.
Consider social media awareness campaigns. Consider fads. Ten views becomes a thousand and in equal time may become a million. They are talking about it to each other. All circles are eventually overlapped and connected. We are talking about it. Everyone loves it or hates it or, at least, knows of it. Many want it. Many have to have it.
It is not linear like the pace of bricklaying in constructing a house where the pace can be predetermined and is dictated by the finite number of agents involved and their limited, measurable physical capacity and ability. Like the individual walker or driven car.
The human social and collective endeavor is like a bonfire, not an assortment of individual candles on a cake. It is a ball on a downward slope, not across a plain. This exponential nature is unfathomable. It is as unpredictable and powerful as any other force of nature. The exponential power of the human collective is beautiful and frightening at the same time. It is greater than any one of us. But it lacks responsibility, duty and control like the inferno, tornado and hurricane. The difference is that it originates from humanity. But can lose humanity in less time than its arrival can even be noticed, like an explosion.
Recognize it as its own entity. Understand and respect it with the rationality and wisdom that it is incapable of. Know that collective endeavor will proceed like this and be prepared for it. Take a collective responsibility for it. That’s probably the hardest part.
And then there is Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity. The human need for understanding and control grows exponentially with the wisdom and intelligence built as a result of that very motive. Ultimately, we do and will continue to strive to create ourselves the more we understand ourselves. Recreating is, it might be thought and said, the crowning and final achievement of the pursuit of understanding. It satisfies the control craze and empties the box of intolerable mysteries. Recreating ourselves is the mastery of ourselves and the cure to the plague of intelligence.
THE FIRST AMENDMENT SURE IS ONE HUGE MOUTHFUL TO CHEW ON FOR SUCH A SMALL SERVING OF VERBIAGE…
Arizona SB 1062: “Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed a bill Wednesday that would have allowed businesses that asserted their religious beliefs the right to deny service to gay and lesbian customers.”
And there we have it, another challenge evoking the First Amendment. Instances of these clashes between religious intention and dogma vs. established anti-discrimination laws will only multiply and it must be definitively addressed by any state in which the challenge arises.
The tossing of this bill relieves the judicial system of the quagmire of determining whether the choice of the accused was based on some religion’s dogma or motivated by something else. Good for them. Imagine the bullshit interpretations of scriptures we would here in defense of some store owner’s refusal of a decidedly “unsavory” patron. That would have put them in an enviable (and, perhaps, unconstitutional based on the wording of this same First Amendment) of making a decision based on how they interpret religious (not legal) script.
All that having been said, I can’t shake a broader idea that encompasses personal decisions of a religious, gender, racial, age or any other basis. That is – maybe the freedom for an individual to make a choice to not act in a requested way should always be protected, no matter what their personal motivations are or what the majority of us think about them. I emphasize not act to differentiate this choice from the choice to act because it is the action which is a potential impingement on the freedom or well-being of another, not the chosen refrain. In the case of the gay couple who sought judicial involvement because of the decision of the accused to not act on their request, the couple is the party who initiated the request (acted). The second party chose not to act in response.
In fairness, one can’t deny that the private business owner, not acting as an agent of the state, does have some rights to his/her choices. If I choose not to take a job because I’m to lazy to drive the extra 5 miles to the location, is the denied requestor going to call the judicial forces to demand I abide by their requests? Is that somehow different and absurd based on the difference between my motivation and the Arizona business owner’s. If we both decide to decline an offer to make money, isn’t that our business? (Pun sort of intended).
Back to the broader issue. I know there are plenty who will think I am naïve, impractical, irrational or even delusional, and I completely understand that. But I have to have faith that, after many such rejections play out for a long time to come, the evolution of rationality and humanity will deliver us to a place where the basis of acceptance and rejection do not derive from foundations of such groundless concepts. As painful as it may be in any moment, allowing the natural course of things to play out may just be the path to maintain. Maybe, and it seems reasonable, honest dialogue and continued exercise of freedoms which, now and then, may yield nuggets of ugly experience for some in passing will triumph in the eventuality. Patience is tough.
TAKE A BREATH, DUDE… THE FIRST AMENDMENT… CONTINUE CHEWING…
And in addition to stirring up this whole freedom of religion, freedom of choice fracas, the First Amendment incites a legal and philosophical tornado with these “freedom of speech… the press… right of the people peaceably to assemble” stuff. (Isn’t this all worthy of at least 2 or 3 amendments? One?!)
Are terroristic threats; outbursts deemed to be “hate speech”; public calls for or suggestions to uprise against political or social actions or institutions all protected under the 1st Amendment? Actually, I’m thinking “yes” here. The “freedom of speech” portion of that amendment may be at the root of more legal disputes than any other phrase within the entire Constitutional text. But rather than overcomplicating it by opening the flood gates to an infinite flood of interpretations, why not consider the opposite treatment – simplification.
Focusing on the “freedom” part puts us in a mucky position. Freedom is, perhaps, the most celebrated and fundamental concept in all the language making up the framework of this nation. It is understandable that even the slightest hint at the slightest flinch to stifle it in the slightest will be met with some opposition. As the radius of allowable freedoms expands, however, it becomes inevitable that one freedom will overlap and conflict with another. The nature of this type of conflict is one of action though, the exercise of freedom of action, not speech. Two conflicting ideas, even when voiced, do not exist in the physical or practical world and so are harmless until applied. Such application is not the inevitable effect of the cause of speech. The action would be its own, separate and individual choice. I would suggest here that the focus should be moved to the term “speech” in considering these disputes.
This is the part where some will try to cleverly expand the definition of “speech” to include gestures in addition to, or instead of verbalization. This is simply convoluted nonsense that blatantly ignores the unequivocal definition of speech. Speech is speech, as in speaking, as in the verbal message. Those who attempt to dismantle this solid and simple concept use artistic terms in a desperate effort to construct an argument. They will point out that dance and painting and film are “speech” because they express and communicate ideas without spoken word. They are unable (or choose not) to recognize the difference between expression and speech. Hopefully anyone with a black robe and gavel can. Again, speech is speech, regardless of what is intended to be communicated by it. Expression may utilize speech as well as imagery and action to achieve an intended goal (or simply for its own sake). Action, not speech, is what should draw legal concerns. Actions may encroach on others in a potentially negative way. Actions are what the letter of the law already allow or prohibit. Until motivations lead to a decided and chosen action, there should be no legal concerns.
This brings us to the speech-wielding, assembled protesters, also referenced in the First Amendment, who seek to “petition the government for a redress of grievances.” All sound good so far, and in adherence with Constitutional allowances. Enter the “action”. The action to move into a position which purposely blocks the flow of traffic, thus impeding the freedom of movement of other parties. Sometimes the action to throw stuff at those who disagree causing potential harm to the targets or their personal property. Action, not speech. Illegal action. Unacceptable. Period. (Incidentally, the burning of a flag may be interpreted and judged various ways when considered an expression, but it is the action of public fire and must be treated as such and within the applicable legal attention.)
However harsh and annoying your protesting voice may be; however horrid the actions you speak of (“Kill the president!” or whatever); however baseless and irrational the nature of your verbal attacks (“Kill the president because she’s a black woman who worships some god I don’t recognize!” or whatever) – have at it. It may be ugly to many of us. It may be an extremely uncomfortable bump in the social human experience. But it is “speech”, not action, nonetheless.
It is perfectly reasonable here, and obligatory, for all relevant camps of law enforcement to respond accordingly and preemptively to the possibility of what action may follow the speech. If your openly offered speech warrants the attention of the NSA, FBI, Homeland Security etc, or the placement of a strike force to prevent any possible action against those whom they are sworn to serve and protect, that is the price (and should be the only price) of your choice to speak freely.
“HATE” CRIMES
Definitions:
Merriam-Webster: any of various crimes (as assault or defacement of property) when motivated by hostility to the victim as a member of a group (as one based on color, creed, gender, or sexual orientation)
Dictionary.com: a crime, usually violent, motivated by prejudice orintolerance toward an individual’s national origin,ethnicity, color, religion, gender, gender identity,sexual orientation, or disability.
Wikipedia: In both crime and law, hate crime (also known as bias-motivated crime) is a usually violent, prejudice motivated crime that occurs when a perpetrator targets a victim because of his or her perceived membership in a certain social group. Examples of such groups include but are not limited to: ethnicity,gender identity, language, nationality, physical appearance, religion, or sexual orientation
In rambling about the legitimizing of a concept, I mentioned the necessity of labeling. This seems a perfect illustration of that step in the process, being it is now set down in 3 (and more) reputable informational resources. It seems to me this rings with the sound of those plastic, non-substantive forms molded in the reactionary need to take control of a perceived morality-attacking epidemic with words and speech whose very utterance and penning gives that sense of positive and broad-sweeping accomplishment. I have at least two problems with this term.
Is “hate” only acknowledged with special attention when it rears its ugly head in the face of one of these “social groups” who can’t seem to get enough attention and acknowledgement of their own? Should we just shrug off hate of an interpersonal nature as a lesser hate? Should hate churned up from any other black cauldron and from a different set of ingredients not make us collectively cringe, hold our noses and seek to quash the source? If the basis of hate is somewhere in the perception of a group or groups, is hate of these validated groups a breed of hate which is somehow more vile, powerful and detrimental and in need of more immediate, large and decisive response? Are other, lesser instances of hatred being discriminated against and not getting their fair share of rebuke and shame?
Then there’s crime. Any crime is defined by its action. An action deemed in some way hurtful and destructive to the fabric of society. Some are smaller frays in the fabric and others major tears. Regardless of size though, the nature of what defines a crime as such is that the consequences of this action impact others negatively. So if we are able to define this action (sensory witness, qualification, quantification, perception and labeling of the consequences), where does the motivation for the act suddenly weigh into the formula? Are we going to discriminate here too against certain transgressions because we have deemed their motives to be not that big a deal, and not give them their due attention? If I plunge a knife through someone’s heart, aren’t the negative sum values equal whether I did it because he is from Indonesia, likes to have sex with goats or stole my ice cream cone? Again, isn’t the crime defined by the action? Shouldn’t, then the penalty for all crimes of this nature be identical and viewed in a place of equal gravity?
Now in a desperate and defensive groping through the closet of reason with the light off, may grab up and offer the suggestion that certain motives for crime demonstrate an epidemic way of thinking which targets larger groups. The existence of this must be addressed with more urgency since, being more widespread, it inherently holds the potential to generate more criminal acts. Responding to instances of this must be done with swiftness and severity as we respond with greater energy in resources to the existence of cancer as a killer than to rabid beavers.
I see more stagnation in what should be our developing perception of humanity in this, like I often see in other areas. That is, we insist on focusing on humanity and society in terms of groups of people or a collection of types. I think it would be so beneficial and just to get away from this. I prefer to see humanity as a collection of people who all share those fundamental things which make us all one. We are a collection of individuals, but one of ones. A crime is something we have deemed universally unacceptable to any of us. A crime or attack against any one of us is a crime defined by the nature of its action and these are all equally unacceptable and deserving of equal response.
Yeah, I don’t particularly like this term. It tries to be something relevant and useful but can diminish the crimes themselves by augmenting the size of the motives. This shifts the focus needlessly onto something other than the instance and the victim.
LOVE AND MARRIAGE, LOVE AND MARRIAGE
Interesting here that there is such an impassioned charge for marital “rights” achievements. Depending on how we define the actual purpose of the marriage institution, these pursuits could be purely to make a statement (we are “equal”; don’t exclude us from the party) – does this devalue the importance of the pursuit by evidencing its lack of measurable, useful functionality to society? Or, it is a case of individuals being denied certain benefits (legally, other? What other?) that others in the traditional consideration enjoy? The pursuit along these lines would require, first, an acknowledgement of that societal functionality (and therefore require its defining) and would necessarily need to step aside of the personal “mistreatment” complaints and “romantic” elements as the basis of the argument. I sense that these seem intermingled, though, in a way so confusing that the platform becomes obscured in a cacophony of ideas and sentiments and emotionally-charged, reactive imageries. Let’s explore the functional purpose of marriage and its definition as our chosen framework for this dialogue, since that seems to be the place in which it is worthy of discussion at all.
A research of the history of marriage would make for its own discussion I’m sure. But I’m pretty confident any time period or region would widdle down the function of it to something pretty reflective of this bullet list from that universally accepted source of knowledge and wisdom we all rely on to guide our lives – Wikipedia. These are the Wikipedia areas of definition (and a treatment of these within the context of current societal perspectives and policies):
--Legitimate sexual access
--Legitimacy of offspring
--Collection of rights (the big one?)
--Formation of a domestic unit
Definitions are historically varied and blurred. In our society these have been left to the care of tradition’s sturdy cradle without cause for real consideration of any boundaries or definition of form and substance until fairly recently. The stage for all arguments is the legal one, with acknowledgement of the religious one on the side. The precipitation of the latter, I think, inevitably forces us into a recurring discussion (but maybe a bit tangential right here) of separation of church and state. Since all parties seem to, at least ostensibly, agree that we are engaging on the legal stage – we’ll try to stick to legality. Those four bullets from the infallible Wikipedia seem like a pretty basic list to guide us…
Legitimate sexual access. OK, isn’t this anything other than rape? Not seeing our current society as being real strict about relegating this to the confines of marriage. Next…
Legitimacy of offspring. This gives the state a nice clean and concise way to clarify ownership rights and resolve any related disputes. Legally-defined marriage begets legally-defined beneficiaries of property inheritance. Everyone knows what is whose and it’s all good. The thing is, this necessity was also born in an age when child rearing was more or less obligatory. Someone’s gotta work the farm and someone’s gotta take it over too. Not having kids wasn’t really much of a viable choice. But no such obligation exists today so, one might even say, straight or gay or whatever, if you’re not having kids (and certainly aren’t forced to by the state) what is the point of marriage – at least with respect to this bullet. Not to mentioned a notorized piece of paper with your signature can ensure that whoever you want gets whatever you have upon your departure, can’t it? Next…
Collection of rights. Is this really the fuel to much of the marriage-definition-related arguing? They get this and that so we should get this and that too. So, is marriage defined by the desire of two (how about more?) people who like to be together to get stuff from the state? In the end, I’m thinking all of us perpetual singles are boned no matter how the definitions shake out. Next…
Formation of a domestic unit. Come on. This is laughable and sad at the same time. Defining a “domestic unit” is probably every bit as hard or harder than identifying the basis of marriage. This is another concept that our society has allowed (even encouraged?) to erode without any great concern. If we have little or no interest in defining a cohesive, healthy and ideal familial unit, what the hell do we care about defining marriage for? May I refer you to the third bullet again? I seem to keep going back there.
We may begrudgingly but invariably keep arriving at the same question after considering the whole set of marriage issues. What is the purpose of marriage here and now? Is there really a need for such thing as an institution with associated legalities? Legality, regulation and state-based legitimacy aside, will the natural inclination of two people who experience “true and unbreakable love” be the basis for how they define and live their lives as well as the basis of a nuclear family? Are these choices by the persons involved made freely a healthy enough basis on which to structure the building blocks o the larger society? Is there a need for all this to be bonded by the state (which clearly doesn’t work any better since such bonds have proven very “breakable” anyway).
Treatment of this issue is incomplete without the consideration of the gender “role” aspect of it all. This is where lots of eyes start to roll as people fear we’re about to get hung up on silly, meaningless and primitive stereotypes. I think it’s at least safe to say that whatever traits someone brings to a relationship (considered “male”, “female”, neither, or not considered at all) are virtually irrelevant within the context of the relationship itself. One person chooses another and that’s that. Only within the context of child-rearing is the topic at least worthy of discussion.
So, is exposure to clearly-defined gender role figures important in the healthy psychological development of a child? Is it, arguably more so, important in positioning the child-to-be-adult comfortably into the fabric of the societal structure minus the turbulence of certain uncertainties? Is this thinking another hold-out of antiquated conservative thinking which refuses to evolve with humanity?
I’ve encountered people who argued for equality in marital rights before it became such a hot topic who would still contend that same-sex couples should seriously consider the difficulties children from such family structures might face. It seems to me that people in such a potential-parent position should at least be careful to not succumb to that selfishness of “my rights”, “my needs” and “my desires” without complete, honest and fair contemplation of the most important one in the scenario – the child. (Yes, this is a recurring theme.)
There is also the school of thought out there that the marital relationship is an equal partnership in every sense, be it hetero or other. This thinking would contend that there is virtually no such thing as gender roles but that there are functions necessary to parental duties that must be fulfilled by the parents. How they share these duties would be largely based on practical matters (ie. who is home when this and such needs to be done, etc.) This seems to be a somewhat “progressive” (“regressive” to some) way of thinking. If practice should demonstrate that this approach is successful (How?), would the gender make-up of the parental partnership even be relevant anymore? We can argue this all we want but, like so many other things, the results are wrapped somewhere within the character of the adult who has developed from that child within that cauldron.
With regard to the child’s exposure to the gender role figures, aside from distribution of duties between the two parent genders, the total equality motif raises another question. As many have also suggested, is the only role to which a child needs to be exposed for a successful development really that of a love and intimacy? If a child is shown through example the value of trust, respect and love of a significant other and the willingness and ability to engage in intimacy with the right other person, is that not the foundation of the parental mission?
Will give this all a lot more thought, I’m sure, and I would love to hear the thoughts and experiences of others. I am settled at least on the aspect of child-rearing in the “non-conventional” parent partnership structure as the most important of all this.
(On a personal note… If it should evolve that the legal implications of recognized “marriage” diminish to nothing significant or worthy of its exercise; if the partnering relationships between men and women become less meaningful or desired; if our society’s policies continue to become less concerned with (even fully accepting of) a “whatever” attitude toward the conditions in which children are brought into the world – family structures inconsequential; and if the general functional importance of marriage fades to a point where this very conversation is passé and laughable… I think I will still acknowledge a value to its tradition, tradition in general, and some practices reduced to nothing more than statements. I like romance. I think a declaration of my life-altering love for someone who is indispensible to my world is a really cool and powerful thing (and an excuse for a great party). I would involve the practice in some form regardless of a complete lack legal or functional considerations. OK, just indulging myself there. Moving on…)
RANDOM ADOPTION STATS FOR THOUGHT – US adopted over 9,000 kids in 2011 (per US State Dept) mostly from China, then Ethiopia, Russia, S. Korea and Ukraine; 400,540 children in foster care here with 115,000 eligible for adoption and 40% waiting over 3 years (source??); 6-8 million dogs and cats annually enter shelters with 3-4 million being adopted (Humane Society).
So why are the majority of adopted children in the United States from outside the United States? This is not to say that any one abandoned child is more valuable than another. It’s just curious that the effort involved in bringing a child halfway across the world and through two systems of adoption “red tape” must be far greater. I have to wonder if this is simply a matter of public awareness. Even the high profile celebrities are going overseas to find children in need of good homes, and everybody sees those stories.
I’m willing to bet that 400,540 children in foster care didn’t suddenly lose their parents in car crashes or tornadoes. What promise of emotional and psychological security is there for all the children who will rationalize quickly that they did not have an intrinsic value worthy of love, guidance and safekeeping, nor is there a quickness to prove that this isn’t so (waiting over 3 years?). I won’t get into the tragic practice (crime-worthy?) of bringing a human being into the world without all the resources necessary to provide health, safety and happiness and a society that tolerates this, even celebrates it sometimes. I’m sure I’ll rant on that elsewhere.
I know. The responsibility of raising a dog or cat is not nearly as heavy or involving a commitment as raising a human child and any attempt at parallels is flimsy and unfair. But I still can’t help staring at the huge disparity of those numbers. You have to admit that the awareness campaigns are far bigger these days for animals than for children. Don’t you? Dog rescues and those involved are voicing for their cause all over social media. Great job and keep it up because the suffering of animals is appalling too. Is there a considerable barrier between a prospective parent and a child who is not of their seed or blood that would most likely be conquered by the greater spirits of human nature if the first step of acknowledging and facing it was chosen? This prerequisite never exists for animal adopters. There is only sympathy and a good heart, then a dog is a dog and a cat is a cat.
FOOTBALL – THE GREAT AMERICAN ANALOGY
In The Uses of Enchantment (The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales), Bruno Bettelheim sets out to explore the age-old tales children have been regaled with (perhaps frightened by?) for ages in a “struggle for meaning.” He calls out Mr. (or Mrs.) Id, Ego and Superego; addresses the Jungian archetypes (fun folks for every party); shines a light on the wish fulfillment aspect of dreams; and, most importantly, dissects the useful constructs of fairy tales and myth to expose the integral tools in earliest intellectual development within their makeup. As a clumsy and wholly inadequate summary nod to his efforts, let’s say that their imagery, prose and playing-out act as a sort of cognitive therapy for those of us whose psyches are not yet advanced enough for more “mature” treatment of relatively heavy, but human and real, subject matter. (Myth is, maybe, the more adult and socially-shared version of this.) In, perhaps, even cruder terms – analogies. (Tolkein opposed the likening of myth to allegory and would probably not have liked the term “analogy” in this respect either but… sorry, dude. Work with me…)
So what’s all this ramble got to do with football?! Man up!!
I realized over the years than when I find myself grasping for some analogy to colorize, model or better illustrate I concept it seems like almost infallibly within the darkness and within reach – there is football. Here I will periodically document examples of this as they come back to mind.
Don’t know what Bettelheim thought of football (if at all), but aside from being a handy resource file for analogies of life, it serves another purpose. Along with other sports (or vigorous games whose existences seemed to have been assigned a great deal of importance by the Legitimacy phenomenon), this form of entertainment provides a sort of therapy and means for working out certain psychological issues for the adult (albeit not always to a satisfactory end) in the same way that fairy tales and playing-out do (or did) for Bruno’s kids. It is emotional outlet. It is a wanted vicariousness. It is both an escape and a self-submergence. It is fraught with… well, analogies. It is football!
1/12/13 MORE FOOTBALL
Reebok and MC10 Inc. are apparently partnering to bring the world a product in response to a seemingly growing trend of injury in sports, especially football. It is a bit of headgear with a removable impact-sensor. This sensor has a measuring system which is meant to report the severity of the blow taken, with a red light indicating a concussive-level whammo.
Some welcome this as a step in the right direction with equally-varying levels of embracement. “It’s OK as confirmation of an injury after the fact, but what about channeling your energies toward prevention?” “In the very least, this should be mandatory for Pop Warner leagues (the kids.)” “This is a great solution that will counter the problem of the misreporting of injuries by players whose egos prevent them from admitting anything that might tarnish their images or have them omitted from the competition.” Etc., etc.
My first question is the one which I’m sure none of us have ignored and to which, I suspect, most of us have arrived to resounding agreement… Since the occurrence of such serious injury in sports (ok, football) has become such a prevalent issue, is it proof that the evolution of play has given us a game with stronger, faster, more aggressive players who are playing for greater rewards in a more competitive environment against opponents of equally-elevated athletic prowess in a practice which, as a matter of course, has become more abusive, all vying for the same goal (pun intended)? An evolution true to the theory of exponentials and gathering momentum? Let’s proceed on the assumption that we all answered “yes” to that question. If you didn’t, please share your thoughts with us.
My further interest in this discussion is really just two-fold. First, there is the concept of choice. This is a biggie which extends well beyond football as we know. Second, there is the control craze in resistance to the acceptance of the state of reality as arrived at through this evolution.
When thousands of people developed illnesses which were linked to asbestos exposure, lawsuits ensued. Many parties were accused of knowledge of this adverse effect of secure jobs, living arrangements, etc. Had the affected known beforehand the dangers associated with the related jobs they agreed to, it is pretty safe speculation that most, if not all and at least many, would have opted out of such employment conditions. One might state with less confidence the same of coal miners. There is, however, a power in the forces of tradition, the “it’s-all-I-know”, “it’s-who-I-am” and “it’s-just-what-I-do” mentalities can mightily persuade many into an acceptance of these associated hazardous conditions.
Those examples considered, how does the choice of football (boxing, more so, and throw hockey in there now too) compare? Family tradition and involvement is often a strong nurturer of the choice. The it’s-what-I-know-and-who-I-am factor can surely develop too. The promise of monetary returns with sick digits is firmly in place. But the greatest factor of all, I would say, is social status. They are (almost) the modern-day gladiators. Our dysfunctional value system places celebrity at the peak and a great allure accompanies it. None of those previous examples offer any incentive in the same universe as the latter two.
Further important contrast brings us to the concept of choice. The asbestos-exposed workers were not made aware of the dangers (whether by purposeful or unwitting employers is not the issue right now). Choosing the danger was never part of the sales package. With the amount of media devoted to the dangers involved in football now (and in boxing, blunt force trauma defines the sport), those romantics who were ignorant or unaware before must now accept that it is a reality of the beast. In answer to whatever call lures you in the direction of the game, you must consider the risk of injury – possibly severe – as part of the choice.
I know this attitude of acceptance seems irresponsible and does not sit well with some. Those folks may report in as representatives of the control craze set. Like those who align with the statement that the resources channeled toward creation of the impact-sensor device would be better-spent on injury prevention. There are often these broad strokes of gentle petting statements made to end a thought on a favorable note. These statements assume that the gesture of channeling time, money and energy toward a scenario that smells, sounds and tastes nice is somehow assumed to be proactive. You’ve been pointed in the right direction so, this is a good place to leave the story. If anyone has any truly viable and hashed out suggestions as to how resources could, indeed, be used to mold a less-abusive environment for us to continue with one of our most beloved forms of entertainment - football, or boxing (good luck) please bring them to the table. If you know of any such suggestions we would appreciate your directing us toward them.
As for now, I am returned to the concept of societal evolution. The desires, needs and passions of individuals and the society as a whole will continue to evolve as the forces of various realities continue to act as molding agents of those paths.
A trend may set off a ripple in which fewer and fewer consider those risks associated with the sport to be worth what success in it promises. Along with that may come public outrage at increased occurrences of tragedy, then reduced sponsorship and less spectatorship. This ripple may become a wave which, ultimately, brings a level of disinterest that knocks football from its pedestal to, inevitably, be replaced by another “equally necessary” form of entertainment.
Or there may be some innovations in safety that will help protect the game as well as its players. But these will have impassable limits. Complete control is an illusion we obsess on. The games survival will depend on social acceptance and a sub-evolution of what we define as “socially-acceptable” in the realm of sports. As strength, speed, skill and competition levels continue to increase so, likely, will the number and severity of injuries.
If it comes to fit that last profile it must be because the freedom of the individuals who chose that path was not compromised and the control craze has been sobered by the acceptance of, sometimes harsh, realities of an institutions society has chosen to preserve. The institutions of boxing, hockey and – football!
THE INSTITUTION TAKES ITS DICTATORIAL SEAT BEFORE AN ASSEMBLY OF ITS CREATORS
Humans inspire, conceive, create, propagate, legitimize, communize, grow and celebrate the institution. The institution becomes greater than those who created it. It is an untouchable, perhaps indestructible, entity. Our reactions, practices, routines, rituals and social evolutions proceed on a course that moves around it and along with it as with objects compromising traffic patterns on an orderly major highway, accepting and respecting its immovability and immortality as part of the foundation upon which all further decisions with regard to the state of ourselves (humanity, its creators) must be set.
FREEDOM OF CHOICE
I continue to hear of policies that are designed to save one from one’s own inclination (as I interpret it) to make bad decisions. These decisions often absent of an obligatorily applied common sense, discipline, consideration of consequences and, instead, based on how-I-feel-and-what-I-want-now impulses. Take, for instance, the current obsession with government’s need to force “healthier choices” at us at it wags its finger and tells us how pathetically obese we are. (Walmart was under attack for not offering such choices and responded by stocking packaged foods that purported to be healthier. And there was much rejoicing as I scratched my head. I used to buy my fruits and veggies from Walmart regularly. Fruits and veggies. Doesn’t get much “healthier” than that. Do the sheeple simply ignore food if it isn’t in some colorful rectangular package the way toys are packaged for simple-minded children?)
Similar parental stances are taken with regard to obviously risky practices in common situations (gotta have those “ice is slippery” and “coffee is hot” kinda signs for everyone); repeat flagrant violations of law which warrant our “understanding” and some course of “rehabilitation”; some indispensible need to push everyone through higher education programs to keep them on par with what valued citizens should be since they didn’t fully apply themselves and take full advantage of what 12 years in a classroom offers even those of modest means and common abilities toward bettering their position in life and preparing them for the world; and, yes, incompetent and irresponsible child-rearing practices. (We seem to want to extend this coddling, safety net approach to corporations too, but that’s another can of worms.) We have resigned to the conclusion that people are just going to do dumb stuff anyway so let’s just view them as needy victims (of themselves?) instead of chronic poor decision-makers and NOW our dealings with them take on a whole new color range (sort of a pastel set). Now I’m not saying that a possibly growing number of people may be suffering from chronic stupidity as the evidence seems to be mounting. I’m merely concerned that this approach to dealing with the epidemic only works to nurture it, thus weakening the fabric of what we are rather than improving it.
If stupidity (OK, chronic poor decision-making) is just a flawed characteristic of human nature that we must shrug and accept, as such policy-making suggests and as some have no less than stated (sorry, I didn’t take note of who the healthcare “expert” was, but he actually said “People are just gonna make bad decisions no matter what.”), it is something to be gravely concerned about and warranting an immediate dialogue and implementation of a cultural program of treatment and rehabilitation. Now, you would think the meteoric rise of such a characteristic would defy a naturally-occurring application of those cognitive tools which evolution (or a God, if you need to go with a more direct-causation theory route) has endowed us with in response to environmental conditions and demands. That is, rise to the occasion and do as it necessitates to survive, protect and thrive or succumb and suffer the consequences of your choice. By continually weakening the natural response mechanism of good decision-making with forced policies that subvert its operation, aren’t we jeopardizing any assurances of our own survival and growth? Kind of like drug abuse and dependence sabotages the body’s natural remedies against most physical and biochemical attacks.
I, hereby, proclaim that I will stand up for every human being’s right to make their own bad decisions so long as they do not directly harm another in their wake. I do this out of my desire to see each of us grow stronger and wiser from our own experiences. This, macrocosmically, will strengthen the fabric or all humankind. Smoke those refreshing cigarettes you love if that is your choice and eat all that artificially-yummified junk food if you feel life is short and you see it as just a series of those moments you can enjoy. If that health insurance company, who entertains entering a deal with you in which they will pay any insanely high medical costs which may or may not occur in the future (gamble) and in turn you will pay them an assured amount of money regularly, needs to renegotiate what they think a safe deal would be for them, that’s between you guys. I’m not about to force you to buy health insurance that is ridiculously high because of those choices you make and no one should expect me to help you pay for it. That’s cool. Oh wait, did I just smash into another can of worms?.....
11/21/12
So, it seems a business’ pursuit of “overhead” (any income in excess of the cost of expenses) is an excessive exercise in greed. Or, at best, it is an irrelevant occupation of the wealth-seeking “rich” people which is, along with them, detached from the interests of the populace and the human condition altogether. Once that element of the equation has been placed upon that top shelf to be ignored or scoffed at as the situation dictates, we are left with business generating “good” revenue (the base before the excess, or overhead, is considered.) Aside from the business expenses, for which have no measure in terms of humanity (raw metal, dough, paper, perishables, etc.), we are left with the “human” elements of the commerce equation. These are the focus of those who care about the human condition and we can identify them as wages and healthcare costs. (If I’m missing anything of significant weight, please let me know.)
Let’s talk about the human considerations first.
Those who simply believe money and capitalism themselves are nothing more than evil concepts that we need to get on without if we are ever to progress and improve the human condition just don’t understand the functionality of the capitalist system and are restricted by this thematic and exclusionist thinking, some instilled passion to hate money and anything associated with it, and are stuck there, unable to move further into the discussion. (As with all seemingly dysfunctional thought, I say do two things: Do an OBE [Out-of-Body Examination] of the reasons for your feelings and an identification of what exactly brought you to that position; and attempt an unbiased, logical and dispassionate exploration of the proposal to remove money and capitalism from our dealings and the logistical implementation and long-term ramifications of such a move.
So then there’s the camp exists in some form of “overhead-is-OK-but-don’t-care-if-it-exists-or-what-its-size.” These folks would be focused primarily, if not exclusively, on those “human” elements referenced above………..
It seems to me that when one feels so compelled to take up a position on related issues and voice that opinion, one will invariably be subject to the seduction of one already-established and solidly-defined position. Each such position is born of and designed by a motive with clear objectives. I’m not going conspiracy theory damn-those-lying-propaganda-machines! on you here. The courtroom system of pursuing truth is in full effect always when the impetus for argument propels toward one goal alone. Its very nature is shaped in every element by its decided goal. Therefore, its boundaries in consideration and conversation are raised and sealed immovably. This is natural sociological function and its existence is A-OK. A danger is in not identifying or recognizing its existence. To latch onto this force with complete and unwavering commitment should never be done so readily. If a cause is appealing, its concept is assumed. It is the sober and discriminating (yes, this is a safe word) person’s responsibility to observe with the discerning eye and all the wisdom one has to muster and not half-blindly embrace any goal-seeking force in the guise of some clever tagline or legitimate position arrived at via the path of pure fairness and logic. (If it drips more humanity honey than humans; if it screams wiser than the wise; if it is certain, simple and obvious – don’t touch!) Question everything (isn’t that an X-Files mantra?) I think the most important place to explore any position is at its source – identify the motive.
MORE RANDOMNESS
What do we want to write about? Is it the impetus for writing on such whims? Is it alcohol and its effects? Is it alcohol and its potential for having us write on such whims? Is it the quality of writing under such influence, the perceived quality of writing in stated conditions which becomes a lack of quality when stated conditions have come to pass or is it about writing or alcohol at all?
Brain cells are destroyed by this, irreparably, thus making it a poison of the worst order – a poison for which the body has no complete answer for complete recovery. No good so far. I am stupid and incoherent. It is a struggle to formulate logical sentences with the most effective choices from the current vocabulary and arrangement of them involved in only a more labored and ineffective way as the condition amplifies. Definitely no good there.
Freedom and honesty.
Focus.
Touching, encouraging and bringing forth necessary and important verbal expressions of the psyche that are there. Necessary and important because they ARE there. Or is that just part of the unleashed fantasy, and what is its motive and function?
Therapy or escape or something else?
Either way so many of us enjoy the exploration of this condition. A communal necessity or de-inhibiter. Potential for excess is obvious and uncontested, but is there a positive? Why a destructive drive within us – that is illogical? But evolution has raised us to a point of illogic that no others seem to have achieved (Suicide, etc.) Have we developed such powerful drives that they are even capable of overriding what many (most?, some?) would consider the paramount drive of all life – survival and proliferation? So, is there over-abuse? Or is all use equal to abuse and any argument even shaded with the contrary sentiment an excuse for…. well, for what exactly?
Gotta go. Committed to meeting friends (Thanksgiving tradition) tomorrow morning – and, yes, there will be drinking.
1/20/13
(This was a comment made after viewing the video “Conception to Birth-Visualized” by Alexander Tsiaras at http://youtube.com/fKyliukBE70)
[How many times has this been magnified?
A invisible-to-the-eye molecule can be examined under a microscope
making it look like a huge work of art ......
Too bad they aren't completely truthful by telling us that this has been
magnified beyond comprehension. No measurements either .......... so this is just
something for sensationalism ..
Keep abortion safe and legal. Abortion is an OPTION, not something women are sentenced to.
In some instances, it's best to abort. It's not like we have a population shortage. To each his
own. Be truthful about this and show measurements.]
The commenter refutes the validity of what has been witnessed as an illustrative and truthful showing of this biological and human process based solely on the fact that he or she cannot observe it without the aid of technological enhancement. In consideration of the fact that we did, nonetheless, just witness it, the obviousness of the absurdity and argumentative levitation from the sturdy ground of logic renders it unworthy of too much time and language. But I found it a compulsion to post it as it rings of the familiarity criterion necessary in validation. Being a species and society heavily dependent on the sense of sight in both expression and comprehension, it would seem those enslaved to this validation process (like the commentator above seems to be) would find an amoeba no more real than a fertilized and dividing egg. Of course, concepts like the amoeba, viruses, toxic gas and radiowaves are never argued (not to my knowledge anyway) because acceptance of them presents no psychological or practical hardship, nor does it challenge any position one has already chosen expressly to align with with feet dug in (ah, there’s that pride thing again maybe.) I know for the “pro-choice” set who would engage in legitimate philosophical debate this commentary isn’t worthy to bring to the table and I would never mean to throw it out there as a straw man or ascribe it to any group undeserving of its inanity. Personally, I just found it worthy as a passing note with regard to the familiarity confinement. Indulge me there, if you would. OK, moving on….
1/20/13 - 2
Is this the basic difference between a theist and a non-theist as they both observe and acknowledge the beauties and wonders of the world…
Theist: When I gaze on the beauties and wonders of the world which I know have existed before me and will continue long after me; their intricate systems and complexities, the nature of which my mind can never possibly comprehend but accepts as proof of something greater than I…. I must believe that it all has a great designer, for it is the only rational explanation I can accept.
Non-theist: When I gaze on the beauties and wonders of the world which I know have existed before me and will continue long after me; their intricate systems and complexities, the nature of which my mind can never possibly comprehend but accepts as proof of something greater than I…. I am able to accept that I can never comprehend with no debilitating level of distress. Upon examination of the solutions put forth by those who “must believe” (perhaps due to a fear of that debilitating distress) I find that those explanations do not survive their submergence in logic and exposure to the light of rational scrutiny.
Now, in basic form, I love both these guys (girls/girl and guy/guy and girl.) We would probably most agree that the complexity of the human, our societies and psycho-social mechanisms (which, like any complex system of which none really compare is unlikely to operate without a variety of imperfections) renders it virtually unable to operate at an optimum, blueprint-planned, level devoid of any “contaminations.” But if we are willing to hypothetically accept their sentiments at face value and without the suspicion that their origins were born of any deceit, fear of Truth, succumbing to social pressures, pride, ill will or any other form of large or small psychological dysfunction, this difference may be summed up in two sentences… The theist is motivated by that very human need for control (in understanding, not for power) because the incomplete picture is unsettling and denying of the stability needed to function safely and with awareness of purpose. The non-theist is motivated by a defensive reflex stirred into action to prevent the acceptance of any concept, without the security guard logic test, that may compromise and degrade the functionality of the psyche, thus making him vulnerable to the choices made based on a reality fraught with falsehoods which would impede positive progressions. It seems to me these positions may hold each in a place well-insulated against philosophical attacks. (I know, that would take all the fun out of arguing, wouldn’t it?) Instead, these both reflect an operative present in the functioning of humans and all life – survival instinct.
I, for one, would so much rather we not too often give into our philosophical frustrations with each other but, rather, channel any negative energies or compulsion to engage toward those among us who are incapable of even recognizing the beauties, and are even driven to destroy them, and those who set out to position themselves as greater than the complexities of the world and those who occupy it and deem themselves somehow more worthy of our attention. These are the ones who have been infested beyond recognition by those “contaminations.”
11/9/13
And so the sides are formed. One side is stirred by the perception that the stability of convention is compromised by the choice to engage these unprecedented challenges to the status quo mindset only to necessitate the appeasement of those few noisemakers who have stepped outside the Order and turned to hurl stones at it. The other side is aroused in a modern renaissance by the battle cry of liberation from the fetters of convention without honest and substantive contemplation and a respect for the evolution of intellect and its era-sensitive applications that are our civilization’s due.
Prayer before official state functions and state-sponsored gatherings or the Pledge of Allegiance. My mind is hung particularly on the Pledge right now and the might of convention. In a process exclusive to human culture and civilization, the Pledge has undergone a transformation observed only with institutions sharing its level of specialness. At its origin, it is a literary piece written by a human being (Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister in 1892) much like each of us. No doubt this author was a well-intentioned, country-loving, people-loving and, yes, God-loving person who embodied the most passionate elements of the reflection of patriotism of the time. Did you know that author’s name before this? I didn’t. I had to look it up (http://www.ushistory.org/documents/pledge.htm). That is because, as the Pledge itself matured from mere script into the mighty mantra uttered within the patriotic institution as we now know it, the pen and mind from whence it emerged have withered in importance like the proverbial cocoon to the gazer of the beautiful (and proverbial) butterfly. But with no intention of the slightest spec of disrespect, let us hold in consideration those humble and human beginnings for at least the duration of this rambling.
An assumed belief in God and his (her?) place in all that is and that happens, along with the obligatory nod to this assumption, is a key element included in the writings of the times within which convention and tradition as we know them were formed. I’m sure I’ll be motivated to ramble on that in a more expansive fashion at some point, but for now I can explore the Pledge as a microcosm of something bigger. I’m focused on that. (Yes, this is actually focus. Shush.)
To pledge or not to pledge, is that the question? To change or not to change, is that the question? Had the wording of the Pledge never come under scrutiny, the tradition of having school children drone it out as is for time indefinite without further consideration would be the course. Being not so, and that option being yanked from the table, there are three other options implied…
Firtst – No Pledge. (What’s the purpose of it?.) Second – Change the Pledge. (Remove God. What’s the purpose of him?.) Third – Pledge As Is. (What’s the purpose of change?)
Let’s consider the likely responses to each choice. Let me know if I missed any, but I think I got the basics covered. Let’s also develop a simple point system based on rating those reactions as: (mad)=-2; (not OK)=-1; (OK)=1; (happy)=2. The uninvolved and unaffected who would say, “ Whatever. If it stays the same, no matter. If it goes away, it’s not important anyway.” Represent 0 and, so, don’t figure into the calculations. Admittedly, the disregard for the popularity of each opinion may be seen as a major flaw, but this is a republic, not a democracy.
It might shake out like this…
No Pledge:
1a) No pledge, no controversy. This is good(OK)
1b) Don’t do it, With or without the God part. It’s about the nation anyway, not religion. The real spirit and intent is kept. The practice is good for kids and healthy for the unity of the nation.(not OK)
1c) Don’t do it. Leave it as is. God is an important part of all this. It is an important institution, part of our heritage and to remove even a piece of that would contribute to the crumbling of the fabric of what makes our nation. (mad)
Change Pledge:
2a) Must remove the God part. It is insensitive to have those who don’t share that irrelevant sentiment go through the motions as dictated by a disagreeable convention. It’s about the nation anyway, not religion. Don’t see the need for it all if it can’t be universally friendly. (OK)
2b) Must remove the God part. It is insensitive to have those who don’t share that irrelevant sentiment go through the motions as dictated by a disagreeable convention. It’s about the nation anyway, not religion. The real spirit and intent is kept. The practice is good for kids and healthy for the unity of the nation. (happy)
2c) I’m personally religious and like the God part. But, while removing it sucks, it doesn’t fundamentally change anything and I can deal with it. It’s about the nation anyway, not religion, and I believe in the separation of church and state. The real spirit and intent is kept. The practice is good for kids and healthy for the unity of the nation. ( OK)
2d) Don’t do it. Leave it as is. God is an important part of all this. It is an important institution, part of our heritage and to remove even a piece of that would contribute to the crumbling of the fabric of what makes our nation. (mad)
Leave As Is:
3a) It ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Changing it would be disrespectful to tradition. God is an important part of all this. It is an important institution, part of our heritage and to remove even a piece of that would contribute to the crumbling of the fabric of what makes our nation. (happy)
3b) Must remove the God part. It is insensitive to have those who don’t share that irrelevant sentiment go through the motions as dictated by a disagreeable convention. It’s about the nation anyway, not religion. Don’t see the need for it all if it can’t be universally friendly. (not OK)
3c) Must remove the God part. It is insensitive to have those who don’t share that irrelevant sentiment go through the motions as dictated by a disagreeable convention. It’s about the nation anyway, not religion. The real spirit and intent is kept. The practice is good for kids and healthy for the unity of the nation. (mad)
3d ) Whatever. The God stuff may be unnecessary. But if everyone’s gonna cry because change is unsettling, I’ll get through that. It’s about the nation anyway, not religion. The real spirit and intent is kept. The practice and moral implications are good for kids and the maintenance of tradition is healthy for the unity of the nation. It’s easier to just let traditions be. (OK)
Results:
1 No Pledge - -.67 points (-2 points divided by 3 groups)
2 Change Pledge – .5 points
3 Pledge As Is – 0 points
The result of my completely arbitrary (but pretty solid, I think) point system would support the decision, if one was obligatory, that the Pledge should be changed. A decision squeaking out a victory by .5 points. Am I ready to take the fruits of my formula to the streets and rally for change? Not even if it was a 2-point victory. Why not? The wording of the Pledge is not destructive or even problematic enough a thing to make the effort. Plus, I hate rallies.Frenzied stirrings of the sheep into passionate bonfires that discard intellect for simpler emotion. They often stop traffic and make uninvolved innocents late for work or life. But there those who feel the call to action.
So what’s next? The Bill of Rights? The Constitution?! Weren’t Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, et al also “just people” who often sprinkled theist sentiments into their nation-shaping speech? Well, now we’re venturing into the very core of our nation’s identity and beyond simply a dearly beloved verbal ritual, and we must tread delicately.
Well, that’s some ramble on the Pledge of Allegiance rumblings. More on the larger scope at another time.
“SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE”!! – (IS THAT A COLLISION COURSE UNFOLDING ON THE HORIZON BETWEEN TRADITIONAL RELIGIOUS UNDERTONES AND THOUGHT EVOLUTION??!!)
I’ve seen arguments asserting, purportedly with literary evidence, that Jefferson was at best a theist but by no means an avowed Christian. Others have come back to refute the evidence, claiming to know Jeff’s heart more intimately than their opponents. And back and forth. Frankly, the “he read/she read” stuff starts to make me dizzy and suspect people venture into those character explorations usually with the motive of wanted to support something they already want to believe about someone or something. You probably don’t need to look too far if you simply seek such affirmation to help you sleep better. Although people, especially great historical figures, are limitlessly fascinating, I’m not all that interested in that avenue of the discussion right now.
What I’m thinking is more along the lines of how we are all without immunity to being a product of and reflection of the world and environment in which we operate. Yes, even those who will rise to the level at which they will turn around and offer the pearls they’ve wrought back to that world which will play some part in its future development. Enter Mr. Jefferson.
There are many who feel compelled to remind us, in support of one argument or another, that the Europeans who would form the nucleus of this country came here to escape religious persecution. Largely true, I’m sure. Now that we’ve summarized what may have been the prevailing mindset of most of our earliest European settlers, let’s consider the harsh climatic conditions which drove the likes of Jefferson and company in their time. Having temporarily found enough room to spread out and allow most of that religion-based anxiety to be relieved, it was time for a new set of issues to rear up. Taxation without representation, the pressing and relentless thumb of a self-serving monarchy , distant and detached governance, etc. Yes, these would do nicely to stoke the flame and awaken the brilliance and heroism of our forefathers and foremothers to fight those demons leading to (thank you, again) the birth of this nation.
These battles were fought and the documents which are celebrated as testaments to that struggle authored with, yes, a decidedly Judeo-Christian tone in their makeup. (aka Old Testament-flavored, with religious references exclusively to that God and not specifically the Christ, that is.) No religion I’m aware of (I’m inviting an army of hardcores, I’m sure) has claimed the Constitution as a religious document. Any religious tonalities, inferences, or direct statements are simply reflections of the conventional mindset of the time. The Declaration of Independence was not a declaration of religious ubiquity but a declaration of the natural rights of humankind made by unequivocally religious men who shared the prevailing beliefs of the time and, of course, bonded those beliefs with permanence and inseparableness, even causally, to those natural human conditions.
Let’s cut to the chase here and not continue to get caught up on interpretation of the finer points of the texts here. After all, it’s all about the clear choices we need to identify and air out. Those choices are based on how we choose to define the nature of what, really, is the basis in all those documents and intentions upon which we sculpt in unbreakable stone our identity as a nation today. The fluidity observed in the dialogue of our age only betrays the vision of that identity which appeared, for all that time, to be sculpted in marble. So let’s be honest about that...
4/12/14
Someone just posted one of those pre-made, greeting-card-like things which are all over Facebook which said, “Yes I dance in my car. Yes I see you staring. No I don’t care.” The list of “attitude” cards is endless and I’m sure we all know them but it’s the ones with the basic “I am… and I don’t care what you think” flavor that catch my attention. I find such things, rampant as they seem to be, interesting and telling. These proclamations always seem to be a desperately defensive scream. No one is asking the speaker if they care about others perceptions or opinions, yet they feel compelled to let us know in large colorful letters anyway, any chance they get. Making this kind of effort and even having this must-tell attitude tells me strongly that, in fact, you DO care. And very much so. Relax. It’s OK to care. This doesn’t equal some admission of unjust pressure to have to alter who you are to accommodate others’ existences or something. Really, relax. Many things are assumed about the “observer” in your tale, whose simply observing you you feel the need to verbally lash out at. You assume that they are somehow operating with a poisonous predisposition, outside of their natural right to observe the curious world around them. This is what all conscious people do, isn’t it? We observe things. Maybe for lack and want of understanding; maybe as a result of being hooked by some sentimental stirring or useful reminder; maybe just for the sheer experience of the beauty of the moment. Why is it assumed that this observer has some negative supposition about you dancing in your car? Why are they necessarily degrading you in their own minds based on your behavior? Would you really not stare at someone dancing in their car, or anything else out of the ordinary? I think that would be notably weird and unnatural. Why are we so defensive and conditioned for battle? Is there a real insecurity with how others view you and “standing out in the crowd” that is masked by this overly-emphatic declaration that you aren’t insecure about it at all? Isn’t that something to consider? Something the “observed” proclaimer should probably consider? Maybe we should care about other’s perceptions about us, about everything in our environment. Not because in doing so we have somehow surrendered some bit of power to them which they will, in turn, use to dictate even a minute aspect of the course we will then take in life. Conversely, maybe you have in fact inspired them in some minutely positive direction – without exercising power over them against their will. Maybe we are in this together, the experience. Maybe that’s all part of what makes us stronger, rather than an excuse to try to solidify “me-ness” and separation of “what I do” vs. “what you think about it”. Maybe if you feel like dancing in your car and someone else feels like watching you should smile and dance harder. Hell, maybe they’ll join you. Maybe not. Either way, this speaker’s response seems unwarranted and its motive(s) worth exploring. I think there is something askew in the perception here, but it is not with the “observer” who didn’t feel so disturbed or in need of posting something confrontational about you dancing in your car.
PREJUDICE AND PRECAUTION
This is the definition of “prejudice” as taken from the Merriam-Webster dictionary 2014 version:
1: injury or damage resulting from some judgment or action of another in disregard of one's rights; especially : detriment to one's legal rights or claims
2: a (1) : preconceived judgment or opinion (2) : an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge
b : an instance of such judgment or opinion
c : an irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics
This is the definition of “prejudice” as taken from Webster’s 1928 version, in case anyone is interested to see if there has been an evolution in the accepted meaning (as I often am with potentially contentious and flame-stoking terms of accusation):
1. Prejudgment; an opinion or decision of mind, formed without due examination of the facts or arguments which are necessary to a just and impartial determination. It is used in a good or bad sense. Innumerable are the prejudices of education; we are accustomed to believe what we are taught, and to receive opinions from others without examining the grounds by which they can be supported. A man has strong prejudices in favor of his country or his party, or the church in which he has been educated; and often our prejudices are unreasonable. A judge should disabuse himself of prejudice in favor of either party in a suit.
2. A previous bent or bias of mind for or against any person or thing; prepossession.
3. Mischief; hurt; damage; injury. Violent factions are a prejudice to the authority of the sovereign.
A few interesting comparisons I thought. Take the first 1928 definition. I imagine it echoing through some ivy league hall from a stuffy old philosophy professor laying down the rules for his thinkers-in-training on the first day of class. He refers to the opinions and decisions of mind in reference to country, party and church – all entities based in ideology. Contrast that with the 2014 definition which immediately damns the term by making it, first, personal rather than philosophical (“of another”; “one’s”) and, second, about attacking rather than perceiving and viewpoint. We are quick to focus on individual rights and claims here, but assumedly with “disregard” and “detriment”. In 1928 apparently “it is used in a good or a bad sense.” In 2014, no good. 1928 – “previous bent or bias of mind for or against any person or thing”; 2014 – “an adverse opinion or leaning”. The no. 2 definition of 1928 and no. 2c of 2014 seem to be basically the same (except for the “for or against” thing) but the latter focuses on individuals, groups and races while the former is broadened beyond scope. I find no. 3 of 1928 a bit of a head-scratcher. While 2014 has “damage”, “detriment”, “adverse” and “hostility mixed all in there, 1928 quarantines these nasty terms to their own penned up no. 3. But it almost seems detached from the spirit of it all. When and why did they decide to inject that venom into a word that breaks down into simply “pre” and “judge”. Thoughts? Maybe it’s the “ice” they added – so cold.
Anyway, I’m gonna hang onto the whole “pre” and “judge” parts. A judge makes judgments because he or she has to. When there is an injustice, there must be some resolution or punishment as demanded by the law. This judgment is made based on all relevant information obtainable and presented via a, presumably, orderly procedure. The key here is that this process should include an openness to all available information. That is the best we can do. This is not rushed and once such judgment is made we have to accept that it was done as fairly as can be. (This is all theoretical of course, but we won’t go into criticizing the legal or judicial system right here.) Rather than “pre”, judgment, true judgment is made “post” or after consideration of all available information. It is also made without the pressure of a time limit.
Considering again the 1928 definition, a pre-judgment is truly a judgment because the subjects implied have committed to and accepted a view or definition of something (or someone or some idea) as truth. It is, for them, a final conclusion. But it is “pre” because they have chosen to settle onto this conclusion without considering all relevant information on the matter. But I ask, can you honestly blame one for that? Is it even possible in a lifetime of openness to be exposed to and absorb ALL RELEVANT INFORMATION? To have no solid conception of what reality is would be crippling. How could one move onward without a defined or visible path? The blind abyss isn’t a life but just amorphous, chaotic existence. It’s about the survival instinct. Without order we cannot function and without function we do not survive.
1928 – “it is used in a good or bad sense”. Survival is good, right. Disrupt someone’s order and they are threatened. We rush to it for safety. But this is not what we think of when we think of survival instinct, is it? We think “fight or flight”. We think about that reaction to a potential threat of any kind or severity as we perceive it unfold before us on that primordial level. Pay attention to it or not, it is always there, poised and ready to be triggered in any healthy creature. And it is often these reactions that are judged by the non-threatened objectively as prejudice. I think in such circumstances the phenomenon should more aptly be considered “precaution”.
While judgment must be “post”, caution must be “pre”. What good is “postcaution”? While true judgment must be concerned with truth, caution must be concerned with possibilities because possibilities can harm. Caution does not have the luxury of time and suspension of emotion that true and honest judgment has an ability to enjoy and a duty to exercise.
If we consider this quick commitment to precautionary action (or reaction) as within the scope of the 2014 definition, then everyone prejudges. It’s part of living for those of us who must and who are not all-knowing. The difference with these “prejudgments” is that they are not entirely “judgements” at all. They are “precautions”.
Is that all to say that I am so naïve that I discount the potential for someone to truly enter a situation with such deep-rooted as to be unyielding to flexibility concepts of certain “realities”? Of course not. This is something we are all at times guilty of without the objective position from which to recognize it. Guilty, yes, because these are just more common flaws in the operation of the mind machine – instances of cognitive immobility and thought calcification. But recognizing the difference is important if failing to do so only launches us into a spiral of conflict.
Now hows about we ride this little take on prejudging, or the survival instinct’s little mechanism of precaution before action, through two little scenarios involving what seems to be everyone’s favorite topic (fantasy though it may be) – race…
Billy Bob (he’s a “white” guy) is wandering through an alley at night in a part of town of ill repute. Two “black” guys (OK, Leroy and Bubba) are approaching him as both slip their hands into their pockets. A million thoughts rattle through Billy Bob’s head as his survival instinct is triggered into action. Synapses snap and “most likely” case scenarios that will present danger are calculated based on all the resources that the limited database in his brain and its processer can provide. The data is based on his personal experience, what he has read, what he has heard from friends and family, his physical surroundings, etc.
Is Billy Bob to be shamed for his response to his situation or the possible conveyance of his apprehensions via his behaviors, looks, etc.? His is a set of responses shaped by pre-conditioning to a concept of what could well be upon entering a situation (precautionary), not a determination of what is based on facts before those facts have been presented or evidenced (pre-judgmental).
Later that weekend, Leroy and Bubba find themselves entering a tavern in some neighborhood across town which is reputed for it’s incredibly delicious burgers. They stop in to find out for themselves and have a few beverages. They soon discover (because prior experiences, what they have grown up being told and reading and all the other resources that the limited databases in their brains and those processors can provide have conditioned them to be hyperaware of certain “important” observations) that they are the only “black” people in the establishment. Now here come “the looks”. In reality these are the same looks that are cast around in a public setting non-stop and not worthy of any deeper interpretation than that people are always observing their surroundings and processing visual stimuli. Next here comes the inaudible conversation of those who don’t want to be heard. This also never happens in a room filled with strangers. Right?
Are Leroy and Bubba to be shamed for their negative interpretations of observations in this scenario? If we apply the same reasoning as we did to the Billy Bob encounter, it would depend on whether part of their pre-conditioning includes perceiving a calculable threat in this environment or if it is just their pride and intolerance at the idea of being viewed differently (more negatively) than the other patrons view one another. The likelihood of a meaningful threat as their survival mechanism calculates is in direct proportion the amount of precaution justifies their reaction as opposed to simple prejudice. Now should they find themselves in a place from which tales of race-based violence (true, false or over-embellished) have been spawned, observing Union Jacks proudly displayed and White Pride signs-aplenty, the lack of comfort enough to chat it up with the strangers would seem more precautionary. There can be a sense that the sheer numbers could work to fortify a prevailing mindset of some “white might” territorialism. This reaction is not to discount the possibility that each person present is quite harmless and good natured when properly judged on his/her own merits and to conclude or pre-judge otherwise.
We can add that Leroy, Bubba and Billy Bob all have friends who identify as “black”, “white” and other designations and the scenarios above are no less feasible. Leroy’s good ol’ boy friends with their cowboy hats and country music (although he may not quite get the music taste) have earned his respect. Likewise, Billy Bob is grateful to have his hip-hopper chums whom he knows to be people of admirable integrity. But in those relationships, proper judgments of character have been made in due time (not “pre”) and any stimulus-induced caution is either unnecessary and absent or arises later from the weighing of facts collected and not possibilities calculated.
Nature has given us the ability to process information and an incredible rate and make instinctive, precautionary actions. It can only operate for him or her within the confines of what he or she has on the hard drive though, so to speak. Sadly, the twisted fetters of language and semantics, “precaution” and “prejudgment”, etc. have clouded what should be a respect and appreciation for this process. Instead we unfairly prejudge the actions of this subject and slap on them that readied label of unfair prejudgment. We quibble over who was offended by such reactions rather than make an effort to be open to why and how those actions came to be. Useless. How about we try to be open to all available information before truly pre-judging, and being cautious not to pre-judge certain responses as pre-judgments and not precautions? (Wait… what?)
$15 AN HOUR
So there have been demonstrations and rallies going on composed of fast food employees and those who support their efforts to have the minimum wage raised to $15 an hour. The sides are drawn as usual. But I’m not interested in the economic theories, facts and fine details of the arguments. I know, how irresponsible of me. Basically one side champions the idea that corporate wealth should be shared among those on the bottom rungs and that it is inhuman to expect someone working any job full-time to do so making wages that a family can’t survive on. Then the other side spells out a whole chain reaction scenario in which every factor comprising the economy is effected by what seems a simple and fair gesture of humanness such that the ultimate result is a damaging and downward plunge of the economy effecting all in a negative way. That’s the basic gist. But I’m struck by other thoughts as I hear and read about this.
Here we have both the mob dynamic illustrated and the me-focus on display. I think I’ll call it the “me-mob”. Sounds like an oxymoron, but not really.
Once the mob effect is ignited, those empowered by it become exclusively focused on their own agenda of the moment with complete disregard for all else. Like with cattle or ants, theirs is a singular movement void of rational thought. This is not the time for debate or openness to other views or fair, give-and-take discussion. There are no doors or windows. This is the mob. It is its own life form and will act until the collective emotion has run its course. Humans are, after all, just the most intelligent herd animals on Earth.
That condition serves to fortify the state of mind which denies that there is a world out there and encloses one so effected in that steel chamber to be absorbed by the “me”. A very defined focus. It started with an awareness of some discomfort with one’s state. That discomfort unresolved renders one unable to (or at least to have great difficulty with) allowing some energy to be allotted to the task of being aware of the others. Other people. Other views. Other possibilities. A bigger picture in which each element is connected to and affected by each other to define the whole picture. Without that ability, the discomfort is soon met by others and the energies magnify each other as like minds and spirits will do. The numbers build. The concept is publicized and legitimized and the mob effect ignites.
The “me-mob” fails to see injustice in how others may be effected negatively by their immediate positive gain (again, not to make that argument but to point out the general closing to that discussion).The “me-mob” fails to see injustice in blocking the traffic to make all aware of their demands at the cost of being late for their own duties, fulfilling their children’s needs, or other of life’s daily grinding chores (some of which might, at that moment, hold someone’s life or future to its accomplishment). But no one in the “me-mob” asked. This is not part of their agenda for justice and, after all, at this moment the world is about them.
So, what is it they want? A fair wage. An unhindered chance at the American Dream. The deserved resources to provide for a family, as is their right. Sounds good on the surface, but I do have a few questions.
What exactly is a “fair wage”? How much money should professional athletes make? Or teachers and cops? How about union carpenters? Or non-union accountants? Or self-employed web designers? Or landscapers, magazine-binding machine operators, tour guides, cancer researchers, political pundits, trash collectors, life coaches (how do you get that job) kitchen utensil salespeople or that guy who announces the big fights in A.C.? Or how about fast food workers? I currently make a living doing a job about which I’ve heard both sides use, I think, the same data to show me how I make too much money or not enough. I just shrug. I dunno. I thought in a free-market society the market dictated that through the laws of supply-and-demand and so forth. I have no idea if I make a “fair wage”, am underpaid or am overpaid. I do feel comfortable enough to say that if someone was to make $15 an hour cooking and selling fast food – I am underpaid. But why, again, is everyone else in this me-mob so sure that they are underpaid? That certainty seems to be related to the other two chief concerns as mentioned above…
The American Dream! This is a patriotic concept, right? OK, what exactly is this American Dream? I thought it was living in a free society which does not create by its laws or by the illegal and unethical actions of its members hinder someone on their path to achieve, work for and earn the lifestyle they desire. (No, I’m not so naïve as to think selfish, unfair and shady practices aren’t taking place. But the perpetrators are not part of that society. They are saboteurs of it. Humans are flawed. Deal with it as it comes.) It seems to me that many in the me-mobs view it as living in a society in which our belonging to that society alone bestows on us the right to have what everyone else is earning. If we were all Rockefellers, Buffets and Gateses there would have to be ridiculous wealth in this country to maintain us all. Would we be pointing at those lavish lifestyles of the Saudi princes and demanding our rights to more? OK, implying that all the me-mobbers believe they should each be living such lifestyles is unfair. So, what then is the lifestyle that all, without exclusion, are entitled to by virtue of their belong to this society? That’s the question and there seems to be one main answer with a variety of definitions. More layers…
“I want the deserved resources to provide for a family, as is my right” sayeth the me-mobber. This may ruffle some feathers but it is a big one to me and I sort of take it personally. Why is it that children, the most cherished and important responsibility we could commit to, are seen as a right and not a privilege? Why are they knowingly brought into a situation in which they will struggle for happiness and even survival simply because the parent(s) feels she and/or he must exercise her or his right to parenthood? The desire to have children and provide them with comfort, safety and a chance at happiness and prosperity should be more than enough motivation to go and get that lifestyle by way of the American Dream avenue. It seems to me to be selfish and backwards thinking (or at least poor planning) to bring human beings into the world under your care before you can provide for them, and then expect the economic system to turn upside down to accommodate your half-baked decisions. And this seems to be the unspoken yet most driving factor behind all this - providing for the family rather than starting a family within adequate provisions. So I’m speaking it. Why do we turn a blind eye to this dangerously irresponsible and epidemic practice? Ah, how dare I question one’s right to have children. I guess I’m just more concerned with the childrens who were forced into a trying situation beyond any choice. This seems to always be at the center of this movement when all the dust and rhetoric is cleared.
So if we use the pyramid model to illustrate success (if you prefer rungs of a ladder then just imagine each pyramid’s layer as a rung), shouldn’t it go something like this… The base or foundation is survival. Survival really involves much less than many will admit. Really anything beyond sustaining life, mobility and human functionality is in excess of survival. Beyond that is a series of comforts we seek. Here we must prioritize and maybe, just maybe, there are some variations with that. Nonetheless, self-empowerment gains you the ability to acquire those things. Self-empowerment includes education and employment. So you may want to get that entry-level job so that it affords you survival and, say, a GED. The GED, along with hardwork and social engagement (schmoozing), etc. may get you a slightly better-paying job (or not). Next you may want an educational certificate (automotive, computer, culinary, whatever). This in turn will open up more focused possibilities which will equate to pay increase. This is the beginning of “skilled labor”. If you have further desire for greater comforts and more of life’s possible benefits, you hone your skills and intensify the work ethic. You impress and flaunt what you know and can do. You prove to those who can empower you that you are worthy of this opportunity. Next layer = and more money = more opportunity to have. This really isn’t rocket science. So… etc., etc., etc. In time, you earn the resources with which to responsibly support and care for a family. Meanwhile, those back at the entry-level, or minimum wage, jobs are beginning their journey.
The problem with that course is that many of those set upon it have made illogical and irresponsible choices and flawed prioritization practices. They have picked the fruits from the higher levels on the pyramid before they have developed the ability to digest them. The course of goal attainment is not in synch with the course of attainment of the tools necessary to handle those goals. The goals, then, are really incomplete and the situation is unworkable or dysfunctional. Now we find ourselves at a higher “have” level on the pyramid than our currently occupied “handle” level of it. In discomfort and frustration we scream out our solution to the problem. Re-arrange the pyramid. Pull the levels down to me since I am not up to them. I can halt growth and the upward rise because you can bring what I need now down to me. My discomfort defines me as victim and my victimhood defines me as in need of the restoration of basic human rights. No one should rightfully be a victim, after all. Re-define this level by endowing it with the fruits of that level up their on which the goals I have prematurely snatched reside. Bring that $15, commensurate with the goals I have chosen to take on, down here to me on the $8 level. It is the only way I can meet the needs of and sustain those goals. To not do so would leave them to suffer and stagnate. You have the ability to do this for me, and my goals, and to fail at this would be inhuman and irresponsible of you. The murmur under the screams of the me-mob is “you are equally responsible for my decisions.”
Equality. What does it mean with regard to the contexts within which we find it? Is it always necessary, fair and good? This is a hot concept to save for another rambling. But a large part the minimum wage me-mobbers’ battle cry is about shrinking wage disparities. I need a little more logic behind the idea that everyone in a small group making lots of money making less money is good for everyone else and directly correlates with the large group making much less money actually making more money. I just need more logic, that’s all. If I had a dime for every time I heard or read someone state that this or that corporate CEO is making too much money I would probably be richer than all of them. People don’t become CEO’s by lottery drawings or cronyism (alone). They have to perform because the wealth of many others who don’t give a damn about those individuals depends on their effectiveness. You are not that CEO making those decisions and that money because you didn’t earn that position and likely (for most of us) would fail miserably in it. But I bet you wouldn’t consider yourself “overpaid” if you were in such a position, would you? Not one of you is going to jump into Derek Jeter’s shoes and do his job when he steps down and make his obscene amounts of money for playing a game and, no, it’s not because you don’t want to. Is it? Didn’t think so. But how many have complained that he makes too much and should make less so the Yankees can offer rebates to all the deserving and entitled ticketholders? Income disparity! Anyone?
10/11/14
On the consideration of human nature and are we good vs. evil by nature…
Reading “The Origins of Political Order” by Francis Fukuyama regarding the characteristics of human interaction between individuals compared to, or after developed into, interaction between social groups. Here he leans toward the Hobbesian idea that man’s propensity for violence is a natural one as we are constantly in competition for survival with one another. This opposed to Rousseau’s view “that primitive human beings were peaceful isolated, and that violence developed only at a later stage when society had begun to corrupt human morals.”
I am, again, reminded of what seems to be an emergence of the sub-groups and sub-cultures. These have larger and prouder memberships, better definition and solid senses of self. How do we define the groups in which we align ourselves with? Does the protester of corrupt, racist cops in Ferguson; or the luch group bemoaning the “welfare-addicted leeches”; or the “99 percenter” toting a sign that the rich “1 percenter” is the evil and oppressive enemy place these conflicts as paramount to any concern for the threat of the Al-Quaeda soldiers who gather to foment a hatred for and intent to destroy the evil existence which is “the West”? Is that murderous collective and the like even aware of the concept of “99 percenter” or economic equality and have they ever heard of Ferguson, or Martin Luther King or the Alaskan Pipeline?
It seems that in this country (and likely others which have enjoyed long periods of inner-development and freedom from continuous physical attacks against them, as nations) identifies less with itself as a nation first. It’s given lip service and the ritual motions of hanging the flag on Independence Day. But if we were able to go person-to-person and read our hearts, where would we find our primary affiliations lie? It starts to scare me how our inward focus and obsession with these more immediate sub-conflicts, in perpetuity, could serve to weaken us against the external threats. As those in this country quibble over how to label, align and sort one another, the doors remain wide open with porous borders to whomever seeks access. Vulnerability?
Enter the peaceniks singing Imagine and swooning to the mantra of “living as one” and “peace on Earth”. To consider what that would look like and if it is even an eventuality, I’m guessing few of us expect it will be achieved any time soon. But now I’m back to Fukuyama’s declaration that violence is a natural element associated with group competition. More is implied here. That is, affiliation with groups sharing a common interest, resources, etc. is a development in the struggle to survive. Without being absorbed into the strength of numbers you are vulnerable to be taken out quickly. So is the recognition of an exterior threat, or enemy, a prerequisite to the establishment of social cohesion? If this world peace was achieved and we existed under the big umbrella of common human interests, and there was no longer an identifiable enemy, would social cohesion become obsolete, become flabby, then atrophy? Would we re-define our wants and needs and, thus, the threats to them? Would we develop into a state of emerging individual-level conflicts when we recognize less the importance of affiliation with the larger group as protection and necessary for survival? Would our affiliations redefine microcosmically? Or did Rousseau have a better bead on human nature and we are by nature non-violent individuals capable of caring for each other without personal interests in appeasing the complex, yet protective, group to motivate us?
September, 2014
Some AI scientists are big on the idea of picking apart the human brain, the holy grail of organic gadgets. It is the most powerful of all computers. They devote all time and energy to understanding of it to its finest detais, then building robots in a rigid attempt to recreate its structure.
You have to find some amusement in the desire and endeavor to build a copy of this perfect computer with all its functional intricacies when nature is churning out the real deal like a Chinese assembly line. And while this is the way of things, we don’t seem so intent on nurturing the development of these awesome devices in our children. We’d rather be wowed by and purchase the latest high-tech offerings for our children to obsess on and be enslaved by. They were born without the greatest computer they could ever possess but seem less and less wowed by it with every generation. The resources to assist are in abundance but the desire to develop this awesome thing toward its potential is eclipsed by the addictive fascination with the gadgetry. The outside stimuli trump the inner processor.
October, 2014
A mob from several directions reaches the top of the stairs. But these stairs only allow two abreast at a time going down. No problems. This one, then that one, proceeding in an orderly flow. Like a shuffling deck, or what I call “the zipper”. It just makes sense – this one then that one in equal turns. It gets the job done efficiently. And not a word is spoken. There is no discussion, just a split-second silent decision pre-negotiated on the basis of logic and experience. Similarly crowds shuffle about in all directions all the time with no signs or traffic lights and rarely is there a crash. It all works out without discussion, planning and hesitation.
Then I get to the Dunkin’ Donuts at the station. It’s morning so, of course, many of the horde need their java jumpstart. A line forms. But it does so in a most illogical way. It stretches across the thoroughfare walkway where all travelers must pass from this place to that. Before long it creates a blockage and a kink in the flow of things. Upon looking, it is obvious that the most effective choice would be to wrap the line to one side or the other along the counter and side counter of the D&D and out of the way of traffic. But which way, left or right? Who decides and starts the turn which will decide the direction of the
There is now a complexity as this process involves more than the two that are involved in the basic component of “the zipper” or the split-second crash avoidance during the hustle and bustle. Here the mob instinct kicks in. Any one of us can look objectively at the setup and know exactly what the best approach to organizing the situation for best effectiveness for everyone should be. But now there are numbers involved and we wait for some collective voice from the mob to dictate our movement and placement. There is no calling upon independent thought or self-generated logic on which to base the action. There is the dictation of the numbers. One person simply stands in front of what is desired (coffee) and the others do what the mob always does – follow. And so an obstructive line, identifiable to all, still stretches across the hall.
Wouldn’t it be cool if the world’s problems, perpetuated by gridlock, were as easily resolved as with the application of “the zipper”. There is only a momentary and necessary impediment to the speed of movement but, ultimately, both progress forward equitably. So this Palestinian and this Israeli meet at the top of a staircase. . .
ROBOTS ON POETRY
Once robots are advanced enough to “experience understanding” of concepts with greater detail than humans, one result will be their “understanding” of the concept of poetry as a useless one. Poetry and music are largely a result of confusion in humans as to lack of understanding of experience. The built-in survivalist need to understand all we encounter and all that effects us drives us to explain what we cannot explain with any of those tools we have handy – metaphor, evocative image and sound, etc. Expressions like these are a desperate cry from the incomplete mind in the face of its complex and over-stimulating world for help. Fear of the danger of not understanding. The advanced robot will describe the how, what and why of any “experience” such to provide an “understanding” sufficient to it for it to carry on.
But the robot could not and would not explore the places in which expressions are concocted. They are another plane of existence – a by-product of the definable and measurable components of humanness, but undetectable within those definitions and measurements. The only practical pursuit for the robot is to define the state of all known constructs when the desired moment is achieved. To replicate those conditions successfully is the only logical end goal for the robot in pursuit.
The stimulus/response relationship as a foundation for art is not the work of a mindful technician. Those who manage to speak the language successfully didn’t create and can’t dissect into its definable components. It is something that developed hand-in-hand with human experience. Could someone who planted and nurtured a tree step back, way back, and claim credit for the entire worldscape?
There is beauty in the moment because the psyche is fed the stimulation it required to balance something askew in the desired and safe order. Then the mysterious conjurations of the”art” don’t need an explanation. They have succeeded in replacing a pleasurable state. Maybe they are the churnings of primordial agents who have grown in the deep caverns of sub-consciousness forged during the untrackable course of the evolution of exclusive humanness.
These can’t be the purposeful constructs of some pre-designed and logical mechanism. The robot is inoperable without logic and reason in design and demands it in interpretation of mechanism. Maybe art can be reduced to logical elements. But maybe these components are amorphous and do not exist within the restrictive language the robot must use to define it. But they will carry on. The robot will have no use or true desire for poetry.
A FAIRNESS OF RELATIVITY FOR ALL
If we step back from all the feelings and ideas that have been cultivated within us over a lifetime, and just look at the concept at its most fundamental, doesn’t a flat-rate tax (and all mandated societally-shared contributions) seem logical? People love throwing out the roar of “pay your fair share”. All things relative (not equal, that’s different), isn’t the “fair” part whatever percentage is deemed “fair” by whoever is empowered and believed wise enough to make that decision of what one owes the whole compared to what they owe themselves for their efforts? So, relatively speaking, shouldn’t he who earns $100.00 in a society where 10% is deemed “fair” be equally as obligated to contribute his $10.00 as he who earns $1,000,000.00 is to contribute $100,000.00?
Seriously and “fairly” consider the simple logic of this alone before allowing yourself to widen the scope and allow all the legal, social, political and personal idiosyncrasies of our collective experience and various other criteria gathered over the years of watching and listening in consideration of the people factors to enter the equation.
OK, now let it in. Ooh, I hear two concepts beginning to rumble around. They are the absolute poor and the unencumbered rich motifs.
Many come to occupy a position from which they ask, “Why should those who have so little to survive on be expected to give, making their place even more difficult, when they should be helped by those who have more?” What appears to be a stark humanness of this question makes its obvious answer an easy sell. But what seems to be a gesture of justice in practice is only a reflex which begins to crumble the order of our perfect little fairness line. The fairness established by logic is betrayed by emotion with the flaw of focused vision.
Fairness is fairness to all and therefore can’t be considered through any but the view of the whole. The fairness line of relativity is accompanied by a mathematical line which ascends in a naturally progressive way. That is, those with less give less and those with more give more in an ascending order which is even and perfect as defined by the stated percentage on which the linear relativity is based. There’s no more perfect and fair application of socialism than what’s already built in. But, in practice, the structuralists in power attempt to remedy what isn’t broken in response to the flawed, zoom-focused views of it. Pandering to the idea of “the poor” shouldn’t have to pay, they take it upon themselves to define “the poor”. As a result, we have some randomly-decided point of demarcation below which are lumped “the poor” and above which are lumped the “other-than-poor” (to be further lumped into sub-lumps with more choppy and random demarcations) who suddenly should be expected to contribute because they made that extra dollar. This all replaces a clean system of evenly-ascending “have” with a series of sections of nonsensically-defined chaos and “unfairness”. Unfair because it has discarded the idea of relativity which should the synonym of fairness, not its enemy.
Then there is the plateau from which many, aided by both accurate profiles and grotesque stereotypes of those who financially have more, look up to see those rich who “unfairly have more than they need” (a rather subjective and unquantifiable diagnosis). Brewing jealousy, a general dislike of certain persons and lustful imaginings of “what we could have” creep up from the gut and stir the head to churn out some concoction which puts to redefining our idea of “fairness.” Like the position of former mention, we are operating here with a diminished scope of things – look at those filthy rich – and not the whole picture of our perfect little fairness line.
But we, through our elected officials, allow this tattering of our perfect line of fairness relativity. And those officials are willing instruments of these attacks. The further difficulty is that this can all be done within the law – but that is more of a digression. We emerge from all that smoke and chaos with the watered-down and misdirected idea that all wealthy (however defined) are somehow guilty and as punishment they (unencumbered by financial hardships) must contribute more financially. (This of course won’t happen because of the twisting and contortion of our perfect line – legally – but that reality seems to elude many who are caught up in this “fairness” quagmire.) The flaw of this thinking is that it lends itself to the re-twisting and reshaping of our perfect little fairness line (largely in retaliation to the same doing by others).
But didn’t we accept the pure, linear logic of mathematical relativity back there? Didn’t we? You let your thinking get soiled, didn’t you? For the first randomly-defined group you let feelings of guilt for having more and sympathy for those who have less blur the one end of our line of relative “fairness” so that it appears to be “unfairness” when you fail to remain at the necessary distance to see the whole line for its perfect relativeness. Then you did the same with the other randomly-defined group at the other end with ideas of greed and lack of caring and out-of-touchness – the evil takers.
So we randomly decide and execute through tax laws which definitively slice our perfect line into nonsensical, incongruous segments. Take a holistic view of the incomescape again. Isn’t Cathy, who makes $6,000.00 relatively as much richer than Joe, who makes $3,000.00 as Jane, who makes $3,000,000.00 is relatively as much poorer than Fred, who makes $6,000,000.00? Ouch, I dared to associate “rich” with that pair of numbers and “poor” with that other pair? If those semantics make you uncomfortable and get that blurring going again, disregard them and just look at the numbers (and their associated contributions at the flat 10% rate) and everything should settle back down to making perfect sense.
If you allow yourself to go back to the foundation, I think you’ll see the perfection in relativity as the basis for “fairness”.
THE PARKING TEST
Without, and maybe even with, some sense of being under the eye of a scrutinizing observer, many people tend to default to “me” mode rather than “we” mode. Their choices and actions are automatically made with regard only for what is convenient or accommodating to them in the moment. They don’t look back with any further consideration.
The early-morning side street by the train station is my laboratory for social scientific observation. The Parking Test. It goes like this…
We start with a long stretch of curbside open parking space. This will soon be filled with working class train sardines. Once it is used up, the late-comers are forced to paid parking and the later-comers have to find what they can where they can and hoof it for some distance to the station.
There is an obvious and logical system to parking conducive to the goal of accommodating as many of “us” as possible. The earliest bird parks at the end of the street closest to the station, of course. One-by-one, each rational and considerate team player back his or her car as close to the previous car as would allow that driver the ability to make the exit comfortably at day’s end. No need to waste an inch of space more than that and the team players are mindful of this. (You could pull in forward at the far end of the street. The point is, get it in there as tight as possible.) But here comes the “me”-centered asshole, the big chief on the island of his (her) mind who makes the executive decision to just park where his car stops. There is no effort to back up or to ease in toward the car behind or in front, eyeing up that distance with any discernment. Too much trouble to measure that reasonable and optimum distance. He is parked and that is all he needs.
So I find myself walking along to the train checking out all the space between cars and scolding the selfish and inconsiderate drivers in my head. I make a rough calculation of how many more people could have parked on that street if the “me’ people (or “meople”) had behaved like team players and taken their reasonable positioning within the space each should have allotted him or herself. Instead, others got boned.
In how many other situations could we apply a Parking Test equivalent and observe the transgressions of the meople, often with more negatively impacting results for others inconvenienced by their selfish choices than just a longer walk to the train.
EVERYONE IS WATCHING (6/3/15)
We fear the NSA and other phantom government powers invading our privacy. Yes, there is a constitution-based legitimacy to this concern that I’m not about to brush aside. But why are we not up-in-arms about the citizens around us, trigger-happy with their cameraphones at every whim and impulse, breaching our right to privacy and dignity?
Weren’t there laws against displaying or publishing someone’s image without consent? Are these still in place and have we just been so overwhelmed by perpetrations to a point of commonplace that we we gave up any attempt to prosecute as passé and unrealistic?
Techno-gossip. The majority wouldn’t normally confront someone regarding a perceived wrongdoing, or go through the proper channels to report it. Don’t make the effort to get involved. They would tell a friend though. In fact, they have to. We are compelled to tell. This powerful urge is the reason most criminals are eventually caught. They have to tell someone. But when you tell one person it’s not gossiping or tattletaling. It’s confiding. Then everyone “confides” so that, in time, no bit of info is ever confidential in potential from its first utterance. It is inevitably spread and subject to countless alterations, embellishments and compromises to integrity. It becomes gossip. The trigger-happy cameraphone lot have an easy, fast and accessible channel through which to launch this. But it is done visually, not verbally. It moves as intangible bits from phone to database to multiple unengaged relay agents (viewers) on multiple intangible, platforms with lightning speed – all from an anonymous source. All conducive to the wildfire spread of gossip. Techno-gossip.
They are everywhere, watching and waiting for their facebook/youtube/journalistic moment. And they will strike. They can’t help it. They are now conditioned to. No, not “the government”, everyone around you. “Friends” even shame “friends” because the lure of contributing to the media show-all frenzy is far stronger than the relationships or the wonder of consequences. Just strike and show what you got! Let’s face it, we’re all guilty of some moronic, negligent, absent-minded, non-conscientious, blithering outburst, decision or behavior some time. Just hope they don’t catch you, or you too can be the subject of a viral shame video. Maybe even spark a heated controversy-of-the-week to boot.
So do you say the ease of exposing those dirty little doings is a good thing because it’s good for the perpetrators of any questionable behavior large or small to be exposed by the anonymous, who otherwise wouldn’t? Or have we flooded the world with the tools to breach personal barriers at will and subject everyone to microscopic and inconsequential scrutiny for our own entertainment and satisfaction of that societal addiction to drama and gossip? Or is it both?
(6/4/15)
The work of lawmaker champions is never done. Tireless and vigilant they strike against that grain of misguided course. Truth and nature are askew again. They must save society from itself.
RETRO-HYPOTHETICALS AND LIMES
Let’s talk about retro-hypotheticals. You know, “what-if’s” that refer to the past. What if such-and-such had been? Then, just maybe, such-and-such would currently be.
Now let’s consider an example of a retro-hypothetical that is ugly, messy and undesirable to handle. Ask someone, “what if you had never gotten involved with so-and-so?” “Sounds good. She/he made me miserable and held me down causing me to lose a big part of my life I’ll never get back. And just imagine what I could have done with that time.” “Does sound good, except that that person who happens to be your child would not exist. That person is a genetic combination of the two of you and would not exist and be in your life if you had never gotten involved with that former partner.” “Yikes, that is sticky. This line of thinking forces me to discard the most important and beloved person in my world and I would never do that.” “Then don’t. Indulge yourself in a LIME, if you can. But LIMEs can be a challenge to eat.”
Lossless Invalidation of Memory and Event. If you allow yourself to fully immerse and engage in the retro-hypothetical scenario, all aspects of the current chosen path of reality must be null and void. If you continue to hang onto all those memories, events, people, things and all aspects of this reality you are not allowing yourself to engage in that hypothetical. You can’t walk in both worlds. But giving up those things stirs up a feeling of self-inflicted loss. Conceptually, retro-hypotheticals are not the voluntary removal of anything that is because in that alternate state of non-reality those things never were. You must accept that those things are not in this considered world and it is difficult to differentiate that process from one of actively throwing away what you know is. But if you allow yourself to engage, you will do so without sense of loss because all of it never existed to be lost. It is all invalidated once you step into the alternate scenario. (If you can think of a more accurate term and acronym, let me know. For now, the poetry is working for me so I’m gonna roll with this after having kicked a few terms around in an attempt to encapsulate the concept.)
Do you miss that kind, lovable and helpful Ezekiel? Of course not, because you didn’t get involved with that one partner back then. Had you chosen to, the fruits of your dealings with him/her would have been that awesome, one-of-a-kind kid, Ezekiel. The chosen path of reality led you in other directions and thus, no Ezekiel. No loss though. We are simply able to consider the possibility of the “Ezekiel” path without missing that poor little guy because in our reality we never even got to know him.
Is it fair for you to consider that your life may have (yes, may have) been one of less misery, more happiness and greater accomplishment had you not chosen a someone or something in the past without guilt over considering the things and people who would not be in that scenario. Yes, it’s OK. Hell of a challenge though, isn’t it?
THE “MATURITY” OF GRAND THEFT AUTO
Curious about the opinions of concerned parents and devoted players alike, I recently read through a number of posts on a few blogs related to something I knew little about – the video game Grand Theft Auto. The game is reportedly rife with profanity and sadistic violence and includes more than a fair dose of unmistakably sexual behavior.
There was one initial and, to me, obvious aspect of the game which blipped my radar when I considered kids being exposed to this romp as a spectator, much less a player. But I’ll end with the obvious. I have to mention the two themes recurring throughout my perusal of these blogposts. Those are “maturity” and “trust”. Positive terms, right? But I found them a bit unsettling in this context, especially the repetition of the notions. This leads me to a new exploration of the populist parental mindset a bit removed from the questions I began with regarding the game itself.
The first popular expression echoed all over the blog was the idea that the age at which it is OK for a kid to be allowed to play the game is dependent on their level of maturity. Once that level is determined (somehow) by the parent(s), the verdict of “play” or “nay” is handed down. I think it is worth noting that the number of posting parents who banged the gavel “nay”, some adding that a player should be 18 if they wish to play at all, numbered very few and far between. The more popular conclusion by far was that the random poster’s son or daughter was “mature enough” to understand the difference between fantasy and reality as well as right and wrong.
The second repeating sentiment involved “trust”. Several parents who, I have absolutely no reason to doubt, have a solid and communicative relationship with their kids determined that “as long as you know you can trust” little Bobby or Susie the green light goes on. The trust idea apparently has to do with the fact that there are aspects of the game, places to go, which are experienced purely of the player’s choosing and not a mandatory step to take in order to complete a “mission”. Our hero can visit his favorite strip club or get a blowjob in his fine car when he isn’t beating someone to a bloody mess for info. At one point, I read, one character is taking it to his buddy’s wife’s love nest. Again, all voluntary wandering. There may be some comfort offered by the fact that killing “innocents” is frowned on within the game and may even come with some kind of “legal” punishment but I’m not sure what that entails. One may also be comforted by these parents’ determination that if your child declares they have no interest in such things and that if you “trust” them to stay away from those dirty little corners of play all your fears can be allayed.
I have no need, desire or basis to argue that any 12-year-old is more or less “mature” than any other. I don’t doubt that circumstances and interactions specific to one’s experience have brought him or her to a psychological position it would be unfair to equate with that of another of equal age. My question is, using what criteria in what way does a parent arrive confidently at the conclusion that their little one is above or below par for the course? My concern is that it would be difficult if not impossible to predict how exposure to new areas of conceptual input (“adult” content) will affect any psyche, or to clearly recognize those affects after the fact. My wonder is if bias and inability to objectively assess the “maturity” of one’s own little darling (coupled with the, perhaps unconscious, subconscious, preconscious pressures of “all the others are doing it” and “I want to please little darling and get them to stop pestering me” on the psyche of the parent him/herself) heavily influence the decision to buy.
There is a concern of wider breadth here for me too. Why do we seem so proud and eager to declare that our son or daughter is “mature for their age”? Shouldn’t a 10-year-old be as mature as… I don’t know… whatever a “normal” and psychologically healthy 10-year-old should be. Is rapid psycho-emotional growth necessarily a great thing, or is this seeming special strength really not that or an overcompensation for lackings in other areas? Just asking.
All this somehow reminds me of the college-is-necessary craze which I’ve ranted about and will likely do so again. Is there a relationship between the mentality shared by many parents that his/her kid has to go to college or fall into some churning cesspool with the “lessers” and the mentality that his/her child is specially-equipped to handle the adult experiences portrayed in a game that is labeled for “Mature” audiences?
Then there is the “trust” factor. The best kids with the best parents are all curious about pretty much everything that is out there – especially if told they should avoid it. They are also subject to tremendous peer pressure. Can any of you say you never sneaked doing something you didn’t want your parents to know about? I still remember the “wow” of finding random porn magazines in the woods or wherever that the older kids left around. I know we can always have the debate about how it is better to expose kids to things under parental guidance than to shelter them in ignorance of them vs. it is better to keep kids away from things they are unable to handle. That is certainly a worthwhile topic and relevant here but – too big in scope right now. I would just say, in that regard, that I think I find the parental thinking that exposure to things like these games under watchful eye and some kind of guidance (whether a wise or insane strategy) at least shows more honesty and involvement than the naïve acceptance that you can trust your kid not to look behind the curtain because you told them not to and they told you they’re really not interested anyway.
Oh, yeah. Then there’s the obvious question I had about this game that inexplicably was never addressed in all the posts I read on this blog. Aside from all the profanity, violence and sex that are being presented to a player – the game is called Grand Theft Auto! Doesn’t this imply that the protagonist’s (player’s) objective is to steal cars!
199? - TO BE OR NOT TO BE
Truth vs. Reality, again? Is a perceived or believed existence (reality), though not a “true” existence, in a state of being? If you define being as all existence could these include the decidedly untruthful, or purposely imagined? Maybe there are degrees of both power and substance a reality possesses. A character who captures someone’s heart; a lie that is believed and changes the believer’s outlook; a fugue state or popular delusion which causes a public to rally or frenzy still have some power. Even a simple, personal thought which occupies, even if fleetingly, the psyche which is part of the self and the self being part of the world exists and has being. So while truth is absolute, reality, with any degree of power above zero or immeasurable effect, has being.
So, can a “concept” be a “being”? It is defined by its own distinct set of attributes and can interact with another being in such a way as to influence that being’s nature of understanding, defining and affecting the world of which both are a part. The concept is a, albeit non-physical, presence.
If that concept exists now in reality but grew out of misunderstanding and false or faulty perceptions that do not belong to truth, can that concept itself be part of truth? No, but my belief in the false concept or acceptance of the fantastical element, constitutes a bit of the truth. The door, in truth, is red. I see it as yellow and believe it is yellow. This belief influences my conduct and interaction with the world. (I might decide to decorate the room with complementary yellow accents – which might also be red in truth so, no foul – and so contribute to the physical truth based on my faulty belief.) My acceptance of the reality of a yellow door which is not consistent with truth nonetheless becomes a part of truth.
Don’t the profound and widespread effects of society’s interaction with Sherlock Holmes, Lady Macbeth and Indiana Jones afford them all places somewhere within the machinations of truth even if we all agree the living, physical human beings did not exist?
And what about power and substance?....
198? – A PAGE AND A PEN
Today I went to my room and opened a book and flipped through randomly until I found a blank page. Most of the others were already filled with who-knows-what. I picked up a pen that was sitting there waiting – always too patiently waiting for me. There was something I must’ve wanted to say so damn bad, but I couldn’t figure out what the hell it was. There was a period of clenched brow and a psyche twirling like several paints once definitive in color being mixed, spinning around and around over and over into a fog of unrecognizability. A drumbeat slowed and softened; a sputter; waves of sureness pushed and crashed with conviction but unknown reason now stilled; a pant became a breath; a growl became a hum. I realized the pen I had taken command of didn’t care and neither did the page I had brought before me for sentencing, so I put them down and just thought. I thought so hard that my head hurt and I got real tired. I go to bed with a lot of headaches it seems. But tomorrow I’ll get up and, who knows, maybe it’ll be different.
199? – THE TIMELINE’S HOWS AND WHYS
Science has often presented evidence that great natural occurrences ended what we define as one period on the timeline of existence and begins another. At the point of those harsh transitions the tools for transferring knowledge were either wiped out or never had existed to begin with. What need would a society unconscious of its past or that past’s importance have for the vigilance for passing knowledge onto its future. So maybe, largely, the remnants or “next generation” of one society had to start from scratch. If so, many a society in the timeline would have been dependent on longevity without a marked and disruptive transitional hiccup from something to something else rather than the significant aid of knowledge inheritance in order to achieve some degree of advanced development.
Consider the mysterious and wondrous constructions of the Ancient World. If we could “read” Stonehenge we may find it to be a flawlessly accurate tool for measuring time – one which might make Julius Caesar’s, Pope Gregory’s and everyone else’s variations on the calendar moot endeavors. Wowwed even by the theories of how the Great Pyramids of Giza were constructed, our best architects with our advanced methods can’t explain how such an enormous piece measures to be less than 1 minute off perfect square and with a startling relation to pi, a concept thought unrecognized until some time later. This would be a pat-on-the-back accomplishment with all of today’s resources.
Perhaps all the awe and mystery inspired by the look back assessments of cultural, structural and other great achievements of the past stems first and foremost from the mindset in which achievement and sophistication are measured itself. It’s a sort of tunnel vision to think that all humans of like “intelligence” (that is, cognitive ability?) would advance along identically the same course. Just as the nature and nurture influences are considered in trying to understand why two individuals brought up in the same society can be profoundly different in just about every sense. What factors (nurture) would affect the way in which a civilization would proceed in forging the course of its development?
A collective construction of the answers to the and “whys” of cultural development has to be every bit as important as the awestriking explorations of “whats”, “whens”, “wheres” and “hows”. Consideration of the religious framework within which a society operates is huge. Any necessities for physical survival would, of course, dictate thought and action. (You could probably apply the Maslow hierarchy of needs to the society in its place on the timeline as you would to an individual to determine what drove or motivated it.) (This has later all been dealt with in great depth by Jared Diamond in “Guns, Germs and Steel” and”Collapse” as well as many others, no doubt. Highly suggest those reads.)
A civilization which associates the “greater power” or gods with the skies would be more conscious of the celestial patterns (Egypt and Greece) thus driving them inevitably to the detailed study and understanding of them. That allows them to eventually harness the mathematical perfection of it lending to strength of the suits of calendar construction, architect, etc. The sporadic astronomically-orientated genius (Galileo and company) are but sparks in a pursuit once, perhaps, undertaken en masse by the ancients. While our eclectic scientific world alone truly understands and appreciates the gems the great minds of our history have exposed for us, the masses of historical monom we know so well yield to the grand plan as conveyed by a narrow band of earthly leaders (Gregory, etc.) on their papal and monarchic infallibility high horses. After all, is the perfection or our year to a finest tick really all that important to a society who lives to get through each day and ultimately survive the wrath of a God who does not identify himself in the placement of the stars or the squareness of stone structures?
MAKING HISTORY?
Many of us truly believe that the qualities, abilities and potential necessary for the most affecting and far-reaching tasks are not mitigated in any way by the more superficial perceptions of gender, ethnicity, weight, beauty or what have you. We have passed so far beyond this that we have no time or inclination for consideration of these illogically-conceived relationships. But, apparently, not everyone is there yet.
These simple and child-like notions move from absurd to frightening when they move with the building momentum of a downhill kiddy rollercoaster building the froth we’ve seen so many times in mob-charged frenzies of irrationality. “I just think it’s time for a woman president,” one will say. Well, what time is it anyway? That is, how do you choose to define the time? Judging by a simple statement like that, it would seem you define it in simple terms. Is it the time when you discover you are surrounded by other women who also perceive some issues with their focused gender identification, thus amplifying your own (this is, after all, the classic mob effect). Does that make it the time when you observe that a woman has never held the office of the presidency and is your reaction to do all you can to change that since gender identification is now the center of your universe and so to put that right would solve all ills? Or at least help you ease the pains of your own, regardless of whether or not success on that front has a positive effect on the rest of the world. When all aspects of presidential duties are laid out on a table, can you show me how applying the virtue of gender will lend to a more effective result in the practice of each? Really, I’m all ears. It’s just that I’ve never heard anyone in the gender-centric (race-centric, money-centric, language-centric, etc.) passionate crowd try or even recognize the necessity to make that case.
It is the duty of those in the present to determine the most beneficial decisions based on the strength and validity of the factors at hand. You don’t “make” history. You make rational decisions in the present which you judge to the best of your ability will have the best chance at a long-term positive outcome. It would be unwise to make any decision you know will have broader consequences based on one small picture you imagine looking back on in the future and your intoxication with the idea that your hand lent itself to stroking with that communal brush.
History is owned by those in a position of looking back at the conglomerate result of concurring events and the active responses to those events. It is they who may use the picture of the path behind in attempt to learn the most beneficial response to a present situation and choice of the next step forward. History is theirs to lament, celebrate or both as they see fit. Those who attempt to take ownership of the future’s “history” for their own self-indulgent pleasure in the present are lacking true focus and guidance in a way that is selfish and irresponsible.
WHEN CUPID’S SECOND SHOT MISSES
It seems to me that there is a misuse of language in books, movies and the world over that is a slap in the face of the romantic sensibility. A very one-sided surrender to a powerful emotional takeover is commonly referred to as “being in love with” someone else. The problem with this description is that the word “with” indicates that you share the same place or state as another at the same time.
This all seems completely unfair to both the language of romance and to one who may be singularly afflicted – the smitten. Isn’t it, often, a more appropriate assessment to state that one is “in love of” someone else? This would both excuse the second party from accusations of being a willing accomplice in the first party’s plight and treat the first party’s malady in fair and understanding terms. Hell, that pathetic romantic deserves at least that much consideration and respect.
The condition of being in love with is a wonderous, exhilarating and life-launching thing. One builds up the other and vice versa as two agreeable partners in a blissful venture melt into a world never before trodden by others. Being in love of another tosses the victim like one of those balls in the lottery blowing air jar thing from exhilaration to despondence and every freaky place in between. His/her drive may be fueled like a rocket one minute and his/her gut may be twisted by unseen demons and concentration on important things completely non-functional the next.
The distinction seems fair to me since the experience of one is far more desirable and victorious than of the other. Let’s right the language for the smitten! Can I get an “Amen”?!
FAMILIARITY
The power and importance of familiarity in judgment and determinant of action are based on degrees which are applicable regardless of context or, most unsettling, weight of the decision’s result. These are degrees of quantity, not quality, in that they are an accumulation of various bits of data able to be drawn from every area of the psyche. There need not be any relationship formed between these data and the subject or item being perceived for the familiarity phenomenon to make its play. That is, it is a ”subconscious” engagement not requiring a “this is because that is” rationality (“This thing is good because it is like me in that way”, or whatever).
Items (subjects) to be considered as examples by comparisons, with respect to the judge’s sensitivity to life in general (be it learned or natural) might go something like…
Ulysses is more likely to pull out the plants growing in those cracks in his driveway, thus ending their lives, without an ounce of compassion than he is to chop down that majestic tree without some sense that something very much alive has been removed. Trees are the stuff of grand landscapes. They are testaments to the wisdom of the ages. They have “limbs” like us. They are even storybook characters. That stuff in his driveway cracks – not so much. He will rip out those dandelions because he has learned that those yellow flowers are “weeds”. Ripping out the roses in the garden would be a travesty, however, since he has been informed by the human collective that they are “beautiful” and have taken their place in the annals of the great romance.
Ulysses would do his duty and remove all those plants with not the moment’s hesitation he would have before he kills a bug. Although he has “done the right thing”, there is no mistaking the identification of the action – he killed something. He killed something that moves from here to there as he does. It has something called a head and things called legs, like he does. It makes a squishy mess when crushed, as he would.
But, Ulysses is more likely to kill a spider or a roach outside of his home and posing no identifiable threat to him because they are bugs for which negative bits of data are instantaneously and without effort recalled. Biting, poison, messes, taking his food, germing up food, invasion of his personal space with multiplication. He is less likely to kill a caterpillar or any of a multitude of odd-looking bugs that land on his leg that he can’t identify because no such negative data exists. He is even less likely to kill a ladybug or a firefly because, not only is there no such negative data, but there is a higher level of familiarity introduced. Ladybugs get good press in all the cartoons he has seen as a kid and consciously forgotten. Fireflies do something cool, make a glow, which vaguely resembles a form of communication or even artistic expression (much more “human” than anything those other creatures are known for by him).
The ending of all of the above-mentioned life forms will not give Ulysses the pause he experienced when that glue trap he put in the cabinet to get that dang nuisance mouse actually worked. There it was staring at him with eyes that looked like… eyes (unlike the plants or even the bugs). Clearly a nose, clearly teeth. And a torso heaving with life-defining breaths of desperation. Now what, Ulysses? Had he gotten a snap trap he wouldn’t be in this predicament. He would have ended the life indirectly (something we’ll get back to later) and not triggered the “familiarity” process which creates his present dilemma.
What kind of a hunter might Ulysses make? He can’t help but be obligated to the “familiarity” effect upon observing those eyes, that nose and the breathing chest (like the mouse) he plans to put a bullet through. That could easily be him wandering innocently through the comfort of his abode, unaware of the stalker who means him the gravest of harms. That deer eats and drinks with a mouth and tongue like he does. Like the mouse does. It hangs out with its friends and family and has sex and makes little deer. Or little mice. Or little babies. But the mouse has invaded his home, uninvited. It takes his food and leaves germs which could harm him. The deer, with its size more like Ulysses rather than any rodent, is not an intruder. Bambi? He spoke English, loved his mother and played with his buddies. Ulysses finds hunting much more of a challenge than exterminating that mouse. The plants, the bugs? Hardly a stumble or stutter. But now, that clutter of positive data freezes his trigger finger.
The next step in that progression would probably be the taking of a life of some human we do not personally know. Thankfully, I do not know this experience. That seems a whole new realm of consideration that I will explore at another rambling time and place.
It should be emphasized that the judge’s (be it Ulysses or anyone else) basic sensitivity to life, as referred to before, will be subject to negotiations shaped by the extracted relevant data, collected as a result of his/her experiences, as they are applied. This is not to offer a justification for a decision that the rest of us may find ill-conceived, wrong, illogical or flat-out reprehensible. Nor is it an attempt to invalidate all decisions which may not be based on pure logic. It simply identifies what, I think, is one part of the process by which that judge arrived at that decision.
Let’s pull out to an aerial view and away from the tale of maybe-not-so-brave Ulysses. Why is familiarity the first stage of legitimacy?
A subject, item or concept must exist with a strong enough degree of collective familiarity that we will even consider it. Once presented, it must elicit some sense of recognition. This recognition relative to who we are and what we have learned. If we cannot define it, it doesn’t really exist in our consciousness. The concepts and subjects of the flower, the firefly, the mouse and the deer are most substantively defined within the conduit of the human psyche and the data which emerge from it and act as agents. For those concepts, the reflection of “self-image” (visual or physical data) is accessible and able to be applied (this picture as compared to that). The function of those concepts (ie, mice and roaches take are food and harm us with germs) may also be utilized if there is data of that kind which emerges during the encounter or experience. Those and other data which come into play in molding definition of the concept do so only with respect to our own established concept of self. Our attitudes toward and decisions with regard to those concepts (live subjects, etc.) are the result of those molded definitions.
In addition to all else it may be, any thing is a concept. Once a concept exists in relatable form that we agree upon, we are able to consider it. Someone suggests that calculus is an illusion based on false presuppositions and I am able to draw no relatable data from my psyche to breathe life into the concept of that particular statement. (I just say, “Huh?”) It ends there and will never achieve legitimacy for me. Someone says that humanity is in a more depressed state in this day and age. There are plenty of data which emerge from which I can identify a concept I perceive to have been presented. I am now capable of consideration and from there, consideration will be malleable and guided…
LEADERS AND COMMANDERS
It has been said of certain persons, sometimes by themselves, that he or she is a “natural-born leader”. I guess that may or may not be true. But before I question whether the traits which position one more advantageously for that role are natural or nurtured, I would have to reconcile the proof in performance (at near-birth) with the necessary elements of purpose and/or duty. Does the newborn leader crawl first across the floor to the distant toys inspiring the peer toddlers to follow in his path? Maybe.
Aside from all that, this is more a rambling about what seems to me another misuse of terminology. Even more so, a misunderstanding of and under-appreciation for certain roles. So are leaders and commanders the same thing?
If asked to give titles of various people in leadership roles, one might rattle off such things as president, manager, coach and general. But are those holding such titles truly leaders by virtue of the title alone? I would propose they are not necessarily leaders, but are necessarily commanders. So what’s the difference?
A commander is one to whom a duty is given and by whom it is accepted. This role is a fundamental piece in just about any complex system in which some function or project is to be carried out with order. Without that center which controls all surrounding and interacting elements, the system is chaos and ineffective. There are a number of traits (natural or developed) which need to be strong for a successful commander. There is the ability to understand the parts while seeing the sum of them with clarity. A quickness of wit and response to changing environments may be necessitated. There must also exist a skill for communication with which the plan and the order are presented to the other agents within the system. As with the leader, a sense of confidence may be exuded to lend itself to success and prosperity of the whole. Think of the placement of the role. Corporate and military terminologies would refer to “Headquarters” or “Central” Command. This implies a position atop the whole so as to see and reach downward into its workings, or outward in all directions toward its mechanism elements.
The leader, in placement, is in front of a linear movement in some direction. This role is conceived out of a singular vision. The leader needs only to recognize a goal; a path toward that goal; the conviction to move in that direction; and followers. The last of those is really the defining element. One who moves alone is simply moving, not leading anyone or anything. But with or without followers, that person’s inherent purpose is the same.
So while a commander may act as a leader at times, it is not necessary to the role. The leader may find him or herself giving commands to those who choose to accept them, but the key is the choice. Followers define the leader and choose to do as the leader does. Commanders are not chosen by those who would do as they are told by him or her.
ISN’T RACE JUST A SPEED COMPETITION AFTER ALL?
Here’s one of those terms that seems to be so freely flung whenever the clear nature of a dispute with another appears to be inaccessible or wherever else the user deems it to be applicable – “racism”. I really can’t go on to discuss the term itself in any detail because, frankly, I don’t know what the hell it means. I think I thought I did at one time. But it seems now to be used with such a variance in application that I suspect it is just being abused by those who seek to counter-punch someone who proposes an idea found to be unfavorable. Provided there is some, similarly incalculable, difference in appearance between the idea proposer and the counter-striker, have at it. It is a reliable dialogue stopper. Throw the “race” thing out there and everyone halts because they’re not sure if they’re the only ones listening who don’t know what the hell it means or even if they might be, in fact, guilty as charged. (Guilty, that is, assuming it is definitely a negative thing – and that seems to be the assumption.)
I implore someone to provide me with a clear and concise definition of “racism” that we all can work with in order to include it without tangles into our dialogue. After all, it seems to be a ubiquitous and largely relevant thing. It’s base is, of course, “race”. So a good starting point might be to define that. I can’t. Can you? Isn’t the whole “We-Are-The-World” happy people philosophy governed by the concept that we’re all the same – one human “race”? I think I get it. The accusation of racism is an accusation that the accused is not playing by that rule, that he/she is proposing ideas based on the premise that that fantasy “race” thing actually exists as a natural divider of the human race – an unjust and destructive premise indeed. But if the counter-striker (accuser) is the one who introduced the “race” concept into the dialogue, isn’t the onus on that person to explain what the term means (at least within current context) and question whether or not this race thing is influential on the initial proposition? In an open dialogue, the proposer would simply define what race is and how it is relevant to his/her proposition. If that is not included in his explanation, shouldn’t that be the end of it? The explanation that is offered in support of his/her proposition should be all that is relevant in the continuing dialogue. Oh, so part of the accusation is that the proposer has been dishonest in his/her explanation of what inspired the proposition. The explanation is then a ruse? Unless invalidation of the explanation can be exposed (or even if it is), what is the value of pursuing some imaginary explanation for the proposal, which can’t possibly be substantiated, rather than pursuing the explanation the proposer has rightfully offered in support of his/her proposal? It’s like randomly off-roading blindfolded with complete disregard for the road ahead.
Now just maybe the proposer does hold some accepted definition of the term “race”. Maybe this term does, in fact, play a role in support of the proposal. The onus would them be on him/her to, first, define the term and, second, explain how this thing acts to support the proposal. We can all then calmly proceed with the discussion in hopes that the solid validity or sheer lunacy of the concept of “race” will become evident. Healthy dialogue at work. But unless it is so offered by the proposer, it is irrelevant to the dialogue. If no supporting explanations for the proposal are offered at all, theories as to the motivation behind the empty proposal are as useless as the proposal itself. Dead end. Next? If one proposes that there is an angry wolverine inside that wooden crate, then only shrugs when asked what explanations he has to offer in support of that proposal, it’s a dead end, dialogue over. (I probably wouldn’t open the crate to disprove him though, but that’s just me.) Is there any more value in attempting to explain why he has a paranoia to wild mammals than in explaining why the statement of the previous proposer is a result of an obsession with something called “race”. Neither has proposed anything worthy of further exploration.
Since I really don’t have any reliable definition of “racism” to play with, I prefer to call what those who speak with references to the “race” concept “race-centric” thinking. It seems that people too often imply or state outright that race is a relevant factor in any variety of things from speech to choices to hobbies to food to friends to social activities to political leanings and on and on and on. Race-centric thinking seems to be a product of the depth to which one is immersed in culture and sub-culture.
MORE ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL IMPLICATION OF THEISM; THE PRACTICAL DENUNCIATION OF THEOCRACY;AND WHERE WILL THEY FIT EVOLVING AM ONCE IT IS LEGITIMIZED?
It has become more obvious that in order to survive in the realm of politics, a player must accept and dress in certain certain pre-requisites. This may be done with visual embrace and vocal applause or simple acceptance and silent agreement to non-decry. The labeled “left” continue to allow the Progressives to gain political ground and louder, more numerous megaphones. It seems to me that, at this moment, the former is the immediate conflict in destructive play. But I see the latter moving in off the horizon. Let’s think about that.
A fine line is often walked between support for the concept of Church and State separation and the acknowledgment (even celebration) of the theistic verbiage and sentiments within the Constitution. While the proud pointing out of theistic references in the text has all been innocent enough, the unacknowledged, yet growing, population of non-theistic warrants a dialogue regarding the functionality of this language.
Why? Because if those empowered with creating and enforcing law based on the fundamental constructs of the Constitution view theism as inextricably tied to its existence, how do they propose to treat the non-theistic in the operation of state, membership in nation, or abidance by its rules?
Let’s consider the pretty simple historical context. It is agreed that the nation was built largely on an influx of people escaping religious oppression. Therefore, theocracy is an absolute no-no. No one religion will rule over the populace. Instead the freedom to practice religion will be respected and defended. But, at the time, the religious oppression was all within the Judeo-Christian tradition with strife among factions of that basic philosophy.
Here’s more historical context. The religious will quickly and proudly point out the religious position from which the founding fathers laid out the guiding principles of this nation. Some non-theists will try to fabricate arguments supporting the idea that many of the big players of that time were not theistic. That battle utilizes choice extractions of personal writings from those players by either side if they think it will support their position. The probability that makes the most sense and that should be conceded without silly resistance is that these guys and gals were theistic and devoutly Judeo-Christian. That is simply “the way it was” back then. If you exist in a world that is completely Judeo-Christian, believing that the strictest adherence to the Bible is the only way to achieve eternal salvation, why would anyone expect you to think any other way? (I’m sure you can imagine certain universal aspects of our lives that our descendants might someday look back on in wonderment about how we all could share this without question – the need to wear clothes in public, or something.)
When push comes to shove, the religious right will be forced to define whether they see the Constitution, the basis of how our nation operates, as exclusively theistic (as opposed to simply moralistic or “humanist”, if you prefer) in its sentiment, even if not Judeo-Christian. (The Judeo-Christian concern has been expressed regarding the inclusion of Islam. But it seems to me this is not so far removed from the Judeo-Christian philosophy as to cause functional sticky spots. These perceived differences and conflicts are largely cultural. For instance, the application of Sharia Law is largely a cultural, not “spiritual” or moralistic one and its obvious conflicts with national law are for another rambling.) This will eventuate the need to address at least three functional issues. These are: symbols and language within the operation; inclusion; and a solid sense of national identity.
The final and decisive step in our legal process by which fates are determined, the trial, includes an obligatory practice of not only theism, but Judeo-Christianity. People are still required to swear oath on the Bible? (Just read that a case had to be re-heard when it was discovered that the defendant was Muslim and swore on “the wrong holy book”.) But, whether we expand to include the Koran or any other “holy book” for this oath-taking, the entire process still assumes the oath taker is so devoutly bound to the word of the text (whether he is the perpetrator of heinous murders or what have you). How is that not absurdity at best? There is, of course, the hoopla over the wording of the Pledge of Allegiance and making kids recite it. There was the uproar for and against the presence of the Ten Commandments at government locales and the placement of Nativity scenes at uncountable public sites. So we see that the conventional integration of theistic symbols and language in state-based functions is being challenged, usually based on a “separation of church and state”-based argument. But the fact that these have existed for so long without question of their placement from the start says much about the inherent nature of theistic thought in the implementation of state functions. (Mind you, I find some of those examples innocuous and the uprising against them just plain silly. But they are sufficient to show the unquestioned incorporation of religion into state function as well as the existence and proliferation of non-religious philosophies which can’t be ignored.)
The more I interact with and observe the practices of people I am moving further to the conclusion that a great many more than will admit are not wholly sold on theism as a foundation for how they choose to live their lives. Even fewer embrace, to the letter, the traditional and organized religions for their governing principles. These people seem to settle on some safe compromise that there is. I say this is a “safe” choice because it removes the obligation to admit am if that is the place one finds oneself in the honesty of one’s own mind. This is safe because it protects unadmitted non-theists from an expected ridicule, even ostracizing, from within a community of belonging. (But that’s a rambling for another time.) This growing group does not tout godliness with the same vigor as certain politicians – whether that be for show and out of expectation or genuine. These people recognize that, while government, with all its flaws and failings, is necessary, religion as part of its basis for functioning is not. The problem here is that, since the non-religious mindset has been largely ascribed to the “left” side of political thinking, it is unconventional and uncomfortable to consider it as existing within the ranks of the “right”. This is because, again, theism (mostly Judeo-Christianity) has become an unspoken, assumed and obligatory characteristic of the “right” through the successful labeling of the ages. This labeling has set us on a course toward an ugly scrum of entanglement. If the non-religious are not invited to participate; it they are the ugly fringe relative who can bring pastries and cigars to the family reunion but can’t talk to the kids for any length about anything of substance, how are they to be treated in the realm of politics? How long can the “right” pretend this group doesn’t exist and isn’t growing? Is it rational to rigidly discount those with a shared thinking on social, economic and other issues because of one difference? Is it wise to exclude the non-tic from the conversation? If you don’t think this is happening, try to name a “right”-leaning politician who hasn’t espoused a religion-based position when dealing with some national or governmental issue.
Is every ingrained aspect of the Constitution and governing principles suggesting theism vital to the nature of our nation as we know it? Does it make a functional difference if our “inalienable rights” were endowed by a creator or not? In other words, does the fundamental nature of this nation change if any recognizable reference to theism is considered as a colorization or sign of the times in which it was penned – a backdrop for the mindset. Does it affect functionality? This is not a crowd-with-torches crusade to remove theism from the original wording of the fore-fathers. They are their words handed to us with all powerful and moralistic sentiment intact. This is a call to consider whether that sentiment can exist independent of a Judeo-Christian belief system. I know my answer. What’s yours? This is acknowledging that all evolution of thought must be addressed without prejudice, vilification, propaganda distortion, demeaning or invalidation without proper and honest trial. We, as a nation, owe it to ourselves to acknowledge the considerations and views of all whom we call fellow nationals as the universal consciousness presents them. That is, as long as the majority deems them to be nationals with respect to their alignment with the national identity. Maybe we have enjoyed the complacency of not having to weather explosions of national identity questions since the Civil War. Maybe more of these are inevitable. The solidifying of national identity can only be a healthy thing for the Union. If it is realized that a nation cannot exist with the strength and integrity necessary to its survival without exclusion of some sorts, that is a harsh reality that must, nevertheless, be laid out and decided on by the republic majority. If that involves shedding the pretense that we are, and always have been, a nation of blind inclusion – so be it. The lack of honesty would be the silent destroyer.
In finally addressing younger philosophies, it may be found that they are inoperative within the construct of our nation’s directing tenets, inextricably tied to old philosophy. The light of this conclusion may show that those “fellow nationals” are, according to the clarification of “nation”, not in fact nationals by virtue of their inconsistent philosophies. Personal identity would then invalidate national identity making them, suddenly, lacking the requirements for membership. So… then what? How are they redefined? Does non-membership equate to enemy (as in the Civil War)? Now I’m getting ahead of myself. I just don’t think these potential transitions, should they work out that way, need to be destructive. I hope I’m not just naïve. I like to believe that the “inclusion” we so love to tout would be forced into play (and not just given lip service) and a workable understanding would be reached. Is there really a sane alternative to that? Let’s see how this all plays out.
The reality is, atheism is inherently not in conflict with national identity or law in the way that many “fringe” religious groups are in their practices. So, oddly, it is religious groups who are being stifled as some of their practices become… well, illegal. This in the country created of the desire for tolerance of diverse religious practices. While “freedom of religion” sounds nice, it clearly and necessarily has its limitations. This is all the more so when the nation solidifies the definition of its own identity through laws. It is atheism which is logically more given to the embrace of a national identity, not bound to any religious-based tenets but to the laws harvested from the wisdom of the ages and natural humanitarian inclinations. But, sadly, it is often the target of easily vilification. Godlessness equals chaos, selfish motivations, abolishment of structure and moral vacuum in the eyes who equate theism as the opposite of all those things.
There are theists out there who believe that that theism is the foundation upon which the nation was built and the glue which holds our laws together. It is their responsibility now to answer the question “what is to be done with non-theists?” It is irresponsible to simply think that they will “see reason” and change or just be laughed away. It is dishonest to demand that they simply play along and go through the motions of theism (like a growing number of people, I believe, do). So – what to do? I’m waiting for an answer on that one.
???????
Is it better to do the right thing for the wrong reason or the wrong thing for the right reason? Isn’t the answer dependent on the number or people who are positively and/or negatively affected by that decision?
8/2/17
Cheyney University, a historically all-black college, is seeking financial assistance from the state in order to stay afloat. A commentary in the local paper is calling on those who will listen to support the cause with testimonials from those for whom the Cheyney experience was crucial in molding their careers and identities. “All-black” institutions are permitted to carry on their racist ways in 2017 with anywhere from tolerance to encouragement.
Such racist institutions came about out of necessity, in a time where racism was needed to combat racism. This was the only way to give those for whom the initial climate of racism was an insurmountable and unfair obstacle. Proudly, they served their purpose. But we exist in an age well after racism as a public policy has been extinguished. So why is public and government-supported racism still, in direct opposition to all laws and in dishonor of our triumphant “better angels” of society, still in existence? A blatant and unabashed contradiction in policies?
The history of institutions like Cheyney should be applauded by all who value fairness and equality, and remembered with mirth by those for whom it helped find a way in the world. But, since college institutions are now just college institutions vying for students and a piece of the education market, why are we having yet another singular dilemma misplaced as a beacon or pawn for the readily-available and unrelentingly needy racial preservation crusade? If Cheyney can’t cut it in a world of anti-racist policies and capitalism and lacks honest support from education-seekers, maybe its usefulness to society has come and gone. Is there a need to keep it afloat as some sort of symbol. Isn’t that what statues and plaques are for? Let statues be statues and schools be schools.
AND THEN THERE’S 8/13/17 - FLAGS, STATUES AND WHAT THE HELL IS “CULTURAL HERITAGE” IF NOT MORE RACE-CENTRIC NONSENSE?
I attended a small concert in the local park the other night. A freebie fundraiser for the park and part of a series running throughout the summer. I noticed what I thought to be a larger police presence than normal and someone informed me that a Black Lives Matter “demonstration” had just broken up down the path. Odd for a group seeking visibility to be tucked inside a local park far from the city. I’m not sure why that choice of venue, but I suddenly realized that the theme for that night’s show was “Southern Rock”. Is that what brought protesters there?
I remembered a concert the year before with a performance by a Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band (I don’t think it was the same band). I also remembered that there were a few Confederate flags carried up near the stage and waved proudly. This is apparently common practice at many “country” and “southern rock” music shows. Maybe the Black Lives Matter people also caught wind of this. Anyway, there were no confrontations and no Confederate flags waving that night. Maybe a request was made by those running the show or by the police. That would likely have caused a First Amendment retaliatory outburst though, wouldn’t it? I don’t know the deal but – no flags flown but the American stars and stripes. This display was accompanied by the singing of the National Anthem, just like with every concert.
I gotta say, I don’t really get the whole Confederate flag thing. Maybe someone can explain it to me. I bet the explanations would vary as I have read. If some people think it’s all just part of what you do at certain events in certain locales, void of any deep, negative sentiment or message, I would encourage them to reconsider the choice of party props. It would appear that for some, however, it does accompany a deep sense of unrest (to say the least).
As a matter of coincidence, there were incidents that weekend at the University of Virginia both before and during a “Unite the Right” rally. The purpose of this rally was, allegedly, to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from a local park. Organizer Jason Kessler characterized it more broadly. “This is about an anti-white climate within the Western world and the need for white people to have advocacy like other groups do”, was his summation. This suggests a motivation of perceived white oppression. Right?
Violence erupted during the protest between protesters and anti-protesters (yes, we’ve heard all this before.) The climax of all this was some scumbag driving his car into a group of counter-protesters, killing 1 person. The injured are anywhere from 19 into the 30s according to several reports. Prior to all this (the night before) a pre-rally a march of torch-bearing “white nationalists” through the campus brought on its own racist insanity. Yes, more violence. But the biggest takeaway for me is the chanting of, among other things, “blood and soil” which is a known slogan for Nazi-ism which equates to white (Arian) supremacy.
It seems you have at least three choices of how to interpret this “message”. It is a call to affirm white supremacy; it is a response to white suppression by virtue of the advocating of other racially-identified groups; or it is to acknowledge a disrespect of the innocent “southern culture and values”.
I can’t help finding humor in the clear similarities between two heatedly opposed mentalities. There is the school of slavery-whiners facing off against the school of confederacy-celebrators and both share one invalidating feature. They rally behind and are fueled by former realities that they were never a part of and ceased to exist long before they came to exist. My fantasy would be to have these angry people who have successfully been sold on their respective race-centric, boxed and bleak illusions of reality, probably from birth in most cases, dropped into a secluded pit somewhere so they can figure it all out and leave the rest of us the hell alone.
While both the Black Lives Matter groups and their ilk share similarities with the angry white supremacists, there is an important difference that must be noted in fairness. First, the similarities can be summarized as the respective negative brainwashing and conditioning, detached from a full awareness of the landscape of the truth in which their respective , which set the scene for acting out once the ignition is fired. But the difference is in that the Black Lives Matter philosophy came to be as a reaction to the perceived transgression of a flimsily identified adversary while the white supremacist philosophy is believed to be a condition which has already existed and not reactionary. The basis of the “unfairness” perceived by white supremacists, and their victimization to it, is the premise that they, by virtue of their “race”, are special and superior. This illogical foundation situates the “victim” in a position from which he/she will view the inevitable evolution toward equality in treatment (or excellence which individual freedom allows for) as an assault on their basic and natural top-tier status. Black Lives Matter don’t believe that they, by virtue of “race” are greater, but that forces exist to oppress the freedom by which they may excel. The problem with their position is that, while certain forces do exist and act in such a manner, much of it is the result of encouraged and fueled misinterpretations of events and realities. The suggestion becomes the reality when shared and echoed often enough and the power of propaganda wins the day.
Now Robert E. Lee may be respected as a great general for those who can respect such things. In many ways he can be respected as a solid dude who stood for what he believed within the context of the time and place in which he lived. In fact, it is unfair for any of us from another time to stand up in judgment of anyone in whose metaphorical shoes we haven’t walked. But in the here and now (long after the Confederacy ended and the United States were put back together), I would ask those who wave the Confederate flag and celebrate figures of the Confederacy to step back and look respectfully at exactly what these things represent. They represent definitively something that existed long before you came along and confiscated the symbolism and decided you had a right to somehow remold it into something you pretend it means at your concerts and parties. It is largely agreed that the greater substance of the confederate position was the maintaining of slave-ownership and more expansive states’ rights, among other things. The Confederacy was a real thing. But it ended. The Union won the war and the country was put back together with an end to slavery and a larger role for an all-encompassing federal identity. Those things became part of what defined the United States from that point on. And we move on.
Participants in this protest have voiced a concern about the threat of an erasure of their “cultural heritage” as the impetus for activating. Somehow Robert E. Lee and all that is Confederate are pieces of this all-important heritage that will, in due course, be chipped away if not protected, leaving these victims with . . . well, what exactly?
This battle cry was met with a crash by its alter-ego. Counter-(race)protesters argue the absurdity of that claim when weighed against a reality that the cultural (and biological) history of those descended from slaves or other forced immigration (or someplace with no means or motivation to keep accurate records of such things) have already had their “cultural heritage” erased with disinterest and no pity party. Not to sound cliché but – aren’t we all immigrants. Not, it would seem, if you define that “we” by a racial identity rather than as a group of real persons in the here and now. And so that’s what we keep returning to. This amounts to bullshit as a counter-argument against other, but similar, bullshit.
There were approximately 2.5 million inhabitants of the US according to the first census of 1790. There are currently approximately 300 million. If all of those people traced their ancestry, very few would be able to trace it in this country to that time. Most would have to trace it back to another country of “origin” and eventually the trail would end and the records become obscured or non-existent. How far back do you need to go to gather information on your ancestry which is somehow relevant to who you are and what you do during your lifetime to leave for those who follow? Do we really have to know where we came from to know where we going? Explain how that works to me please. The story of your ancestors is NOT “your” story. You make your story in the now. How far back can an adoptee trace their history? I sure hope he/she isn’t immobilized by the inability to retrieve this information. People rising up to protect their “white heritage”! The unfairness of an already lost “Black History”! By what rational path did people arrive at the realization of these contrivances and assign vital consequence to their existence? Trace the records back only far enough to realize that family record-keeping was only used to prove legal birthrights. Further back it becomes apparent that no one gave a damn about “where they came from”. This is a new-fangled obsession which evolved with race-centric thinking and just more of the crippling, brainwashing propaganda flavors which have poisoned the people for decades now.
If you find some pride in sub-cultural things like Cajun cooking, square-dancing, skeet-shooting competitions, Lynyrd Skynyrd music and the origin of horseshoe throwing – by all means, be proud and have a great time. But consider what some of the chosen symbolisms actually mean and how your fellow Americans acknowledge those meanings. If you have been brought up to subscribe to a philosophy which states that supremacy of “whites” is the rightful way then join the KKK (wow, they still exist) and, being open to rational consideration and two-way dialogue, go out and make your case. Yes, I mean that. Why? Because it is the freedom of open, clear and whole speech which will allow reason to cure the “American” mindset of any aberrations which might exist. It’s kind of like exposing a wound to fresh air so that nature may be allowed to heal it.
On that last note I’m suddenly reminded of the revolting trend among colleges to disallow speakers whom the powers-that-be find politically incorrect or unsettling. But that’s a rant for another time.
9/21/17
Simple signs. Simple chants. Encapsulated slogans saturated with emotion’s entirety. A clock with an undetectably slow hand becomes drastically inaccurate over more time. A scope tilted by a hair will cause the mark to be missed at the greater distance. An idea, position or sentiment takes on a germ of dishonesty in its presentation which quickly grows into gross mischaracterization. But the flawed dialogues continue with the misguided belief that they are useful and meaningful. There is a compulsion to accept the characterization of the thing as reality when it fits one’s chosen position and works to stabilize it. Dig for the roots and the seed and explore it before holding up some artist’s rendering of the tree. Listen first and understand the truth before deciding how it may or may not fit into the greater and beneficial truth. Find the honest first.
AND A “WARM WAR” REACTION
Throughout the “Cold War”, Russia never fired weapons with decided exhibitionism toward the US or its allies accompanied by the declaration that it is determined to strike upon achieving that capability. That is at least a “Warm War”. But almost as unnerving is the power of commitment to a blinding passion for opposing one’s own head of state – vote for him, like him or not. It is this compulsion for turning any and everything into an attack against him that crafts this bizarre mischaracterization of a dangerous reality. “Trump threatens war against North Korea” and “Trump will get us into a war”. I’m sorry, who is threatening whom?! Please step back and look at the big picture. Don’t ignore the honesty here because it doesn’t jibe with the passion and rhetoric being promoted. It could be as destructive as a North Korean nuke.
THE QUESTIONS OF LIFE:
“… all men [persons] are created equal…” The concept of an all-encompassing, mathematically-applicable “equality”, as if we are all exact clones to the last molecule and moment of environmental exposure, would be ridiculous. So the obvious interpretation of human “equality” is that each and every human being is a life of equal value to each other, with acknowledgement of the incalculable multitude of differences among our singular identities. This all looks good on paper and is simple and peace-promoting enough to elicit a chorus of unhesitating nods of approval. But then there are the specifics we face when we choose to disregard our universal agreement on the matters of value and equality.
Is there a value of a life, in addition to (or perhaps opposed to) the general value of life? Is the preservation of human life itself (we’ll keep it species-specific) the overriding prime directive of our conduct? Does the preference of or discarding of one life when put against others as conditions often seem to call for nullify or at least complicate this directive? Are there more delicate and palatable treatments of this consideration when posed? Are those safe and comfortable treatments nothing more than empty avoidance of more difficult and ugly questions which will continue to present themselves whether we choose to ignore them or not?
Let’s consider a few hot-topic areas where the closetful of ugly questions just can’t be contained.
ABORTION:
I prefer to anymore avoid discussions about abortion with those who are labeled “Pro-Abortion” (aka the self-labeled “Pro-Choice” which is the humanistic and more appealing term). Those pursuits end up in the same endless turnstyle which includes vague talk of “dependence”; a magnetic pull to the focus on the woman’s right as the whole of the situation; the probable protection of the would-be child form an assured life of doom and misery; and references to the injustice of rape thrown in there in its turning. All of this insists on skirting the real and necessary discussion so, no thanks. But I’ll ramble here anyway…
Politicians have played this game out since Roe vs. Wade, if not earlier. “I was raised by a Catholic and I’m very spiritual. So when I say I’m pro-life I don’t want to over-politicize it. It just means that I’m respectful of all life.” This is a quote from a self-labeled Progressive candidate for governor of Idaho, but it could belong to anyone leery that their position on life could be any less grey or non-inclusive conceptually. In addition to identifying as “pro-life”, she states that she supports a woman’s right to choose. Pretty good coverage as politician-speak goes. Move delicately so as not to harm that egg-fragile relationship with any voter. The power to set public policy on such things as abortion is in the hands of those for whom naked and thorough honesty is a tricky thing to wield. Such is the nature of politics.
“Pro-Life” seems to me a completely useless term (like “spiritual”) meant to emphasize the user’s humanity when put against, say, the insinuated lesser humanity of another? Who the hell isn’t pro-life when all is calm and right? It’s a pretty safe assumption that we all like life. It seems pretty evident that we like, or at least respect and tolerate, the lives of others in a settled state. But when a life becomes a danger, opposition or inconvenient obstacle to our own, or to those more important to us, are we still unequivocally Pro-that-Life? Ah, enter the inconvenient obstacle and the unsettling cry of human rights protection and suddenly the tenet is negotiable.
But here comes the truly frustrating part, where the dialogue attempts a turn that isn’t there and derails. We create new, more palatable, arguments to replace the real one. These bellowed mantras are veiled in something decidedly viewed as humanity. One amazing thing about humans is that loudness, repetition and numbers seem to always beat out logic when establishing the stronger position. Here are the popular ramshackle “arguments” eagerly bought up by those driven to find a more personally comfortable resolution to an imperfect position…
The defense of the pregnant woman exercising her rights often retreats to the seemingly stable ground of the “independence” argument. This attempts to demonstrate invalidation of the unborn as a life due to its dependence on the mother and lack of ability to survive on its own. I guess part of the logic here is that it (we’ll refer to the unborn as “it” not as an implication that is not human but in consideration of the indiscernible and wholly irrelevant gender factor and pending the conclusion of its life/no-life status) has no existence whatsoever but for the choices of the mother in her actions which brought it to be and the beating heart of the mother, without which it could not survive. Being dependent on the mother and the mother’s choice makes it not more than a part of the mother, like an unnecessary and extraneous wart or tumor. If the mother’s heart stops beating, every last bit of tissue and organism contained within that vessel cease as well.
The familiarity factor plays largely into this assessment of the unborn. There is no relatable character whatsoever, no binding interaction (until maybe the first kick or squirm is felt) to engage the senses and no visual elements of resemblance (those in-utero pics, if viewed at all, show little in the way of recognizable human form for a while). But let’s focus on the “independence” claim. So my question is, what newborn, infant or toddler could survive on it’s (wait, those are human. Right? OK, his/her) own in this harsh world requiring complex action to ensure sustenance of life? Could you just plop an infant on the floor and say “OK, there you are post-utero. You’ve achieved our independence now have at it.”? How long do you think this independence would sustain this life? Poets, psychologists and relationship enthusiasts of every type would argue that we cannot survive alone in this world at any stage of life. How independent are any of us really? Is each person’s level of neediness commensurate with the value of his/her life? Is there a point of dependence at which the needy can be deemed by the giver(s) as unworthy of the sustenance bestowed? Does he/she/they reserve the right to that judgment as awarded them with their role of sustainer of the dependent’s existence? Just asking. The “independence” arguers have provided their answer but I have my doubts that it would be universally applied to all who are dependent for their survival, pre or post-birth. Or would it?
Conception is defined as the point at which the pregnancy begins. That is, sperm joins egg and the transaction begins with the DNA exchange process underway and developmental journey launched. Before this very point there were only eggs and sperms, neither of which progressed in any developmental way. From this point forward there is a continuous, verifiable and observable process of an organism which peaks about 35 or so years later and then declines, all or which ends at the (also very exacted) end point called “death”. Any random and ambiguous point from that obvious and logical beginning to the pinnacle of life development (before the less obvious start of the regression and decline) is just that – random and ambiguous. On one side of this point is nothing and on the other is the thing – let’s call it “life”, shall we? Pretty simple. Any effort to track that course of development in search of some other elusive static point, which may seem more useful a definition of “beginning”, seems desperate and futile. This non-referenced pointing into the darkness of the life journey’s complexities does not reduce or negate the starkness the obviousness of the starting point as recognized already.
But here, again, we apply the familiarity to the organism and pretend that if we can define some point at which enough characteristics have developed to an amount of which we can recognize familiarity with the organism, we will have found a place at which we can begin to assign value to it. We will now be able to spark empathy for it and, as usual, emotion defines how humans will behave and decide. Will this empathy spark at differing stages of the organism’s development and in response to different characteristics for different judges? Probably but maybe not so much. Regardless, it is obvious how an attempt to define “life” relies on the conditions, sensitivities and appeals to the judge’s emotions (be it fear, empathy and/or what have you) rather than to logic which has already provided the obvious answer. We continue to hide in the safety of the muddle we created and cradle our discomforts. We even encourage the discarding of logic. When the numbers band together in the realization that they share the same desire to restore comfort and convenience, even at the expense of rationality, they effectively become a mob and the mob mentality takes power. The statement is summarized as: “It cannot do this; does not feel that; and has no recognizably human features; therefore, it cannot be defined as a life.” But this is just an excuse for the decidedly abandoned more honest sentiment: “There is no basis for a familiarity bond to it; and it has no functional value or contribution to society or any self-aware and assessing member of it; and its removal is of no consequence to anyone of measurable value.”
The rape and incest conditional qualifiers must be mentioned. Even the negotiating legislators are willing to yield to these factors. But these and a projection of assured misery laid out in the unborn’s hypothetical future don’t change the nature of life. They only help us ascribe a value to particular lives. The ultimate consideration and bottom line, in practice, is the convenience and comfort of the life already capable of understanding the question of abortion, considering its ramifications, already engaged in the dialogue and with a comprehension of how all involved may be affected. Is any argued wrongness of this death lessened if measured solely by the victim’s pain or experience of it? A pain and experience drastically lessened, perhaps altogether absent at the early stages, along with his/her/its comprehension of self-loss.
WAR:
Differences are inevitable and, when existing in common space, conflict is the result. Arguing differences of perceptions is a battle of right vs. right and will never have a speedy outcome or resolution. The positions of institutionalized, communalized and cerebralized doctrine are too strong to be influenced or withered with acts of physical aggression. On the contrary, it only strengthens them. Maybe we can call this spite at its highest level. It’s like trying to dilute water out of existence with oil.
But with all its horrors and destruction to life and humanity, the battle of might vs. might will far more likely have a practical, definite and actual resolution – at least in a pragmatic sense. It would be foolish to view these conflicts as might vs. right. But that is the propaganda that will stoke the conflict to its end. The reality is that conflicts are more often (of course there are exceptions but no time for another recap of the list of selfish, angry and crazy power positions that moved armies) some version of right vs. another version of right. These are immeasurable and incomparable. But might is measurable and comparable and one side will emerge, damaged in every way perhaps, in the obvious position of having their “rightness” validated or rewarded.
When a soldier finds himself in the trenches, so to speak, the complex chain of events and decisions (which date back to long before his birth) are irrelevant. At that point it is kill or be killed and the history of the discourse doesn’t matter. It is self-defense and in the moment, under the microscope, this would be the most valid reasoning for ending another life. Wouldn’t it? But the issues with war don’t come from the microscopic analysis. They require the zoom out.
By virtue of the fact that the opponent in combat has chosen a wrong or lesser ideology to operate from, his life is of just that less value than mine of the righteous way. Couple that with the universally agreed upon confirmation that he directly opposes me in opposing us, which makes him a threat and justifies my response to his actions as self-defense (defense of me, mine or us – the ones among whom I count myself). This alludes to, in addition, the familiarity factor which lessens the value of someone who exists beyond my immediate world of involvement. I do not see or hear or know the profile and story of my opponent. I am free to define him by ideology and his intention to harm me and potential to do it. Subscriptions to ideology and choice of a team color; familiarity; and self-defense all work to create a necessary devaluation (just enough) to justify war. This is not enough for everyone though. Imminent and immediate threat to life would, nonetheless, both expedite the devaluation and judgment process and amplify the intensity of it, no doubt (back to the “trenches”).
It would be nice to think that every human in the world could simultaneously subscribe with conviction to the concept that the removal of one of us by any other one of us must be universally unacceptable. But these soothing fantasies do not change the realities in play in human relationships on a grand scale. Will preaching and singing of peace without a concerted effort to explore why it doesn’t exist and the entertainment of theories of action toward its possible achievement help? This is all just therapeutic complaining, pleasurable indulgence and a useless, non-strategic exercise of communal hope. The reality is that the mingling of millions of complex human minds and societal structures results in the choices of some lives to remove others.
In consideration of the familiarity element again, let’s consider the Guantanamo stir for a minute. Wars result in lost lives every day they are waged. Lost lives. Gone forever. But when it is so common and, more importantly, happening beyond our periphery it becomes an impossible burden to consider ascribing value to each lost life involved. But in Guantanamo we have visible faces and names along with the discomfort of harsh mortal treatment. With these relatables we have the sense of humanity before us and the spark of empathy. The pain inflicted on someone who retains their life becomes more morally burdensome to the observer than each of those lost lives. Is it possible to accept the loss of life in the venue of War as part of the prevention of some greater negative effect on greater numbers while not accepting the Guantanamo pain-inflicting activities as such? Let’s say the Hiroshima bomb considered against an ongoing policy of torture in the hopes of obtaining the information that might help bolster our defenses.
WAR – THE ACCEPTED PREVENTION OF A NEGATIVE EFFECT ON A GREATER NUMBER. GUANTANAMO – VALUE OF POSSIBLE LOST LIVES WITH NO NAMES, FACES AND FAMILIARITY VS. DISCOMFORT WITH HARSH MORTAL TREATMENT OF THE VISIBLE AND NAMED.
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CAPITAL PUNISHMENT:
Don’t dare think our penal system is based on vengeance! The driving considerations are deterrence, ensuring the safety of the innocents and our societal obligation to “rehabilitate” our fellow and equal citizens who have developed a kink or two and failed to develop an ability for sound decision-making. Right? Hmmmmm. Or do we call the vengeance meted out in a courtroom “closure” and “justice”. “Vengeance” is just too ugly a term for us to entertain.
A distinction is made between vengeance and justice on the basis of emotion. It is the driving force in the former and absent in the latter? I suspect that the hearing or witnessing a heinous and selfish crime against another would elicit an emotional response from any person who is grounded in the moral foundation on which society’s laws are based. The intensity of this emotion is determined by the level of familiarity with the victim or victims. I further suspect that upon hearing of the exacting of vengeance, as opposed to an official justice, against a perp would actually elicit an approving and positive emotional response commensurate to the degree of that familiarity in the majority of people. A second school, loyal to the doctrine of justice and law and its decidedly emotionless application, would differ.
The second school would seek to enact a “moral correction” or a “restoration of balance” to a state presumably “off-center” or “tilted” due to the commitment of a crime. I need someone to explain these models to me. What exactly is being “re-centered” or “put straight” by giving the OK to do something nasty to one who we decide has first done something nasty? These just appear to be more clean metaphors, but for what is not satisfactorily defined. Like fixing a clock without caring what time it is. Maybe it is the idea that society (in the action of one of its members) has veered toward the path of uncontrolled primal emotion just a little bit with every such crime committed. Maybe justice expresses our commitment to the rational and our vigilance against the emotional. But is this denial, even betrayal, of our emotional nature? In the end, the response to one party doing something harmful to another is to do something harmful back to them (be it stripping of one’s freedom and the chance to pursue a life of choice or the stripping of one’s continued existence in entirety).
Perhaps with a similar compulsion for correcting what is askew are the rehabilitation promoters. They would seem to be truly removed from vengeance and the valuation of life – at least within the criminal justice world. Not only does society need constant correcting but each equal member deserves an opportunity to correct him/herself from the slanted state eventuating in the wrongdoing. The true rehabilitators have answered “no” to the question of whether or not the offender has become rotten fruit incapable of being made unrotten, while others differ on their conclusion or remain undecided. Does society owe its offenders an opportunity at redemption or, as the religious would consider, salvation primary to serving the vengeful sentence? It is called the Department of “Corrections”, after all, and not Department of “Vengeance” or Department of “Punishment”. (And, maybe hiding among this crowd, are “rehabilitators” who value the state funding received for each wrongdoer needing our correction more than they value any life anyhow – uh oh, tangent alert.)
Emotion and rationality co-existed in the earliest humans who saw the need for laws and the practice of justice in forming a tightly-knit and functional society. We viscerally and naturally cared about the well-being of humanity. (It would seem that idea isn’t wholly subscribed to by those who believe the world would be a self-seeking free-for-all without the threatening controls of law and religion to keep us in line.) Should we ignore the emotional element of the progenitor of law and convince ourselves that it is wholly a practice of rationality? Is there a protective need for this decided ignorance?
There is the further distinction made between the personal (biased) and impersonal natures of vengeance versus justice. So our system lays out a path toward agreement. Justice may simply be vengeance that is agreed upon, after full and due examination and characterization of the crime, by those chosen to represent the whole of society. Is this necessarily emotionless, or does the judgment simply condone the expansion of the emotion from the personal to the societal? Acknowledging that it is vengeance, nonetheless, would risk admission of humanity as never having achieved more than an emotion-driven mob and this could prove destructive. But our we just ignoring a truth of our nature that we refuse to uncage for fear that we can’t live in harmony with it, instead eventually being devoured by it? Or do we already intermingle with its spirit regularly while the sight of it remains in the cage?
An aside: My personal problem with capital punishment is my lack of faith in the judicial system to get it right except in those slam dunk obvious cases, barring any technicalities to trip up the process. (I know, I know. How do you identify the “slam dunk” cases? Can of worms!) When DNA science started to be applied, allowing old cases to be reversed and justice (for the condemned) finally be realized (oh, but you’ll NEVER get that time back, sorry) more tragedy was revealed. I’m inclined to think wrongly accusing an innocent and stripping him of his life might be a greater tragedy than not getting a rightful conviction (exercise of societal vengeance). How many true victims of capital punishment or lifelong incarceration will the world never know? Yeah, tangent I guess.
None of this isn’t to rally the wronged into reestablishing mob rule. Meting out vengeance in an official and society-condoned manner because of the examination and agreement factors. Calling this path toward implementing vengeance “justice” is call too, as it makes the distinction between society’s vengeance and the more incidental, unquestioned personal vengeance. But isn’t it all vengeance just the same? And doesn’t this vengeance include a necessary de-valuation of the perp’s life based on their choice to (propensity for?) harming society or any of its members? Does anyone else ever see the emotion oozing from a judge (law’s representative) and the prosecutor (society’s representative) in his/her sentencing or aguing? How about valuation of life in the presentation of a victim’s profile?....
VICTIM PROFILES:
Consider the crime victim whose life is encapsulated in a series of colorful tales meant to demonstrate the severity of the loss to the world at the hands of some injustice. So young and with a promising future (as opposed to old and, therefore, with not much more to contribute?); an accomplished athlete; involved in charitable functions within the community; a beloved friend to so many; etc. If another victim left with undeveloped skills and no compelling interest in interaction with others (shyness?) leaving us with few tales of involvement in humanity with which to paint their pretty picture, is the measure of their value diminished, and with it the injustice which resulted in death? The miserable, unknown homeless person who has had no positive impact on anyone’s life and who made some bad choices steering them down that spiral toward an unnoticed death on the streets on a cold winter night. What is the value of that life and how is it measured? For that victim whose face smiles at us from the picture with the newspaper article, a deliberate attempt has been made to compile items from which we can assess value. The fact that this information is expressed in a courtroom meant to work as data with which to compute an appropriate sentence for a perpetrator affirms this. All this as part of an accepted and official, state-sponsored process. Tragedy is a weighty component here too. Sometimes I think the greatest thing you could do for your social image is die. In a tragic way – even more value to the tale and even heftier a helping of justice vengeance is served in response. You are loved and valued immensely, at least for a time.
THE CELEBRATED:
This is exercised the same as above for the celebrated but on a grander scale, and not just in death or victimization. Society has chosen to collectively place greater value on individual lives evident in the attention paid to them and the size of the eulogies when they are gone. This is certainly not a criticism, just an observation. In fact, the role of celebrity may be important in the defining and cohesion of society. If you had to sacrifice the highly-regarded public figure or the unknown regular guy to the angry gods to prevent the eruption of the volcano, whom would we choose? Heads and tails are equal in probability but different in appearance on a coin. But my guess is we wouldn’t be flipping a coin in that scenario.
SELF-DEFENSE/SELF-SACRIFICE:
You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would find fault in the ending of a life as a direct means of preserving one’s own. The only form of exception I can think of at the moment is a religious-based one. A Catholic (other Christian denominations?) mother faced with the choice of ending her own life or the newborn’s in a problematic childbirth is called on to choose the newborn’s over her own. That strictly religious example notwithstanding, any split-second choice of self-preservation over self-sacrifice (“only one of us can survive here”) is never illegal to my knowledge, so long as proactivity or direct action is not responsible for the death of another. But it may always be subject to scrutiny and judgment of an ethical nature. So is the weighing of the value of one’s own life versus that of the other who will perish upon one’s decision a matter of personal prerogative? Judge the act to be selfish and inhumane or part of Nature’s programming. Judge the act of self-sacrifice to be heroic. Either way, both self-preservation and self-sacrifice will, beneath it all, involve a very personal valuation of one’s life against another.
EUTHANASIA:
The vast majority of one’s human experience is completely personal. We feel alone (though others may empathize). We think and comprehend alone (though we may speak out and have others share our thoughts). We will ultimately die once in a very personal experience. We make our own choices and our freedom to do so is defended and celebrated. If that defense and celebration is a testament to our conviction that one’s life is wholly one’s own (sharing parts of it as one chooses), is there logic in the sudden objection to one exercising the ultimate choice?
Is this protest of an individual’s choice here borne of religious fear of a punishment for disrespecting life (even one’s own) taught during a lifetime? Is it the overwhelming discomfort of the protester being reminded of his/her own mortality? Is it an unrelenting hope that something good will turn a bad situation around, a stage which the chooser has already struggled with and passed through? Is it a selfish refusal to let someone go? All or some of those things?
Let’s leave the bedside and consider the harsher and more unsettling suicide.
Suicide is usually a crime of passion leaving the same person as both the criminal and the victim. The act will prompt both judgment of the crime and the perpetrator as well as negative rippling through the affected surrounding the victim like any other crime. But examination and judgment won’t seek an end. There will be no vengeance or re-centering or repayment to society. Does the victim’s exercise of personal choice negate the perpetrator’s angry hand? When the suicide act (assisted or not) is performed as a crime, with the intent to cause harm and from a negative emotional place, it is an offensive disrespect for both life and a life (the victim’s own). But when the decision comes from rational consideration and peaceful acceptance, is that a crime? To define a criminal harm or offense as inflicting undesired pain or taking away that which is rightfully the victim’s (with murder, everything) is insufficient and exonerates the angry suicide as still just a personal choice. But that suicide is not characterized by the victim’s peaceful acceptance of death, but is only driven by the perpetrator’s negative emotional motives to harm or take something away (albeit from him/herself).
It may look like the suicide/euthanasia protester values that life more than it values itself. But that isn’t necessarily the case. If the protest comes from one of those non-peaceful places mentioned above and the suicide from one of rationality, contentment and a motive of pain removal, which one is more in line with society’s sought balance and rightfulness?
It seems to me that a valuation of life and respect for it exists in one example even in its non-preservation (choice removal), while a devaluation and disrespect for it exists in the other example of its non-preservation.
I’m not about to scold the entire world (including myself) for veering off the “equality” track on a regular basis. I just get irritated with the seeming avoidance of the discomfort of honest dialogue. Do we place different values on different lives for a variety of reasons? This question has to be answered first and not shied away from. It’s clear to me that we do. Before we decide to ascribe “rights” and “wrongs” to our practices as a society in these matters, let’s clear away the nonsense charades like some inability to pinpoint the moment life begins; a human obligation to rehabilitate our equals who have premeditatively chosen to destroy others in vicious ways; and similar smokescreens. Let’s be honest without the fear that we will (or should) be vilified for treating uncomfortable human questions with openness and fairness. Once this trepidation and the rhetoric it woven are put aside, I’d be glad to listen to anyone discuss their thoughts on human equality, the value of a human life or the choice to end it.
ANOTHER LIFE STORY(?)
With a bit of bJust read an article in the local paper about a young man being held on $1 million bail. The perp was a college student who, allegedly, handed his college student girlfriend a glass of water on her way out the door after a night together. Soon after, she states, she felt a burning sensation in her throat. It seems he dosed the water with a bit of bleach in the hopes of bringing an end to her two month long pregnancy. Guess he just wasn’t ready to be a daddy.
The charge against him, it reads, is “criminal intent to commit first degree murder of an unborn child”. OK, now my confusion. In this era of post-Roe vs. Wade, does a crime by that definition teeter just a bit on a flimsy thread of legitimacy? It looked official enough in black and white.
The only conclusion I can draw is that the active cessation of an in-utero life (in this case it is apparently, albeit inconsistently, considered “life”), is unacceptable and criminal if the mother does not agree to it. Otherwise, this act would be the exercise of a woman’s right to free herself from the unjust shackles of victimization. Victimization, that is, to a set of uncomfortable circumstances in which she has found herself due to the presence of this entity (?). No, life (?). No. Wait. It’s not life in this scenario because that would make it murder. Right? Thing (?). An inconvenient… thing. So then, life is defined by the desire of those finding themselves in the role of maintaining that existence to actually do so? So then, if those on whom one is dependent for survival no longer desire to actively promote it, the result cannot be murder? I’m confused.
What is a little more clear is that the father here (as the story names him) does not have the right to end that life of his own choice. That is probably because that life is, currenty, not dependent on him for survival. Now had he suggested the bleach plot (which, by the war, failed) to her, her agreement to it would have made it OK? Wait. Would it? What would be the legal treatment of that? What is the logic to the legality of all this? Help! I’m confused!
Of course, the obvious transgression of bleaching the mother isn’t to be ignored but is out of the scope of the confusing element which is the immediate focus.
ALSO ABOUT THE CLOSURE ARGUMENT AND THE PERPETUITY RESULT OF THE VENGEANCE VERSUS JUDGMENT TREATMENT OF A CRIME OR AFFRONT
Let’s consider the perpetual Hatfields-and-McCoys-style cycle of counter-revenge and the seemingly non-resolvable conflict in the Middle East. Always a third party is called on in the hopes of procuring “closure”, resolution and peace. In the case of an established authority figure third party, this would include a final and universally accepted judgment on the terms of the resolution.
It is unclear exactly how the Hatfield/McCoy feud started, although some point to one or two killings which were either inspired by the already existing enmity between the North and South or hidden beneath the mask of it. Regardless, any ensuing murderous encounters, which were often spaced out by years, were ignited by a clan-affecting sense of dishonor more so than as a response to any specific and unprovoked personal offense. Any official of the state (non-corrupt and unbiased) passing judgment on behalf of society would be obligated to judge based on the merits of the specific and alleged crime (murder or self-defense) without consideration of the long-term sentiments between two clan identities separate from the individuals involved. The problem is that the clan identities took on a life of their own and were, arguably, responsible for the series of killings. Such entities remained beside society and its subject members and, thus, beyond the law. But the pretense that justice can be found by the two parties caught in this cycle is false. First because neither party is able or willing to seek a position from which they can identify the true origin of the cycle or calculate the weight on either side of the balance. Second because each individual answers for his/her own choices and actions and so “the sins of the father” need never be answered by the son/daughter.
Then there is the Middle East. (Heavy sigh). Here it is so tempting to recognize that a truly honest and rational treatment of opposing states of mind is not possible and to just leave two parties to fight perpetually between themselves. That could be said for the Hatfields and McCoys and the like. But the guilty responsible would see that as largely inhumane and ignorant of the reality that nothing in this world is really ever contained. Sadly, peace among individuals in the Middle East not only exists now (albeit not advertised often enough) but existed even more so before powers came to be who wanted to equate religious identity with state identity. I have no suggestions here. As with the feuding families, an even older and greater vaporous entity dictates how people live, think and act. This is religion and the letter of its law. Argue translations all you want, but as long as the opposing words are accepted as the end all and be all of each respective faith and the vast majority of individuals identify themselves as members of a religion before a member of humanity, these conflicts will continue to spiral.
With “first and unprovoked” offenses being beyond pinpointing and the nature or legitimacy of the respective sentiments on either side of the enmity ever being put to examination or judgment (due to political avoidance and their existence beyond the scope or grasp of any third party jurisdiction) the conflict and the series of individual crimes it inspires will be perpetual. Either or both parties must choose to recognize the irrational foundation on which the ethereal offenders have been created and turn against the tide of tradition and the perceived identities solidified in a history of community bonding and disavow them. Such entities may be the seasoned and sturdily-wrought by-products of human intellect which have become stronger than any collection of individual thinkers or speakers hinting of their disavowal could ever be. At least, I don’t see it happening in my lifetime.
Regarding vengeance and justice, crimes associated with these historical hatred quagmires are unfairly being considered. To simply blame a specific crime on an underlying feud would be a lazy disregard of the merits of the act itself and its immediate (as argued by the defendant) causes. That category alone is realistically beyond closure. There is, more often, a specific and definite spark which began a series of responses and counter-responses (or just one, such as “I wanted his money” or “he screwed my wife”, etc.) culminating in the crime being examined and avenged. “Two wrongs don’t make a right” is the proverbial argument against revenge. But “He started it!” usually is the truth. If we can identify the root action and see it through to its end, we may often find that the closure or “tit for tat” has returned to the state of balance and the sought closure has been achieved, with or without the blessing of society’s officials prior to the exacting of that re-centering vengeance. Vengeance is deemed justice in the end. An additional action by the original acting party, unable to accept the restoration to peace brought by justice, would now be yet another unprovoked aggression subject to the vengeance (justice) response.
To reiterate: Justice is, at its most basic, revenge. Revenge is not, necessarily, justice. Here it is fair to acknowledge that revenge without examination of the crime by society and determination of the due vengeance with the aid of all relevant information and rational consideration, could be subject to the pendulum effect. The unchecked personal emotional element would introduce that risk. Avoidance of the pendulum effect and the necessary agreement of society for legitimization together make justice the choice means of vengeance.
WE’RE GONNA BEAT THE DUMB OUT OF YOU!
Stupidity is not a crime. It may be the basis for actions that are criminal, but IT is not a crime. Only actions can be crimes. Stupidity is part of the human condition that cannot be officially regulated. When a crime is committed and it is objectively decided that the victim’s choice borne of stupidity helped create the condition in which the crime was possible, the victim still did not commit the crime. They are not the criminal and the attention should be focused like a laser on the one who chose to commit the crime regardless of any circumstances that may or may not have lent itself to the precipitation culminating in that criminal act. The criminal decision, not the stupid one, is the only one that society has a right and the duty to scold. The stupidity involved the victim’s cross to bear alone. The burden of eliminating crime belongs to society. The burden of stupidity belongs to the individual. Now, if stupidity leads to harm toward society or any member of it, it is a concern to be dealt with. If this stupidity hints at becoming epidemic, it is a serious concern and it is society’s duty to deal with it. Harmful stupidity may be punished, since punishment (in a true and clinical sense) is a strategy for bringing about a more positive decision and outcome in a future, similar situation. But the difference is intent. Intent to harm is criminal. Stupidity leading to harm is jus… calling for punishment in the hopes that those afflicted with stupidity can be rehabilitated. (We’re all about the rehab, right?)
Does punishment work to correct the ability for positive decision-making caused by stupidity? Does it work to correct that for those for whom the cause is a basic flaw in the personal development of a moral structure? What is the difference in the origins of each? Is either, or are both, set in place by nature or cultivated by nurture? If nature is the cause (blame the DNA, or whatever), is punishment pointless as a tool for nurturing the skill of decision-making to achieve a positive end? What should be the difference in the addressing of each?
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Why do the smallest minds seem to have the biggest mouths?