Jaded Objectivity

I have a theory...

2010-12-06T10:33:00.004-05:00

There are actually 8 theories about leaders and leadership according to Kendra Cherry, but I'm going to focus on these three:

1. Great Man theory- Great leaders are born, not made.... They're heroic, mythic, and destined to rise to leadership when needed.

2. Trait Theory- People inherit certain qualities and traits that make them better suited for leadership.

3. Behavioral theory- Belief that great leaders are made, not born. People can learn to become leaders through teaching and observation.

That's nice.

Over the years I've given a lot of thought to the Great Man theory, and the Alexander the Great's and King Arthur's of history, legend and lore, and one thing that surrounds every "great man" story is that:

1. he believed himself to be destined for greatness, and

2. others around him believed it too.

There is no mystical book that gives us a list of great men that we're supposed to believe in and rally behind... yet we make leaders to follow, including sports heroes like Michael Jordan and pop stars like Michael Jackson. Why? Because someone else believed in them first.

Maybe it started with their parents, then they believed in themselves, and later they grew their talent so big until others couldn't help but notice, but no great person was truly picked out from nothing and told they were now great... they began with some trait, some talent that caught the attention of another.

That seems to go hand in hand with trait theory... but I don't believe that traits are inherited -- that seems predestined -- but rather that they are learned and honed into skills. And that becomes the behavior theory... they learn to become leaders. In many ways, and depending on how it's interpreted, these three theories are just redundant spins on the same basic principle: that leaders lead.

Guess what that means for those that aren't leaders?

It means you're following.

Choose your leaders well.

Cultural individualism and hand-picking traditions

2010-11-04T08:31:00.010-05:00

Perhaps you've heard about the 10 year old that recently gave birth in Spain. If not, check out the link, or take in on faith when I tell you that she is Roma (Romanian gypsy), the father was 13, and they are no longer together.

In the Roma tradition, young women are "married off" to slightly older young men as soon as they hit puberty. Although the practice is not recognized nor condoned by the government, it is still an active cultural tradition for the roughly 1.5 million Roma.

People in Spain (and on facebook) are outraged that this ten year old gave birth. They are outraged that her mother is happy for her. Well, opinions are free and we can all have several if we like.

Some of the cultural traditions that Americans enjoy as a society include: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Cinco de Mayo, Black History Month, Breast Cancer Awareness month (and purchases of pink products), the 4th of July, baseball, football, and Mom's Apple Pie. Some less iconic cultural traditions include getting drunk on a 21st birthday, getting a driver's license at 16 (or 18 in some states), the high school prom, elaborate weddings with brides in virginal white dresses, regardless of whether or not they're actually virgins, frat parties, bachelor parties, and cars reflecting status. Some of those traditions don't really make a lot of sense -- such as getting slobbering drunk on a 21st birthday -- but it's a rite of passage in our culture, and who can tell us differently? No one, in part because we would pitch a hissy fit if anyone tried. The same goes for white wedding dresses. Have you ever heard a bride say "I can't wear white because I'm not a virgin!" Nope, although you might hear a very adamant and vocal defense of wearing white even though she bears little resemblance to Queen Victoria when the queen wore white. It's just one more detail that is part of our current culture that we cling to.

I'm not advocating ten year olds having sex and giving birth. But I am stating that if you accept cultural individualism then you need to accept all cultures, whether you agree with them or not. This ten year old was not raped, had consensual sex with someone close to her age, and was acting within the bounds of her culture and culture identity. Who are we to get outraged because we don't like those traditions! Maybe some Europeans think our mandated drinking age is ridiculous and that we should ditch the arbitrary age of 21, so that we might enjoy less drunk driving and less drunkenness in general. (They would have a point worth discussing, too). But before I take off on tangents about Prohibition and alcohol in this country, let's get back to the point.

Standing on a pedestal does not secure one's position nor superiority; the pedestal can be knocked out from underneath, or one can simply be knocked off.

Judging another culture for a human rights violation? That's understandable and worth investigating. Condemning one for traditions you don't agree with? That's a double-edged sword that can cut both ways. Next time you celebrate your traditions, ask yourself how you would feel if your neighbor told you you were wrong and tried to forcibly have your practices stopped.

Cultural individualism = what is right for a culture is indisputably right for that culture.

Trout a la Penzoil

2010-07-19T09:53:00.004-05:00

Who loves fishing? Who loves tinkering with their car in the backyard? Who loves Jiffy Lube so they don't have to change their own oil? Gimme a hoo-yeah!

Economic rationalism believes that if we divvied up the land and gave everyone an equal stake in it, that they'd take care of the land and its resources because they've be personally vested. Lemme ask you, is your neighbor as interested in taking care of his front yard (or side, or backyard) as you are? If the answer is "no ma'am, my neighbor don't take care of nuthin'!" then please be patient with me while we talk a little about the Utopia economic rationalists live in.

Economic rationalism assumes too much in the way of individual persons accepting adequate responsibility for the land. Some people have standards that would be considered "sub par" and their interests in the land may or may not include antifreeze and old engine oil seeping into the soil after a Saturday spent in the backyard several months ago.

In fact, I know a mechanic that runs his business out of his home, and all his work surfaces are dirt, and there is no collection practice in place for various car lubricants that drip or spill out of the vehicles he works on. He also lives just up the hill from an all-weather creek that is used to water horses downstream, and eventually feeds into a major fishing river. Yummy yummy, trout with a touch of Penzoil. Now, he's a nice man, and he's very smart about how an engine works, but he may not know so much about how ecosystems work, and he may not care. It costs money to collect all those fluids and tote them twenty miles into the nearest town to dispose of them properly, and pay someone to dispose of them for him at that; this is where economy and ecology are at odds. It's hard to wanna do something good for the fish down the river when it directly affects how much milk a person has in their fridge, or whether or not they can pay the electric bill and have a fridge at all!

Now, I wanna make a statement here about Earth. It's the Axiom*, folks. We can't send a shuttle to Mars for more coal or clean water. Whatever is on this planet is all we've got. When it's gone, it's gone. The idea, therefore, is to find a way to work with the Earth, not against it, for survival and thriving of us all -- humans, animals, and plants alike. We even need insects; they're part of the ecosystem. I'm okay with killer bees staying in their native environments, though. No need spreading them around outside their indigenous zones....

I'm not the greenest person on the planet. I drive a car that runs on fossil fuels. I light my home with CFL's and run the AC like my comfort is all that matters to me. I try to avoid using paper for anything, I reuse shopping bags, and I try not to purchase something with the intent of throwing it away, with the exception of stuff like toilet paper. I like my vegetables with a side of chicken or cow, and I understand that there is a need for farm-raised meats and a place for leather goods. I like my seal-skinned boots; they keep my feet warm and dry in the snow. I'm what Ed Begley Jr. would consider a travesty to conservation everywhere, but Ted Nugent and I could agree on a thing or two.

I do "get it" though. I don't necessarily agree with the melodramatic "doom and gloom" approach to conservation and the finite resources of the environment, but I do get it. We need to realize that we are part of the ecosystem, not in control of it. Ask any natural disaster survivor how much control they had at the moment they went through that disaster, and that's us folks, all of us, every day. We can no more control Mother Nature than we can understand where she'll rage next. But we can learn to accept that we are a part of her, and we can work with her. Course, that's something everyone is gonna have to decide for themselves. We can't mandate or legislate giving a damn into anyone. But maybe if we chose to give a damn, we could minimize legislation, and find something that works more practically than economic rationalism.

*the space ship in Disney's WALL-E

Results may vary

2010-06-07T09:17:00.009-05:00

Sometimes it doesn't pay to get out of bed. Sometimes, it pays to stay in bed. Just think, you too can be your own boss of your self-generating web site that auto ships your products to your customers! You too can receive checks in the thousands every single Friday!! Just pay $2.95* (*recurring billing is $49.95 a month after 14 days) and you'll have access to all the tools you need, plus 24/7 customer support that even builds your website for you! Get your own check just like I did!

Oh please. If it actually worked like that -- if the "results [didn't] vary" -- then no one would go to work at the ole nine-to-five.

Sometimes I wish I had a time machine. I'd like to know what the world was like pre-McDonald's. How did society deal with the grind of patience, before the drive-thru, before fast-food, when families cooked meals from scratch instead of out of boxes and cans, when instant gratification wasn't so instant. When microwaves weren't kitchen staples.

Our living history gets older every day. People who remember the Great Depression, remember WWII, remember JFK and MLK and the civil rights' movement of the 60's... remember McCarthyism and the Cold War and the Bay of Pigs... they're all getting older and that history is slipping away from the oral tradition into the pigeon hole of written tradition. Myself, I have no grandparents left to tell me stories; I lost them all before I was old enough to appreciate them. And it seems that we're so consumed by the pop culture of the moment that by and large, those stories aren't getting told like they once were. Perhaps I'm jaded in this opinion, but that's to be expected** (**see blog title).

I think it would be incredibly interesting and poignant if a grandparent somewhere created a series of you tube postings telling stories. Stories about outhouses and the use of a JC Penney catalog in the mid-twentieth-century Midwest. Stories about growing cotton and what "fair to middlin'" really means. Stories about how their family got through the Great Depression. Of course, results would vary, but then, that's the point! To record for history more than the text books ever will, to talk about things that were never interesting enough to get written about in newspapers, to give that slice of life that means something when front-porch sitting and drinking tea. To pass on life lessons in the oral tradition.

Nostalgia is in many ways the greatest history we have, with 20/20 vision and wisdom and romanticism that nothing else can touch or replicate. The real color of life is in the details, and the details are often opinionated. No reporter can ever accurately give us the color of life, as they're trying too hard to be objective to the point of monochromatic grey. No flavor, no color. "Just the facts, ma'am." No, I want the color, the flavor, the aromas, the sights, the feel of history. I want what only our eldest generation can give to the rest of us, and moreover, I want it to be desired by us all. Cue the coca-cola jingle "I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony...."

Aiiiyyaaareeeeevaaaah! Or, "Let's dance!"

2010-06-02T07:34:00.002-05:00

The border issue between the U.S. and Mexico is a hot debate, particularly in places like California and Arizona right now. So I did some brainstorming, and have come up with as viable solution as anyone has offered about handling the issue:

Perhaps the problem is not any more difficult that "party envy" or "fiesta envy" if you prefer. If it's one thing we Americans have learned how to do, it's throw a good party. From tailgating to fraternity parties to Mardi Gras, we know how to really live it up. I think, in part, that's why Cinco de Mayo is so celebrated here; for one, it's another excuse to drink and have fun, and secondly, it's how we show other cultures we appreciate their customs -- by adopting* them and making them our own (*read "stealing" if you prefer). But even if you think we hi-jacked Cinco de Mayo, at least we kept the name, which gives credit back to Mexico. And Ford has recently reintroduced the Fiesta, so isn't that another great American display of brotherhood? But I digress....

Let's take the party back to Mexico! Not just any party, either, one that really lends itself to supporting economic and cultural expansion. Let's open a string of strip clubs!

Why strip clubs? Well, let's look at two of the (stereo)typical types of strippers: drug users and young women/mothers trying to pay their way through college to get better educations. As for the drug users, well, we're just taking the demands back to the supply. Think of all the issues that will be solved if Mexican drug lords don't have to worry nearly as much about all that interstate/international commerce. Not to mention, prices can be cut or profits can be increased by simply removing some of the travel currently involved. Moving on.

As for the women who are dancing for their education, I say we partner these strip clubs with U.S. and Mexican universities, where these women (and men, if you want to expand as such) can work as exchange students, stripping for their schooling, but also immersing themselves in the Mexican culture and language. Think of it as supporting the arts and education at the same time.

Now this all may seem a little cheesy, but let's think outside the box. With these new strip clubs, we create jobs in Mexico such as bouncers, DJ's, bartenders, cocktail waitresses/waiters, and club management openings. With bouncing and bartending, opportunities for education open up, including trade schools related to both jobs. That would produce a demand for educators in bartending and in crowd control/self defense. The increase in bouncers alone could stimulate entertainment sales, with everyone purchasing a Mexican dubbed version of "Road House" to learn how to be Swayze cool on the job! Not to mention that with the demand for house music and DJ's comes the opportunity to give play to an untold number of currently popular and yet to be "found" musicians, with no preference to nationality! Can you imagine the artistic expansion of salsa into a stripper routine? Well, try for a moment. It's like breaking down a cultural Berlin Wall! (ok, not really). But with all this expansion in entertainment, there will be a need for an increase in public works and government employees (trash removal, police -- don't get me started on the current system, and this is my Utopia here), all night diners would have a place, thus creating a new demand for Denny's, IHOP, or something else in their place. That means cooks' jobs, waitress jobs... pretty soon Mexico starts looking like downtown L.A. or the Vegas strip, depending on how it's all planned out, and then WHAM! no one cares about the border, because the party is in full swing in Mexico and it's Fiesta all the time! and suddenly Arizona goes back to making headlines for golf courses and Maricopa County and North America collectively drinks a margarita and says "thanks for the great advice!"

**This is meant to be read tongue-in-cheek for all those that do not recognize my brilliance, and is meant to cause laughter in everyone else. If neither of these options fits you, oh well.

Teaching lessons revisited

2010-05-19T14:01:00.005-05:00

"The English did to us what we did to the Indians, and the Americans did to the English what the English did to us. I demanded revenge for everyone. I saw cities burning, I saw movies falling into blackness. I saw the maize on fire. I saw the Jesuits punished. I saw the trees taking back the long-house roofs. I saw the shy deer murdering to get their dresses back. I saw the Indians punished. I saw chaos eat the gold roof of Parliament. I saw water dissolve the hoofs of drinking animals. I saw the bonfires covered with urine, and the gas stations swallowed up entire, highway after highway falling into the wild swamps."

--Cohen, Leonard, 1966. Beautiful Losers. Pg. 187

I did to my friend what my enemy did to me, and her best friend did it to her. We all wanted revenge, none of us deserved retribution, but we sought it because we were angry. We were angry because we were insecure, selfish, full of pride and envy. We were full of pride and envy because we were immature and didn't know any better, hadn't been taught any better. We weren't taught any better because the knowledge was lost in translation; our parents didn't listen, or had forgotten, or their parents didn't know.

We pass on the history we learn, the history we memorize, remember, care about. We ignore the rest. We pretend it doesn't pertain to us because culturally or religiously it cannot apply to our system of beliefs. We pretend it doesn't affect us because we weren't directly affected by the missing bits. We pretend we are wiser for forgetting or ignoring what we didn't care about. We lie, shuffling our feet, and try to excuse our ignorance as simply incomplete education, because we "haven't gotten around to learning that yet" or "didn't have very good teachers."

Poor us. Poor you; poor me. Full of excuses and bloated on ignorance, forgetful and feigning amnesia, we blunder through daily life, making up stories as to why we parent the way we do, why we keep the prejudices we have, why we like or dislike an ideology, a political platform, a geographical region. Do we even tell ourselves -- in our deepest darkest nights -- what our rawest truths are, or do we cling to our illusions like Linus to his blanket?

European mirrors

2010-05-17T12:20:00.009-05:00

I just finished writing a research paper about the unification of Eastern and Western European countries since the fall of the Berlin Wall. I will not bore you with the 10 pages of quotes from 7 authoritative sources, but I will share some of my own observations by extrapolation.

For starters, the same obstacles that face the EU since its current configuration beginning in 1992 are the same obstacles that have faced all of us -- persons and countries alike -- since the beginning of time: money and power. In the case of the Eastern European countries, I mean the financial instability of their new post-soviet independence, and the political power that those fledgling countries strove to build out of the ashes of their former U.S.S.R.-military-backed selves.

In short, one of the largest problems was that the dream of having the democratic advantages of the Western European countries was far less complicated than transforming that dream into reality.

The Western European countries, for their part, were a bit skeptical to quickly admit the Eastern ones into the EU, and take responsibility for the financial ramifications of the fledgling nations. Can you blame them? Think about the current debate over Puerto Rico becoming the 51st state, if you need a current reference.

But back to Europe. Ideally, the fall of the Berlin Wall represented hope for all of Europe to be united as one continent, one smorgasbord of peoples, one allied group of nations. Realistically, there were not only financial obstacles to overcome with the Eastern countries disparity troubles, but also political corruption in the new countries, where emergent governments were still rising in their own yeast. Trust had to be built -- trust in one's own country, trust in neighboring countries, trust in the EU... trust everywhere! Trade had to be established, commerce had to begin and then begin making a profit. No longer was the statist government going to do it all for you, so there were even some bootstraps that had to be pulled up.

Nostalgia set in. "Oh, for the good ole days when the government just told us what to do and we did it." Now it's "work work work, and there's no guarantee at the end of the day."

Ah, capitalism, how comfortable you are to me. Risk and reward, ventures gained, ventures lost; opportunity abounds regardless. But not everyone thinks as I do, which is fortunate, because then the choir would be singing and I'd just sit down from my pulpit bored with the sound of my own voice.

So these fledgling countries finally got the chance to graze in that greener pasture of the Western European countries that they had so longed to graze in and found out that it takes work to move from one patch of grass to the next. They floundered, they scraped by, they fought with themselves, they argued with the EU, they whined, they picked themselves up, they cried blood and shed their own skin and they redefined themselves in spite of, if not because of themselves. Hoorah! Possibility can begin to become probability and even fact. History evolves before our very eyes, and fiercely we charge into the future.

So what? So what! You tell me. There is a mirror before you. Do you dare look at it?

Kumbahyah

2010-05-03T08:16:00.005-05:00

Comments I've been privvy to recently: "the world would be a much better place if everyone was color blind," "it breaks my heart seeing all the innocent animals that are washing up dead or covered in oil along the gulf coast" (referring to the recent oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico), and "[she] has a low tolerance for scripted puns and allegedly witty repartee from news anchors." I'd like to comment on that last one only because I sympathize, and could have quite a bit of fun with that one, but it will have to wait.

Now, I've opined extensively on racial arguments, including an anthropological stance that all humans evolved from Africa and are all one race. And it is heart breaking to see man err so gravely that innocent duckies suffer. Forget the fact that 5,000 barrels of crude oil are pouring into the gulf because of complications in sealing off a broken pipeline, forget the economic implications of not only the loss of the crude, the loss of the rig, but also the side effect to the Obama administration and their approach to future drilling. For now, let's just forget that anything has any importance beyond how we feel about the devastation to the innocent wildlife.

Would we feel any better if it were man-eating tigers and killer grisly bears covered in oil? Would we sleep better at night if the destruction eradicated any of the millions of unwanted nutria rats in Louisiana?

I don't think so. I think it's nothing more than pseudo-political dribble meant to make people look far more compassionate than they are at their hearts. Honestly, how many of us want to load up our cars, drive to the coast, forgo our jobs, our families, our mortgage payments, and go volunteer all our efforts to bathe and save every single oil-soaked animal we can find? That's right, virtually none of us want to do that. Some of us soothe our wounded hearts by donating money to organizations that help out. Others bake cookies, let the kids sell them for 50 cents a piece, and mail the money to Red Cross. Some of us simply go about our lives while saying things like "poor innocent creatures... they didn't do anything to anybody."

I feel the same way about the race card. "It would be better if the world were color blind." Really? So if we just couldn't see the changes in pigmentation of the skin, then we'd all get along? Would monochromatic greyscale actually accomplish that? No, it wouldn't. The eye is too highly sensitive to see subtle changes in skin tone and shade for it to be that simple. And really, color blindness, per se, is not the problem. The problem is that once again, people need something to unite and divide them by. How do you know that you have friends if you have no enemies?, one might philosophize. We are naturally divided by family, by neighborhood, by city, state, country. We are divided by beliefs, cultural norms, by religious practices, celebrations, festivals, by burial traditions, wedding traditions. We are divided by child-rearing approaches, by the side of the street we drive on, and by the colors in our flags. We are divided by damned near everything you can mention, and we are united only by sharing interests in some of the aforementioned divisors.

It has nothing to do with color of the skin. It has to do with culture.

If we sit around the camp fire singing Kumbahyah and other such songs, then all we did was breathe carbon dioxide into the trees and pat ourselves on the back for giving a damn about something. Well, at least there's no accountability in feeling bad for innocent animals and wanting a colorblind world. There's only accountability in doing something about it.

Holy Roman Church, Batman!

2010-04-22T11:40:00.006-05:00

Recently someone said to me that they believed that of all the churches, that the Roman Catholic Church would not have need to standardize itself in order to safeguard themselves against a downturn in religious interest.

Obviously they don't know me very well.

Seriously? The Roman Catholic Church? The very same church that took the practice of sprinkling (as opposed to immersion baptism) from the zealousness of Constantine? The very same church that promoted the Holy Roman Crusades in an effort to spread Christianity by killing off those that wouldn't convert to it? The same church that uses iconography as a religion unto itself -- what with putting The Blessed Virgin Mary up there between us poor sinners and God, instead of letting us talk to God Himself. Please, let me stop now, before I continue to go on and mention pagan rituals taken from various solstices, equinoxes, rituals and celebrations -- including Ishtar -- and before I go on a soap box rant about saints and martyrdom and the Roman Catholic Church owning more land, titles, money, and gold than any other entity on the planet. Not to mention its extensive library of works kept so closely guarded that even most priests in the church never get access to such a body of literature.

And lets not forget the selecting of the Canons, and thus the setting aside of some "biblical" works, because they weren't holy enough, or something, that resulted in the Gnostic bible. And there was that Protestant business, when an entire faction broke off, rebelled, and started a new system of worshiping God, because the Catholic way was offensive to that many people. And then there's the argument that it's really the Catholic Church at the original complaint with the whole "church and state" argument. Sure, the Catholic Church is obviously so pure an entity as to need not bother with wondering for its own survival. Surely the rest of the heathen of the earth will simply catch fire and burn up if they attempt to overthrow such a righteous institution.

If you are Catholic, dear reader, then let any offense you take to this post only anger you into researching my claims. Of course, don't ask your priest... that's not researching anything, that's being too lazy and too spoon-fed to bother to do your homework. If you're amused, as I am, as to the claim of the infallibility of the Catholic church, then laugh with me, and understand that the laughter is empty so long as people are still so undereducated as to not know our own world history.

One day we will see hot dog vendors selling high school and undergraduate degrees at sporting events. You wait and see. "Get your ice cold bachelors in world religions right here!" "How much?" "Five dollas!" "Mmm, too rich for my blood. You got a hot dog instead?"

the way we were

2010-04-21T08:11:00.005-05:00

Growing up as a child of the 80's, I am familiar with excess, luxury as commonplace, and the outdated idea that if you just put in 40 years with the same company, you can retire with a gold watch and a nice pension.

The beginning of the 20th century wasn't so spoiled as the end was.

It wasn't until the 20th century that a pension or a retirement age even existed. "In 1881, 3/4 of men in Britain over 65 were still working. It was only in 1898 that the British civil service began to enforce a retirement age*." The average life span changed dramatically in a short amount of time as well. "For a French person born in 1820... the average life expectancy was 40; in 1900 is was 47, and in 1992, 77.... The prospect of a sustained span of life in retirement also focused attention on pensions and savings. Out of this attention, government-backed pension and insurance plans came into being*."

Another fun fact is that unskilled labor is not a new issue. In short, people went where the jobs were, and before WWI, there was much demographic shifting in Europe as persons and families moved from country to country in search of work, and before immigration laws really cut out much of that movement. "Migrants tended to move into low-paid unskilled jobs, often ones which locals no longer wished to perform*." I know I remember hearing something quite similar to that about United Stated agriculture jobs....

In my relatively short lifetime, I've heard a lot of whining about not being able to find a good job, not being able to have the job security to earn a pension, not having enough life insurance, not having enough leisure time, having to work too many years to be able to retire... it seems that someone is available to whine about any and everything.

A mere one hundred years ago, pensions were virtually non-existent, insurance plans unheard of, retirement ages didn't exist -- you merely worked till you died. And on top of all of that, if you didn't save your own money, then you had no savings, simple as that.

Today, we suckle at the government teat for everything, complain it's not enough, and bitch that the government is too involved in our personal lives and wallets. Well, what is it? What it is, is that we are spoiled. We are the fatted cow, ready for the slaughter; too drunk on our own excess to notice that we haven't learned from our past, don't even know our history!, and are blindly willing to follow the best sounding politicians down whatever road they lead us. How hard is it to take charge of one's own financial responsibilities and hold no other accountable for one's own life? Hard, apparently. For all the higher education we seek, we don't bother to learn basic fundamentals of accounting -- where you spend less than you earn, and put some back into savings for a rainy day and retirement.

*James, H, 2003. Europe Reborn: a history, 1914-2000. Pearson Education Limited, Harlow, Essex. Pgs 31-35.

Returning with a Flourish

2010-04-07T08:57:00.004-05:00

It's been a long time since I wrote here. Let me say now that it's not for a lack of things to say, rather it has been a question of focus as well as some forces beyond my control.

To that end, I'm part zombie now. More specifically, I've undergone a reconstructive surgery that put cadaver parts in me; apparently my own parts were too broken to be useful. At this moment, I'm in-between surgeries, while I await further zombie transformation into the person I've never been before. Wanna guess what I'm going to be for Halloween this year? You guessed it; I'm going as Bill Murray*.

For the last 8 months or so, I've watched the world whirl by with as much a keen eye as a blind one. There have been moments when I've wondered what we've gotten ourselves into and moments when I've known with a shudder. After some good conversation and imbibing with friends, what I really don't want to do is turn this blog into a political rant (very often, anyway). I'm at a place in my life where I can't say I believe that the 1st amendment protects the rights of any basic citizen to free speech, and my reason for coming to this conclusion is long and mostly boring. Since I'm not part of the free press and I'm not a politician, and since therefore my rights at free speech aren't really rights anymore, merely ghosts of privileges, I'm going to protect myself and keep my mouth shut instead of sporting my foot in it.

To the end that even the blogosphere is becoming an opportunity for the political monitoring of ideas and thoughts in awareness of the grass roots mindset, if not in any appreciation for it, I cry for the broken notions that once established this nation under an ideology that reminds me of Atlantis: completely missing and buried in time and under water.

Young girls in America have been raised for decades to believe in princesses and white knights -- at least for their wedding day -- and many have had those dreams smashed at the altar and other places. Me, I dream of the next Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock... of all the flawed and brilliant men brave enough to demand better than they had, and with the foresight to set up a model that was as scientifically brilliant as any experiment in that it was repeatable. What did we do with our social contract over the last 150 years to use our Constitution as metaphorical toilet paper? Even more importantly, who's figurative asses do we wipe with it now?

But I digress into a disappointment that bends towards anger. Politics is what it is, and I am no politician. Journalism is what it is, and I am no journalist. I am something (in my own mind) far better than both, because I've been bought by no man to spin any tale.

And so it is a jaded return indeed!

*An homage to Zombieland, starring Woody Harrelson and with a hilarious cameo appearance by Bill Murray.

The truth in the lie

2009-07-14T12:29:00.007-05:00

For my birthday, a very intelligent and thoughtful friend of mine gave me the book Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine. I suggest it to anyone that wants to read a non-partisan opinion about our state of affairs.

Something that has been brought to my attention lately (not by Mr. Beck), is regarding finding the truth in the lie that has been told. In this case, the truth is that our country is not in trouble because of flat screen tv's, economic disparity between the classes, or any single politician. The truth is that the underlying reasons behind such effects (as to why people go into debt for material possessions, why some people strive to work hard while others beg for handouts and freebies, and why our leaders have taken America down a road we did not entrust them to go) have far more to do with where we are today than do the effects themselves. Finger-pointing doesn't fix anything, and it often doesn't even illuminate much if anything. It just avoids getting down to the real business of fixing what we broke.

We need to stop pointing fingers. Yes, taxation is strangling us (the taxpayers), debt spending is crippling us, our foreign policies can be compared to a circus, our leaders are selfish and do not often work for the benefit of anyone but themselves. The lie is that knowing all that stuff is enough to do anything about it. The truth is that we need to take a hard look at insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It is insane for anyone currently holding office at the national level to get another crack at the job they're doing. Show me a congressman (or congresswoman, for you P.C. types) standing up and standing out trying to change the partisan bickering and actually writing bills that address the real needs of the taxpaying, law abiding citizens of this country, and I'll show you a con-artist.

When we quit voting for people's character, we quit voting for morality. When we made excuses for our elected leader's personal behavior, we quit holding ourselves to any standard. How can we expect someone to go in and "clean up Capital Hill" when we overlook the fact that they have been accused of tax evasion, racketeering, insider trading.... If we turn a blind eye to our elected leaders' criminal activities, how can we be angry at them for turning blind eyes to corruption around them? The truth is that we can't.

We tolerate things from our elected public servants that we would never tolerate from our kids or even our next door neighbors. Why? Because we believed the lie when we were told it didn't matter.

So the question becomes, what are we going to do about it?

Get over yourself Ma'am

2009-06-18T12:41:00.005-05:00

Senator Boxer* would like it if you would remember her station in life. In short, she got offended that an Army Brigadier General called her "Ma'am" instead of "Senator". The article goes on to explain in brief the Army protocol for referring to pretty much everyone as "sir" or "ma'am".

So let's look at what "ma'am" means:

dame: a woman of refinement; "a chauffeur opened the door of the limousine for the grand lady"
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
Madam, Madame, ma'am, or Mme is a title for a woman. It is derived from the French madame (see different meanings of madame here), the equivalent of Mrs. or Ms., and literally signifying "my lady." The plural of madam in this sense is mesdames. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma'am
A contracted form of madam
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ma%E2%80%99am
Replaces sir, when addressing women officers in particular and all women in general.
toysforkidsvt.com/index.php/marine-dictionary

I'm not sure how anyone can see any of those definitions as anything other than respectful, but that's not good enough for Senator Boxer.

"You know, do me a favor," an irritated Boxer said. "Could say 'senator' instead of 'ma'am?'"

She didn't say "You know, General, do me a favor". She spoke to a military general as if he was some punk kid disrupting class, and she demanded that he show her respect through her title, because his actions and words weren't respectful enough.

I am offended at her littleness. This is arrogant and ridiculous, and all because "ma'am" does not defer enough authority to her. Please. One day she'll just be a has-been, once-was ex-senator, and then she'll just be a "ma'am" again, unless of course she's in the company of the general public, where she'll be lucky to get that.

I did enjoy Gen. Walsh's response to her request:

"Yes ma'am."

Hooah, Sir.

*read the whole article.

All the things we carry

2009-06-02T17:32:00.007-05:00

The average civilian carries around not only the trappings of their profession -- briefcase, laptop, purse, diaperbag -- but also the trappings of their mind -- worry, stress, guilt, shame. This is called "normalcy", despite a growing belief that such weights can be regulated in anti-depressants and vacations to Cabo or Maui. Each of us individually drags around our respective weights, and while what we carry is uniquely ours, it is by no means unique. Forgetting that we share the common bond of suffering is the most dangerous step towards apathy as well as cultural elitism. But today my focus is on the stuff we carry, not the effects of humping it around.

Tim O'Brien was a soldier and then an award-winning author. He wrote about his experiences as a soldier. His work of fiction "The Things They Carried" does a great job of putting a fine point on an often intangible thought process with regards to the Vietnam War. In the following excerpt, there is the burden on the reader of thinking about all that he says and all that he writes between the lines. Carry this around for a bit:

"The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water. Together, these items weighed between 15 and 20 pounds....

What they carried was partly a function of rank, partly of field specialty.

As a first lieutenant and platoon leader, Jimmy Cross carried a compass, maps, code books, binoculars, and a .45-caliber pistol that weighed 2.9 pounds fully loaded. He carried a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men....

As a medic, Rat Kiley carried a canvas satchel filled with morphine and plasma and malaria tablets and surgical tape and comic books and all the things a medic must carry, including M&M's for especially bad wounds, for a total weight of nearly 20 pounds....

As PFC's or Spec 4s, most of them were common grunts and carried the standard M-16 gas-operated assault ifle. The weapon weighed 7.5 pounds unloaded, 8.2 pounds with its fulll 20-round magazine.... The riflemen carried anywhere from 12 to 20 magazines, usually in cloth bandoliers, adding on another 8.4 pounds at minimum, 14 pounds at maximum....

In addition to the three standard weapons -- the M-60, the M-16, and the M-79 -- they carried whatever presented itself, or whatever seemed appropriate as a means of killing or staying alive.... They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.

They carried USO stationery and pencils and pens. They carried Sterno, safety pins, trip flares, signal flares, spools of wire, razor blades, chewing tobacco.... Taking turns, they carried the big PRC-77 scrambler radio, which weighed 30 pounds with its battery. They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could no longer bear. Often, they carried each other, the wounded or weak. They carried infections.... They carried diseases, among them malaria and dysentery..... They carried the land itself -- Vietnam, the place, the soil -- a powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces.... They carried their own lives. The pressures were enormous.... And for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the mysteries and unknowns, there was at least the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry."

Tim O'Brien carries the reader into his memories with this short story, and asks the reader to carry his burden with him for a few pages. Put down your Blackberries and your Mac's, push aside your mocha lattes and your Coldstone ice cream, and be quiet about your own complainings long enough to listen to someone else unload their burden for a bit.

We don't even have to walk a mile in someone else's shoes. We just need to carry his literal and metaphorical backpack around for a while.

The Pre-Natal Agreement

2009-05-27T13:09:00.005-05:00

For your consideration, I bring to you the "Pre-Natal Agreement"! This is my little creation and gift to the legal world. In short, it works like a pre-nup, but gives one parent complete control of child-rearing in the event of a divorce. No more arguing over visitation, over dental benefits, over who's going to pick up little Johnny up from soccer practice! This gem gives it all to one parent! How easy will your custody battles be now!! In fact, it even comes with a built in addendum that the non-custodial parent can choose to pay child support or sign away parental rights, no questions asked!

This is a culmination of years of me shaking my head at the evils that parents will do to their children post-divorce, but now it includes court involved evils. Recently that boy and his mother who ran away to get away from a court-appointed chemo treatment incited me to dream up the "Pre-Natal Agreement". Depending on which article you read after googling the boy and his story, you get various views on who has custody of the boy and his medical rights, and why custody is in question, and why there is a court-appointed chemo treatment in the first place. You also occasionally run across their religious beliefs (like them or not) that are against non-hollistic medicine in the first place.

The questions that this boy's case raised for me include:
1. who gets to decide the patient's rights in this and other cases and what are the guidelines?
2. what about his own rights to decide his quality of life and/medical treatments?
3. how far can the courts and the doctors go to force treatment upon patients?
4. will these treatments be directly related to the business of medicine? i.e. will there be a harder and perhaps court-backed push for more costly treatments?
5. when does patient care count as more important than patient treatment?
6. will personal beliefs towards medicine -- be them religous or cultural -- be subservient to the sickness itself? In other words, will the patient be little more than the vehicle to treat the illness, while the illness is the real interest?
7. how will the insurance agencies lobby and for what ends? Will this be one more area where we-the-people have little say in how we are treated and billed?
8. Did this all start from a divorce and shared custody rights? Some articles suggest that it did, others suggest that the state interfered on behalf of the boy because his parents did not believe nor wish to participate in "traditional modern medical practices".

The easiest way to avoid such convoluted situations is to stay married after procreation. But since we don't live in a society that encourages such unions, the next best thing may be to have ultimate rights over one's progeny.

Of course, this brings about several other basic issues that need to be understood:

1. children are an 18 year commitment at minimum. If you are not financially nor emotionally prepared to dedicate 18 years of your life to a life-form other than your own, then do not procreate or sign away parental rights if you do.
2. children are not playthings that are for your amusement in pride issues and control battles over custody. Grow up before you procreate, or agree to act like a grown up once you have.
3. understand that if you play by the rules of society, you just may scrape by under the radar. Draw unnecessary attention to yourself through any means of stupidity or irresponsibility, and you may find Social Services at your door, and then your parental rights could become a moot point anyway.
4. how you feel about someone the day you decide to procreate with them will be very different from the day you decide you're tired of their antics. Think beyond the moment to the worst possible scenerio and plan to deal with the worst, not the best.
5. use your head for something other than a hat rack. If you don't already have the answers you need to the questions you have, go get them from someone who does.
6. you are not half as important to everyone else as you think you are, but you are ten times as important to your child than you think you are.

I look at the situation we are in as a nation with regards to child-rearing and custody arguments and "a village raising our children" from social services to public education and I wonder how humanity survived long enough to get to this point. To all those people in power that are now making decisions to "safeguard our children" I ask you this: did your parents do such a horrible job with you that you now feel that we should grow up in a bubble until we're 18 and then register to vote to support the social programs you think are inalienable rights to our citizens and illegal immigrants?

United we stood

2009-05-19T13:08:00.008-05:00

I recently took a very casual poll and discovered that most people consider "nationalism" to be the same thing as patriotism: love of country and willingness to sacrifice for it. However, ask a history buff knowledgeable in the emergence of Nationalism, and you'll learn something a bit different.

"Nationalism proved to be the single most powerful European political ideology of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (pg. 744)". Yes, European political ideology. And nationalism is very simple, really. The idea is simply the "concept that a nation is composed of people who are joined together by the bonds of common language, customs, culture, and history, and who, because of those bonds, should share the same government [such as a democracy, a monarchy, or other governmental form]" (pg. 745). Ideally, any group can form its own nation, "but in reality nationhood came to be associated with groups that were large enough to support a viable economy, that had a history of significant cultural association, that possessed a cultural elite that could nourish and spread the national language, and that could conquer other peoples to establish and protect their own independence" (pg. 747)*.

Such relatively simply ideology helps really put a fine point on why there are so many conflicts and wars in this world, doesn't it? We want to be united and have the right to be united and protect ourselves from other groups. And by "we", I mean just about every single individual culture on the planet.

Now if you read my previous post, "Out of Africa", you already know that I posed a very dramatic pitch for peace by way of understanding and respecting our genetic similarities as a species. Genetic similarities do not define cultures, however, and the European Nationalists saw a problem in Europe that ended up redefining borders and bringing about nation states such as Italy and Germany, as well as tying peoples together in a way that had not ever occurred before.

You'd think we, the fledgeling U.S. and "Republic experiment", would have learned something. Apparently we did not.

Take another look at what nationalism means: "peoples joined by common language, customs, culture, and history...." Who in politics is trying to keep this country united at all? No one, that I can think of. Every single politician that comes to my mind is focused on segregating this country by focusing on various economical or cultural differences within our borders. Abortion activists' tend to define that entire argument based on a difference between the sexes, supported by the rhetoric of "a woman's right to do what she wants to do with her body". The entire political plank of illegal immigrants recognizes and thus divides culturally the Mexican/Latino culture from the "American" culture. Arguments over health care tend to alienate economic classes and to some degree also includes ageism by focusing on Medicaid and Medicare. The argument over taxes divides the working class, the upper class, and the tax exempt class.

In short, how does this country stay together at all? We are no longer joined by a common language (we're increasingly bi-lingual), we have no common culture or customs, and our history is used as a political tool to divide us instead of unite us.

With cultural globalization we are increasingly losing whatever vestiges of culture we had as we embrace individuality and increase our integration of other cultural norms into our own melting pot. This in and of itself would not be a bad thing if we actually had an "American" culture that united us. When this country was founded, it was in response to religious oppression and persecution. It was a break from the tyrannical rule of a monarchy. It was to separate from a government that failed to allow equal representation. It was also a chance to pursue personal wealth without strict adherence to a caste system, and a chance to encourage and participate in free trade.

We seem to have abandoned everything that once united us. With no commonality as a nation, of course we're at the whims of our president and congress. Of course we're turning towards socialism and communism and away from the republic that our forefathers established. And until we understand our history, we cannot begin to change our future.

*Craig, Graham, Kagan, Ozment, Turner (2009) The Heritage of world civilizations, (vol. 2, 8th ed., pp. 744-747). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Out of Africa

2009-05-14T14:42:00.007-05:00

Anthroplogists believe that modern man comes from Africa. “...Geneticists found that characteristic DNA sequences called markers on the Y (male) chromosome in a huge sample of men in Asia and Oceania could be traced to forefathers who lived in Africa in the past 35,000 to 89,000 years. Two other groups studying Y chromosome markers have come to a similar conclusion. Together with a variety of studies showing that mitochondrial DNA is of recent African origins, anthropologists now have two strong lines of evidence in favor of the 'Out of Africa' model, which says that the ancestors of living humans swept out of Africa in the past 200,000 years and replaced all indigenous people they encountered.”*

This means that either the government should start passing “racially” preferred handouts to everyone, or quit handing them out at all. It also means that the NAACP needs to widen it's recipient base. Finally, it means that affirmative action really is discrimination. But most people with any sort of common sense already knew that.

But outside of poking fun at governmental policies that allow for any particular group to get any specific favor based on the “color of their skin”, there is another and deeper meaning to being “African American”... the anthropological belief that we're all one race. “In the United States both scholars and the general public have been conditioned to viewing human races as natural and separate divisions within the human species based on visible physical differences. With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this century, however, it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic 'racial' groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes. This means that there is greater variation within 'racial' groups than between them. In neighboring populations there is much overlapping of genes and their phenotypic (physical) expressions. Throughout history whenever different groups have come into contact, they have interbred. The continued sharing of genetic materials has maintained all of humankind as a single species.”**

With all the religious, political, sexist, demographical, “racial”, cultural and economic diversity on this planet, realizing that we are, essentially, no different from one human to the next, we can de-value the constant bickering and warring over inconsequential stuff – like whether or not the color of someone's skin reflects who they are as a person, or whether or not it reflects how capable they are to perform a task. It should also be broadened to consider such things as whether or not acts of terrorism is performed against truly different persons (it is not), or instead just different ideologies (it is). Perhaps human identity is not the way to peace, but perhaps if we focused on our genetic similarities and less on our cultural differences, PERHAPS we could begin to value human life enough to pursue avenues of peace that typically and historically have not worked, because of a shift in fundamental beliefs about what it is to be a human.

"Photograph is courtesy of American Anthropological Association and Science Museum of Minnesota"

*source

**source

This year's ode to mothers

2009-05-09T13:00:00.003-05:00

I have had very little time to dedicate to something worthwhile here in the last couple of weeks, and I finally get a few moments and find myself less than 24 hours away from Mother's Day.

For good or ill, we all have opinions about our mothers, and even without the Freudian approach to how our mothers have affected us, we can probably take a moment to tell a tale of humor or woe that closely connect our heartstrings where our umbilical cords once connected us. Too graphic? Fine, go visit FTD.com and send her some flowers and call it a day.

But before we cut off our reflections so quickly, have you ever stopped and really thought about how your mother's presence or absence in your life has structured you as a person? Think of all the stories of soldiers that die calling out for their moms. Think of all the people that fall into deep depression when their mothers die, regardless of how they connected with their moms while they were alive. Despite the traditional need for a sperm and an ovum to create life, children bond at a deeper level with the mom.

So tomorrow is Mother's Day; the one day a year we are federally told to appreciate our mothers, buy them Hallmark cards, and take them out to overcrowded restaurants to show them how much we love them. Maybe we'll buy them jewelry -- some family birthstone related thing that we can get at Walmart -- maybe we'll buy them chocolates. Maybe we'll remember them with a phone call, a visit to the nursing home, or a visit to the grave. Maybe we'll go out of our way to ignore them altogether.

However you do, or do not, remember your mother tomorrow, remember that the one person who is acutely aware of what "day" tomorrow is... is your mom. The only day that she will be more aware of her motherhood is on your birthday, and that day is set aside for you.

Also remember that she could've aborted you, and without any social accountability after 1973.

don't you forget about me

2009-05-01T14:15:00.003-05:00

The 80's was a decade of great songs. Sure, better music has come out of other eras, but arguing "what musical era or genre is best" is like arguing any other opinionated topic -- no one is going to ultimately win.

It reminds me of the nonobjectivist approach to ethics, which states that there are no moral truths, but instead morality is simply a reflection of opinion and societal norms. For example, say you like Mozart and I like The Kinks. Instead of being able to sit down and rationally and calmly discuss the talents of either, with the intention of deciding one to be better than another, we will ultimately become inflamed and start spewing rhetoric and name calling. A.J. Ayer says that this will happen in any conversation where there is disagreement, and that ethics is therefore nothing that can be argued about as it is all opinion. "Lying is wrong" is as nonsensical to him as "Elvis is alive" or "Bread is tasty" because they're all opinions and cannot be proven as universal fact.

You know, when researching the Na of Southern China, or reading about the Ik of Central Africa, or even just considering dissenting opinions regarding abortion and same-sex marriages in our own country, it's easy to give a lot of credit to the idea that there is no moral truth and we're all arguing our opinions and feelings.

How dare you tell me that I have to agree with you because you're right and I'm wrong!! And do those that believe in abortion have any more right to say that to those that believe abortion is wrong? Do monogamous heterosexuals have the right to force their notions of morality onto sexual "deviants"? If I tell you that you are wrong for thinking that the sky is blue because in reality it is not blue but is merely reflecting blue as all other colors are being absorbed... do I have the right to force you to agree with me?

Ah, morality. How difficult it is to explain you, how impossible it is to contain you.

So maybe there are no universal truths. I mean, even "murder is wrong" is heavily debated by those that think that motive plays no part in murder, therefore even "killing" is wrong. Jainists would be among them; to them, I'm a murderer because I stepped on a cockroach and killed it. I meant to, as well, so maybe I am guilty -- universally speaking. I mean, either taking life is wrong or it is not, right?

Do I have the divine right to define what "life" is? Do I have the moral responsibility to set boundaries? Is making motive an acceptable cause and therefore exception simply making morality more comfortably fit? Just because I did not take human life, I did take life... a cockroach may not be a desirable lifeform to many of us, but we would all agree that it is indeed alive.

Does it become abominable for me to kill something because it's cute -- like a kitten? Where is the line drawn? Who gets to decide? If I accidentally kill it, because it runs out in the street and I run over it with my car, am I absolved of all moral responsibility? Aren't I surely a monster if I hack it up with an axe, however?

So if there are universal truths, then some of us must uncomfortably admit that we've done some universally morally reprehensible things, even if they weren't done to humans.

I remember a mouse I once killed in my house. I was not particularly kind to it, although it was no cold-blooded killing, but instead a rage response because I found the mouse in my cereal box that I retrieved from the cabinet to pour myself a bowl. But the circumstances notwithstanding, I took that mouse's life. The fact is, that mouse died at my hands.

It seems like something of a nicety that we only include humans in our societal ethical norms. How very Kantian of us. How ignoble. Do I have another solution? Are you kidding? I'm an amateur at this stuff.

Guarantees and opportunities

2009-04-14T21:51:00.004-05:00

John Rawls was a contemporary philosopher that put his own spin on the social contract theory -- that of the "veil of ignorance". In short, his idea was that if we were all disembodied spirits in space and not yet humans on earth, would we choose to live in a society that put restrictions on women or minorities, or inhibited peoples by class? He poses that we would not support such ideas, as we could very well end up with the short end of that individual freedom stick once we were assigned an earthly body. He believed that we would all sit down and script a social contract with equality for all.

But he mentioned class in his illustration. Does he mean that the wealth should all be distributed equally, or simply give the opportunity equally to everyone to pursue wealth? The differece is fairly profound, I argue.

If he meant to support equal distribution of wealth, then one could argue that a successful social contract means little more than setting up a socialist or communist government, designed primarily to control the wealth of the people and distribute it evenly. If he meant to support the idea that every person has the same rights to pursue individual wealth, then arguing for a free market society and capitalism is the way to go.

But even if we take political application out of the equation and remove all labels, then let's just look at the primary difference between "equal wealth" vs. "equal opportunity":

To simplify this idea in terms of survival, let's pretend that there are only 10 of us on earth, and we live together in our own village. Let's say I go out and gather 2 pounds of berries, another guy hunts down 1 rabbit, and our village has some chickens that laid 5 eggs today.

With equal wealth, if just two of us gathered or hunted any food, it doesn't matter, for we all will get some of the loot. That means that the village divides the 2 pounds of berries, 1 rabbit, and 5 eggs between us. We each get 3.2 oz of berries, 1/10 of the rabbit, and half an egg a piece. Without even arguing over who gets the pelt or how it's equally shared, what about the different body types? Should age or health matter in the distribution of the food? If there's a small child that doesn't eat that much or a large warrior that requires more than that to keep his strength, or a sick person that needs additional nutrition... what do we do? Our social contract insists we share it all equally. While members of the village may decide to share above and beyond their own wealth, they are not required to, so there is no guarantees in the social contract for it. And what about the people that actually did all the work? Do they deserve no reward for carrying the whole of the village on their back? And what about those that did nothing? Should they be rewarded for their laziness? These are but some of the many difficult questions that arise from the idea of equal wealth.

Equal opportunity, on the other hand, would allow for every member of the village to go out and hunt or gather, regardless of sex, age, color of skin, etc, and would allow them to keep their rewards. The result is that while luck and skill would play a part in daily fluctuations of bounty, there would be no limit to the possibility that a member of the community had to gain wealth, and thus it is often argued that the village would be inspired to work hard to pursue their own wealth. In this system there is no guaranteed foodstuffs to be distributed at the end of the day, but it is argued that people would be generous with their neighbors when their neighbors tried hard and fell short, as they would want such generosity to be returned to them in tough times.

While equal wealth is a more Kantian approach to a social contract -- by this I mean the village would be doing good because it is their duty to do so -- it also does not encourage anyone to go out and try harder than any other, because even not hunting and gathering at all will still result in being given bounty. It could be argued that nothing besides hunger would ever drive any member out to hunt and gather. Such base needs would not warrant a generous spirit when doling out equal portions to any one else, when instead they would wish only to fill their own bellies. Perhaps such starvation could drive a member of the community to steal from the others by eating out in the field and not bringing back the whole bounty to the others. Perhaps they would begin to wish members of the community to die or be killed off to lessen the burden.

In the equal opportunity, a person could become discouraged that others go out and successfully bring home more bounty than another, but an encouraged person could desire to try harder, learn better methods, improve efficiency. Perhaps a person who has no luck could desire to quit trying, or harbor grudges against the successful members of the village, wishing to kill the successful members off and steal their wealth. It is here where the social contract becomes so important, as a social contract -- as per Hobbes's definition -- exists to unite warring persons in that they agree to live under a set of rules because the rules are better than the lawlessness and anarchy that would otherwise exist.

Is one system better than another? Yes, in my opinion. But it's going to take more than just my opinion to work towards any sort of social contract that transcends the political strife we bathe in in this country. It's far easier to talk about how things should be than do anything to create a better community; and if you don't do anything at all, but promise to do everything, you can keep getting re-elected on the grounds that you still have work to do. HA!

Have you thought about this lately?

2009-04-07T10:26:00.005-05:00

"Abandoning an absolute ethical moral standard leads irresistibly to the absence of ethics and morality. Each person determines his own ethical/moral code. That's anarchy. Humans become their own gods and decide, each in his own way, what is good and what is evil. Evil becomes good -- good becomes evil. Upside down morality! Good is ridiculed!! Evil is dignified!" - Richard Halverson, former chaplain of the U.S. Senate

Can you say he's wrong? For those of you that just blurted out "yes", think about all the times that "good Samaritans" are punished for doing good works. Some are sued because they are not doctors or EMT's and pulled an accident victim from a burning car but causing bodily damage by not using accepted emergency procedures. You've heard of these horror stories, don't make me look them up; my time is valuable and if you're that big of a curmudgeon, then I will be wasting my efforts proving my points to you.

So we as a country struggle with cultural relativism (the idea that no culture is more "right" or "wrong" than another, and that all aspects of that culture -- including its ethics and morality -- are no more right or wrong than any other, and that furthermore no one has the right to judge another culture. Basically, it says that "what's right for me is right for me, and what's right for you is right for you".

Take the Ik tribe of Central Africa. They "acknowledge no moral or social obligation to anyone or anything. Their standard of value is the self; their rule of life, to do whatever they wish. At age 3, children are put out of their parents' huts and thereafter sleep in the open, rain or shine. To survive, they gather in bands and form not friendships but temporary alliances, which are betrayed whenever convenience dictates... children learn to cry tears of malice, anger, or hate, butnever of sorrow.... The Ik's sexual expression typically is adulterous and is driven less by passion than by the desire to profit at someone else's expense. A neighbor's suffering evokes not pity or kindness but malicious glee. (observations by anthropologist Colin Turnbull, from his field study in the mid-1960's)*".

To tie this all together, according to cultural relativism, the Ik have the right to continue to behave as they do, treating others as they do, and no one else has the right to tell them that they are in the moral wrong to do so. Halverson would say that this is anarchy and reprehensible, and he might even liken this sort of dignifying of "evil" to issues we see arise in our own country, as so many criminals get off on some technicality or another, thus invalidating the point that they committed a crime and owe reparations to society.

The Ik live -- as described by Turnbull -- without any sort of moral conditions tying them to one another nor any other group. They are the basest culture I've ever heard of, where pleasure comes solely from enjoying the pain experienced by another. "They live without love, and they die alone*".

I argue that this is the inevitable end of people who cannot or will not "draw lines in the sand" for what is right and what is wrong. I argue that even if a 5 year old steals something, and that it is successfully argued that "she didn't know any better", that the crime of stealing remains unchanged, and that reparations to society are still appropriate.

Here's where I become unpopular in my thinking, but bear with me dear reader! It is only here that the details of the case should be considered. Only in judgement, not in deciding whether or not there was a crime committed. If something is stolen, it remains stolen regardless if a toddler took it, a seasoned criminal, or a forest animal. Even if it is successfully argued that Big Foot himself stole, the argument is not whether or not something was taken, but WHO took it.

Before we get way off track, let's get back to the thieving toddler. Should the toddler have her hand chopped off as might happen in some cultures as penance for stealing? No, that would be overkill. Should she be forced to serve time in prison? Nah. Should she be forced to return the item she stole? Sure, that's appropriate. I'd even go so far to say that she could spend an hour of her life in service to the person from whom she stole.

I personally that it is admirable to punish according to crimes. That upholds a standard and a consistency in society that would give the members of the society something they can count on, and a moral base by which they can decide their actions. This crazy society we have, where pleas of insanity often are used as some form of excuse, where deals are made to catch bigger fish or simply plea bargain to a lesser sentence, where repeat offenders do not necessarily receive stricter sentencing with each offense... this to me is anarchy. This is a lack of moral structure and substance. While everyone is fighting for individual rights, the "greater good" is completely forgotten or shoved aside. Cultural relativism is winning, and yet the result is that we have no culture.

For according to its own definition, we have no right to judge or be judged by another culture. So who wins? No one. It has no choice but to exist as "every man for himself". Slowly we are slipping into looser and looser cultural morality. I dread the days when I'm old enough to sit on the front porch and talk about the "good ole days". I fear that I've alredy seen the best this country has to offer its citizens, if things continue to progress as they have been.

If you disagree with me, I'd like to hear a detailed account as to why. I could use some cheering up.

*source: Vincent Ryan Ruggiero, Thinking Critically About Ethical Issues, 7th ed. pg. 52-53

who's Margo Crawford?

2009-03-27T17:42:00.002-05:00

Many of you have read my blog under my pseudonym for some time. Most of you know my real name by now, either cuz we grew up together or because we've gotten to know each other a bit outside this blog.

So who's Margo Crawford?

I am. And I'm ready to tackle Shakespeare's eternal question "Would a rose smell as sweet by any other name?" by simply going by my own given name. And for those of you who no longer find the metaphor of an empty ink well of any significance, or were merely curious as to what "the face of Margo...er, Catherine" looks like, I've even updated my photo to an actual picture of me.

What does this mean for the blog? Not much. I'll still be me as predictably as I always am. What does this mean for humanity? I dunno... these changes may usher in the end of the world.

At any rate, welcome to the next phase in my own evolution.

You're yes then you're no....

2009-03-20T16:52:00.005-05:00

If you knew that Proposition 22 and Proposition 8 may not have ever been necessary propositions, would it change your mind about them?

In short, these two propositions were brought before the people of California to vote on whether or not marriage should be defined as between a man and a woman or broadened to include same-sex unions.

It turns out that the California Family Code, sections 297 and 297.5 allow for same-sex unions to exist:

"Registered domestic partners shall have the same rights, protections, and benefits, and shall be subject to the same responsibilities, obligations, and duties under law, whether they derive from statutes, administrative regulations, court rules, government policies, common law, or any other provisions or sources of law, as are granted to and imposed upon spouses."

These registered domestic partnerships are equal to marriages, legally, and are protected from discrimination and partners in such a union are legally considered spouses.

If there already exists a legal union of same-sex partners, then why is same-sex marriage even an issue? Is it because of the definition of the word marriage? If so, then the people of California have twice said that they -- as a majority -- want a marriage to be exclusively between a man and a woman. Does the California Supreme court have a right to overthrow their passing of Prop 22 and later Prop 8? Is the court imposing legislating from the bench or upholding the law?

What are your thoughts?

Hot Topic: abortion and rhetoric

2009-03-01T15:53:00.009-05:00

"Someone against abortion might define 'abortion as 'the murder of an
innocent still-born person'. This definition carries a negative connotation,
as the term 'murder' suggests that abortion is wrongful killing, and it also
assumes that the aborted fetus is already a person. Such a definition is
surely not appropriate in a rational debate on the moral legitimacy of
abortion, even though it might be useful as a rhetorical tool" (Joe Lau
Department of Philosophy, The University of Hong Kong, August 2003).

Someone might also describe pregnancy as having a parasite growing inside the uterus.

But let's look at "murder" and "abortion" beyond their trigger words. "Murder", according to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, is "the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought". Well, I'm not sure how many people get an abortion out of malice for their unborn child. Most probably do it out of fear: fear they don't have the money nor the education to raise the child, fear that the father of the child will beat them, fear of their parents, fear of the unknown, etc.

And let's look at the rest of the definition: "the crime of unlawfully killing..." well, thanks to Roe vs. Wade, it's not unlawful to have an abortion, therefore there is no crime. So, strictly speaking, abortion is not murder. Ok, moving on.

According to Lau's definition, the abortion is the murder of an innocent still-born person. Answers.com says that the definition of "stillborn" is "dead at birth". Well how, Mr. Lau, can you kill something already dead? (I'll let it slide that it also has to be born and dead to be considered stillborn.)

Mr. Lau's definition doesn't work.

But let's go on. He assumes that those against abortion consider the fetus a person. Now, I am not going to argue the philosophy, psychology, biology, or morality of whether or not a fetus is a person. I'm going to argue that there is nothing to kill if the fetus isn't a person, and you can't even kill it if it's dead, as in the aforementioned definition, so why are we discussing abortion in Mr. Lau's terms?

Let me ask you this: if we can legally kill something that doesn't exist anyway (not my definition), we morally wrap our minds around genocide (in this case, infanticide). Why can't we, therefore, euthanize our elderly like we do our old dogs and cats? Why can't we "put them out of their misery" of old age, cancer, dementia, brittle bones, etc. Come on, we kill our kids in the womb! What's the difference between deciding the first breaths of infants and the last breaths of the elderly? The difference is, I offer for your consideration, that fetuses have no eyes, no smiles, no names, no faces, no emotional to pull at heartstrings. But are they any less alive?

Is a plant a viable organism while it is still a seed or a seedling and still growing? Is it "alive" before it shoots out of the ground and grows leaves? Is it "born" only after it has sprouted roots?

No, I'm not going to go off on the tangent of the evils of eating plants, because "plants have feelings too". I honestly don't care if you eat cows or elephant ears. (For those that don't know, an elephant ear, in this context, is a large green leafed plant, not the actual ear of an elephant).

But I am going to say that Joe Lau, by his own definition, uses rhetoric to attempt to argue that those who oppose abortion are wrong to do so. I say it's wrong to grow peas in a 5th grade science class because they are only going to be discarded after the experiment and not planted into soil to continue to grow and thrive and become mature plants!! Plant Killers!!!!

Now go hug your grandmother.

Little Mystery in Big China

2009-02-26T14:36:00.004-05:00

I have stated on more than one occasion that education can solve any issue. Imagine my smug little self after reading about the matrilineal society of the Na.

Most people have never heard of the Na tribal people, from the Yongning hills of the Yunan province in southern China. Clifford Geertz wrote an article (“Life without Fathers or Husbands”, copyright 2001 NYREV, Inc.) reviewing the work of Chinese Anthropologist, Cia Hua, describing the society of the Na.

"[Among the Na]... there is no marriage, in fact or word. Mothers exist, as do children, but there are no dads. Sexual intercourse takes place between casual, opportunistic lovers, who develop no broader, more enduring relations to one another.... Almost everyone of either sex has multiple partners, serially or simultaneously.... There are no nuclear families, no in-laws, no stepchildren. Brothers and sisters, usually several of each, reside together, along with perhaps a half-dozen of their nearer maternal relatives, from birth to death under one roof -- making a living, keeping a household, and raising the sisters' children."

Now before you, dear reader, consider rushing off to live in the Yongning hills of China, please understand that over the span of several dynasties, China has addressed this issue in several ways, from decreeing that the Na "must marry in the standard way" to passing a regulation "designed to encourage nuclear family formation by distributing land to men who would set up and maintain such a family" to "pronouncing it shameful not to know who one's genitor is, and imposing marriage by simple decree on any villager involved in a conspicuous visit relationship" to finally passing laws stating that "1. everyone under fifty in a relationship... must officially marry...; 2. every woman who has children must publically state who their genitor is, cart him off to headquarters, and marry him; 3. those who divorce without official sanction will have their annual grain ration suspended; 4. any child born out of wedlock will also not get a ration and must be supported by his genitor until age 18; and 5. visiting, furtive or conspicuous, was forbidden".

All these efforts failed, largely. It wasn't until 1992 that any real change in the Na culture occurred. The means that succeeded? Education.

"The expansion of the state school system, where 'all the textbooks are impregnated with [more universal] ideas and values', is leading to rapid and thorough [cultural change in] the Na:
When students graduate from middle school, they must complete a form that includes a column requesting information on their civil status. Unable to fill in the blank asking for the name of their father, they suddenly become aware they do not have a father, while their classmates from other ethnic backgrounds do..... The message... is clear.... There is only one culture that is legitimate, and that [is not the Na].

"In China, as elsewhere, it is not licentiousness that powers most fear. Nor even immorality. It is difference."

Did you notice that the education that is "fixing" the Na culture, is the state school system? Now, if you're a member of the Na society, you are probably enraged at what your kids are being taught as your people are entering into a state of cultural upheaval.

Can't the same thing be said of other cultures nearer to home? What is it, exactly, that "the state" is teaching? Is it the education that we want for our kids? Are we, like the Na, being conditioned to accept a particular knowledge that is "in line" with the government? And who's government? Can it be accurately defined by party lines, socio-economic lines, cultural lines? Sure, education can solve all problems, but "education" is a bit subjective. It's a bit like history, you know; the winning side gets to write the books.