Thoughts of a Modern Classic Philosopher

Labor Day

2017-08-30T19:39:00.002-04:00

Labor Day is upon us, so I figured I would discuss work, unemployment and their effects on our psyche.

The current unemployment rate nationally is 4.3% though the labor participation rate is 60.2%. A lot of people don't understand what these numbers really mean. Very basically, the unemployment rate is only looking at the percentage of people out of a job and looking. The labor participation rate is the actual percentage of people with a job. These numbers will never line up for several reasons. There are men and women who choose not to work to manage the household, others who are sick, full-time students, etc.

What we should see, though, are corresponding fluctuations. When you look at these charts going back to 2007, you see that initially, but then they diverge a bit. Starting in October of 2009, the unemployment rate starts dropping significantly and pretty steadily. The labor participation rate, however, stays very flat for the next 4 years. The participation rate in October 2013 is lower than October 2009, yet the unemployment rate improved from 10% to 7.2%. People stopped looking for jobs.

I am not getting into policy here, but rather how dangerous a situation that is. When people stop looking for jobs they have given in to despair. Searching indicates hope, which is needed for one to be happy. At the end of 2013, we had a lot of unhappy, hopeless people out there. I am afraid that many of them resorted to crime, alcohol, drugs to cope or get by. How many became abusive in their personal relationships?

Worst of all, this set an example for millions of then teenagers. They saw their parents and neighbors give in and possibly turn ugly. They heard complaints about greedy companies eliminating their jobs, no good government policies that won't help them and racial complaints that "they" have it easy or are exploiting the situation. Occupy Wall Street started September 2011, shortly after what I would argue was the middle of the low point of our economy.

Occupy Wall Street was clearly the inspiration of the current iteration of Antifa. They share common tactics and both want the current system shut down. The Alt-Right seems to have been a reaction to BLM, which seemed to be filled with disaffected and unemployed youth. All of these groups are looking for an outlet for their grievances.

If the people of our country hadn't fallen into despair for those 4 years, I don't think we would see these violent clashes of opposing ideologies. We wouldn't see the ugliness and anger in these people. So much property and lives wouldn't have been lost. The most concerning aspect in all of this to me is it is the younger half of the millennial generation. The actions of these people will directly influence the mindset of the generation coming after them. Let's hope the influence is for the positive.

We Are Killing Ourselves

2017-08-26T15:01:00.000-04:00

In light of the issues concerning the alt-right, controversial statues, racism and other current issues in America, I decided to look at pop culture from the 1960s for answers. To do this, I am returning to discuss, again, the themes from a Twilight Zone episode. This time I'm looking at episode 31 of season 5, "The Encounter". This is an incredible episode and can't recommend watching it enough. The plot is a Japanese gardener named Arthur (George Takei) comes to a WWII vet's house looking for gardening work. In the end, mutual prejudices, loneliness and guilt are revealed to be the downfall of both characters.

The overarching theme is racism, prejudice and guilt. The vet, Fenton, is in his attic, which displays a myriad of Japanese souvenirs from the war. The one piece that freaks him out is a samurai sword, engraved in Japanese with the words "the sword will avenge me. While he claims he got it off an officer who tried to kill him, it is revealed that it was taken off of a surrendering officer that Fenton shot rather than take in. The sword "speaks" to the gardener when he holds it, almost possesses him to act like a WWII Japanese soldier.

While Fenton's racism and prejudices are playing out, it is revealed that the gardener was a 4-year-old at Pearl Harbor during the attack and his father worked on the base. Initially, he tells a story about his father looking on in dismay that "men of his own race" would bomb what he built and that he was trying to warn the sailors about the attack. Turns out, his father was actually a traitor and was signaling the bombers. The veracity of this historical tidbit aside (I haven't been able to confirm or dispute it), it shows the constant guilt Arthur is living with. His family was responsible for the deaths of thousands of men, women and children throughout the Pacific theater.

So on one side, we have a hypocritical racist, willing to pawn off the responsibility for his actions. On the other side, a guilt ridden man who thinks hiding his identity (changed his name, won't speak Japanese in public) will ease his guilt and make life easier. Deep down Fenton is conflicted with himself and alone because of his own actions. Arthur's guilt has made him prejudicial in his own right as well as reactionary and short tempered.

In the final struggle, Fenton's racism leads him to attack Arthur, leading to his accidental death by the samurai sword. This adds to Arthur's guilt, he is now personally responsible for the death of a man, and he kills himself by jumping out the window. Because neither man truly deals with their biggest character flaws, those flaws are the cause of their own deaths. This is a genuinely universal and timeless truth of humanity. If we do not deal with our "issues", they will kill us.

What's my point in all of this? If we don't deal with our own troubled national and personal histories we will end up destroying ourselves. Yes, America was founded and grew on racist law and activities. Nothing can excuse it, but hiding it or rationalizing it won't make things better. We as a nation need to own it, recognize what it was and acknowledge that we have evolved past that as a nation and we will never go back to it. Individual groups who are at each other's throats also need to recognize their own ugly roots and disassociate from them but don't bury them otherwise no one will learn from them.

Fascists Everywhere

2017-08-22T22:59:00.002-04:00

It's been quite a long time since I've posted anything, not that anyone's missed me on here, but that is my fault. Regardless, multiple factors have brought me back here today. I figured I'd keep it light, so I'll talk about fascists in America today.

As defined by Merriam-Webster, fascism is "a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition". On the face of it, one could argue that the KKK and Neo-Nazis are the only fascists around. That is what they are, by definition.

This is where I cause a ruckus. I argue that anti-fa in America today are actually fascist in their strategies, but, by their own admission, anarchist in their vision. Anti-fa use the same strategies and techniques as the groups they are protesting. They are both deliberately belligerent, hoping for the other side to attack so they can claim self defense. They want to play both the victim and the protector. They also want to shut down all political speech by the other side.

Their political vision, according to them, is anarcho-socialist. They are anti-capitalist and do not support any government structure, even within their own group...except when cooperating with police works to their advantage. That would, in part, explain this picture:

So what you had in Charlottesville were two radical groups with more similarities than they care to admit, who like to use violence to further their agenda, colliding in the name of their cause. In the middle were people who aren't as radical. People who want to protect American exceptionalism on the right and those who detest violence and bigotry on the left. Unfortunately, those are the ones who get hurt and killed.

I am not going to victim blame. By the time that jackass got in his car and decided to mow down as many anti-fa or counter protesters, I don't think anyone knew what was going on. I'm sure people were doing things they never thought they would do in the heat of the moment.

I will also not condone one group using violence to silence the political speech of another group, no matter how abhorrent that group's message may be. Violence by one group validates the violence of the other group. Violence does not solve these issues. Violence does not cure us of racism. Violence does not promote the common good.

The 1st Amendment protects political speech, but it does not protect violence. We must confront evil ideas with reason. Expose their ideology for what it is; foolish, childish and counter to our American values. They will lose steam. If they get violent with you, defend yourself but let the police sort it out.

Hillary's Server

2015-09-13T10:30:00.001-04:00

According to a Washington Post article, the IT company that handled Hillary Clinton's server claims they never wiped her server, nor do they have any knowledge that it was wiped. The assumption here is that e-mails that had been deleted from the server could be recovered. Conservatives following this soap opera of a political story have been mildly giddy about this prospect. The belief is that she deleted e-mails with marked classified information or, much worse, evidence that she peddled her influence to benefit her non-profit, which provides income for her family.

Conservatives should not necessarily be excited by this revelation. There are several problems with the statement the company made concerning the server. The short story is, it could be manipulated to seem to prove that there was nothing deleted that would be incriminating.

Let's assume for the first case scenario that the IT company is lying. They wiped the server by using a simple program that writes gibberish on the entire hard drive multiple times. A "DOD" wipe overwrites it three times and would probably take about 5 hours, depending on the size of the drive. They could, then, reinstall the base operating system and whatever other programs and files, like the e-mails she never claimed to have erased. I would go one step further and actually load the truly innocuous personal e-mails and then delete them. This way, when the hard drive is being investigated they find the deleted e-mails and everything appears on the up and up. This is, in my opinion, a highly unlikely possibility. It gets a bit conspiratorial, and it only takes one person to blow it up.

Let's assume, this time, the IT company is telling the truth. They say they have "no knowledge of the server being wiped." This does not eliminate the possibility that a single employee, on their own or directed by the Clintons, was able to wipe the "empty" portion of the server, leaving the "used" portion intact. This is far more likely but possibly more easy to detect by forensics.

Another possibility is that the more sensitive information was wiped in the four months between Hillary's role as Secretary of State and when it was handed over to the IT company that handed it over to the FBI. During this time, the individual from State, whom she was paying personally, would presumably have access to it, and motivation to protect the Clintons. He would be most familiar with what's on it, how it is set up and how to delete it effectively. The fact that he will plead the 5th unless he receives immunity certainly makes it appear that this is a distinct possibility.

If any of these three possibilities actually happened, it will result in a statement that the server was not wiped, and all of the data contained were either turned over or show no evidence of wrongdoing. This statement will be used by supporters as proof that, while she was wrong in using her own e-mail server and may have been in the wrong for the classified information she did turn over, she did nothing criminally. It would actually be a smokescreen. If it was wiped effectively, with evidence covered up and misleading information deliberately placed on it, then she would have effectively used the right's own investigation to falsely prove that she's innocent.

In light of the statements from the IT company that stored the server, the results of the investigation should be taken with a grain of salt. Given the Clinton's history and reputation for hampering investigations and general shady behavior, there is even more reason to be skeptical.

Jesus and the Prostitutes

2015-03-31T23:25:00.000-04:00

So the Indiana legislature just passed their version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and is seeing the expected amount of vitriol and hatred thrown at them. Virtually every reaction to it that I have seen has also been filled with misinformation or outright lies. Some of these people have no idea what the law would involve, others know but lie about it in order to further their agenda. This post is not about that law per se, but about a common retort by Christians sympathetic to LGBT issues. For what is, in my opinion, the best article explaining what the law actually means, and what the federal law signed by Bill Clinton here as well as the 19 other states who have similar laws, please go here.

I first saw the argument "Jesus ate with prostitutes" on Twitter, linking to an article on how some are using that argument against Indiana's RFRA. It brought back a flood of memories of people using that same premise to argue, in essence, the notion of sin in general or the sin being discussed at the moment is moot in light of the Gospel. Using Bing search, I quickly found two examples here and here. Most often, they point to Jesus' encounter with Mary Magdalene:

John 8:2-11 2 But early in the morning he arrived again in the temple area, and all the people started coming to him, and he sat down and taught them. 3 Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and made her stand in the middle. 4 They said to him, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. 5 Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?" 6 They said this to test him, so that they could have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger. 7 But when they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, "Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." 8 Again he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9 And in response, they went away one by one, beginning with the elders. So he was left alone with the woman before him. 10 Then Jesus straightened up and said to her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" 11 She replied, "No one, sir." Then Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you. Go, (and) from now on do not sin any more."

This passage rightly is the model of how we must forgive and not offer judgement. By Mosaic law, Jesus could have had her stoned. His followers probably would have justified such a decision by acknowledging he had no legal choice. Jesus shows in this act that the law which man lays down is transitory and must conform to God's will. I know, I'm getting too much into natural law here, but bear with me.

The problem with those who reference or quote this passage is they ignore the end of his statement to the woman. They all stop at "neither do I condemn you." They completely ignore "go and from now on do not sin any more."

That last part is so vital. Yes, Jesus ate with sinners and prostitutes. Jesus also called on them to stop sinning, make restitution and follow him. Just look at Luke 19:1-10, Matthew 21:28-32. Also, when Jesus reprimands those criticizing him for eating with sinners in Matthew 9:10-13, Mark 2:15-17 and Luke 5:29-32 he uses the analogy of the physician and the sick. People forget that the physicians job is to remove the sickness from the body. Jesus is to remove sin from us, but not without our repentance. The words repent and repentance are used 44 times in the New Testament. The meaning of the word repent means "to feel such regret for sins or crimes as produces amendment of life." I'm thinking we need to work on changing our sinful habits if we want Jesus to forgive us.

The Obsolete Man

2015-01-20T23:56:00.000-05:00

In season 2, episode 29 of The Twilight Zone there is a major treatise of the value of man and how the state can be his worst enemy. The episode titled "The Obsolete Man" very directly addresses totalitarianism, but in a way that transcends the two freshest examples of the day; Hitler and Stalin. I see in this episode lessons that can be applied today. From here in the U.S. to China and most everywhere in between, the nasty lessons and warnings of this episode can be applied.

For those who aren't familiar with this episode, I'll summarize as briefly as possible. The state, headed by a chancellor, has put on trial a librarian for being obsolete. Obsolescence is determined by a lack of practical function to the state. In this state, books have been destroyed, therefore there is no need for a librarian, just as the state has proven God to not exist, so ministers are obsolete. The punishment for being obsolete is death. This librarian, however, tricks the chancellor into a near death experience, exposing his cowardice on live television while the librarian bravely faces his death. The chancellor is then determined to be obsolete in the end.

This episode speaks beyond the literal warnings against totalitarianism. I believe Rod Serling realized society and technology would advance far beyond what they could imagine, and so kept his admonitions general. His opening monologue says that this is "not a future that will be, but one that might be...It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history." In his closing statement, he says "any state...any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete."

Looking at the obvious, we see parallels with the current states of China, Iran, Venezuela and other similar regimes that have sought to outlaw truth. I'm not even talking propaganda, but the elimination of media and material that runs contrary to what the state wants. In today's world, it isn't just print media. Television and the internet are severely censored in these countries. But why? Simply put, if the people are allowed to explore ideas alternate to what the state dictates, they are a threat. There can be no differing opinions. Anyone who thinks against the state, goes against the state, and that is treason. Hitler and Stalin put these people to death, or ran them out of the country. In one note of irony, Stalin was about to purge many physicians at the end of his life, which no doubt contributed to his death from stroke.

I believe there is a real distinction, however, in the purpose for persecuting different groups. Here, the librarian represents the thinker, the intellectual, religious, humanitarian. These people are threats to the state because they don't help the state, they help individuals or ideas. Just words, just an imaginary man in the sky. The other persecuted or oppressed, such as the sick, differing race, sexual orientation, disabled, are not threats, but are outsiders or deviants and so are a burden on the state.

This brings me to another point. Today, in most countries, we have abortion on demand. So much so, if a mother receives a prenatal diagnosis of certain disabilities, she is at the least offered the chance, at worst encouraged to abort that child on that basis alone. The medical field has determined, with the help of the state, that a fetus is not a person unless the mother says so. Humanity has been redefined. But this episode screams to the contrary.

"The state has proven there is no God!" "You can not erase God with an edict!" Truth, you see, is truth, regardless of what we think of it. We can ignore it. We can say the opposite. No matter what we do, the truth is still there. We can not bestow humanity on an unborn child any more than we can wish God away or say the sky is green and water is dry.

Faith, intellectualism (seeking truth for the sake of truth) and humanitarianism fulfills our humanity. We are more than our function, and so can not be dismissed once we stop being useful. Books, thoughts, ideas, kindness, faith are what separate us from the animals. When we take those things away, we begin to act like animals.

On a final note, in the penultimate scene, the librarian bravely faces his fate, juxtaposed in the same frame the cowering chancellor scrambling to save his life. This illustrates what makes us truly noble humans. Totalitarianism, to whatever degree, strips us of that.

Reboot

2015-01-18T21:00:00.001-05:00

So...I haven't written in a long, long time. What I have discovered is my desire to write a blog and my time and motivation don't quite match for my previous vision to work. As a result, I have decided to completely wipe my previous blog site. I figured there wasn't much there to begin with and didn't really have many followers, so it shouldn't be a big deal.

Instead of a long treatise, submitted in tiny installments which requires more focus and energy than I can afford right now, I'm just going to post as things strike my fancy. The only consistent theme throughout, I hope, is viewing these topics through the lens of a classic philosopher, which is my preferred viewpoint. I believe it to be the most objective, rational and detached viewpoint.

Please be patient with me, and feel free to offer topics for consideration. One note on suggestions. My desire is not to delve too much nor too deeply on controversies and hot button topics. In many respects, I'm more interested in process than who's right or wrong for the sake of this blog. I have discovered within myself a lack of desire for conflict, but at the same time, desire truth in all things, with a detachment from emotion. That does not mean I will avoid all such topics, I just will be slow and deliberate to pick them up. Thanks.