There but for the grace of God ...

The events of the last week or so have brought out many folks' true nature. One of the (dis)advantages of being involved in modern, social media is that you get a glimpse of everyone's foundation of life. Oh, I know, this is not what most people think, but it is nevertheless what is. Even if I don't place a lot of faith in what people "say", since I'm much more concerned with what the actually "do", social media is one of those "places" where the "the truth will out" and what you post says more about you than you may like to acknowledge.

Most of my social-media "friends" are American, but not by much. The vast majority, of course, find their roots in the "West"; that is, western, post-Enlightenment, Judeo-Christian, ever-increasing secular culture. In short, they're "Westerners". This is not bad, in and of itself; indeed it is merely an observation of fact. What most of my friends don't know, or are not aware of, is that belonging to this particular group brings with it a number of significant advantages, and at the same time, a number of disadvantage as well. How could it be otherwise? After all, this is life that we are talking about.

Before we examine what these advantages and disadvantages might be, it would do us well to reflect upon how it is that we ended up here in the first place. I don't know about you, but I just "woke up here" one day. I mean, there came a time when I became conscious of the world around me, and, lo and behold, I was the first son of a striving-to-be middle-class family in the so-called richest (not to mention, freest and bravest) country in the world, at a time when striving to be middle-class meant something. To the best of my knowledge, I was not involved in that particular decision. It just happened. It was a purely random event. I had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Like I said, though, I was "lucky" by our Western standards. The family I grew up in wasn't rich, but we weren't poor. We always had enough to eat and my life was as good as free from crime and violence. I had lots of opportunities and I was able to take advantage of them. I believe, as well, that most of you reading this ... most of you ... had a similar experience, but not everyone, and certainly not everyone else on the planet. The vast majority of humanity doesn't have it nearly as good as I did. The vast majority. Their lives more likely resemble Hume's struggle of each against all, a struggle for survival, more often than not.

Why? Because they're ignorant, uncivilized savages? Because they are violent by nature and love fighting and killing? Hardly. Regardless of where I have been in this world, I have found that just about everyone I meet wants pretty much the same basic things as me: enough to eat, some family, a roof over their heads, some time to spend with others, a feeling of security and to live their lives in peace.

What we fail to remember, what we love to repress is the simple fact that we were born where we were by the luck of the draw. Some lives have been easier than others, and most of you reading this, for all the pains and travails have had, by comparison, easier lives. I certainly don't begrudge what you have, but I do have a problem with you thinking that in some way you "earned" what you have, that you somehow "deserve" what you have. You were lucky. That's it. Damn lucky. For, there but for the grace of God ...

Are you shaking in your shoes yet?

It will not come as a surprise to any of you that I'm not the world's convinced optimist. Oh sure, things for most of us generally work out, not because we did anything in particular and certainly not because we deserved it. Most of us live in a lucky part of the world and hence most of us are luckier than most others.

This does not mean that I'm therefore and invariably a pessimist. Sure, there are aspects of pessimism that agree with me, but I, like Ben Franklin, am more pessimist out of self-protection than conviction.

And, yes, there have been any number of people who have "accused" me of cynicism ... but I ask why cynicism should have anything crime-like about it. George Bernard Shaw noted, "The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." After all, when I'm in cynical mode, it turns out I'm more often right than I would like.

Recently, I read two good essays (both of which are much longer than everyday, internet-attention spans) by Henry A. Giroux and the other by Peter Koenig, both authors for whom I have a lot of respect. They weren't happy essays. They were well-reasoned, insightful, and thought-provoking. Giroux's was more about America; Koenig's more about Europe, but they had something in common: hope.

Giroux ended his essay with the line, ""Dark times are not ahead, they are here but that does not mean they are here to stay." Koenig wrote, "Rather than fearfully shutting up – wake up! Dare stand up fellow citizen – against the white collar onslaught of fraud and exploitation, against corruption of our elitist neoliberal system! Get rid of those deceiving politicians – the scum of greed and power. Expose them. Neutralize them." In other words, they both think that we can turn this game around.

Naturally, I'm not so sure, but I would like to think they're right. The problem as I see it is that too many of us don't take the time to get truly informed, won't make the effort to sort through the issues and facts, will fall back on our innate fear of power and violence, and will jump upon any excuse we can find why it's "not our job" to do anything about anything.

You know, the only reason it appears to be getting dark out there is because we allow it to happen.

The terror of the darkness

We have every right to be afraid ... day in and day out. If the climate doesn't do us in, it could be a military catastrophe when the "wrong people" get hold of weapons of mass destruction, or it could be the "right" people who already have them and are itching for a fight. It could be some natural disaster, and we seem to be getting more of them, in all sizes, shapes, colors and what at least feels like subjective frequencies.

And, if there isn't the big global cataclysmic apocalypse, there's always a new epidemic, an antibiotic-resistant strain of virus, a mass shooting, a slip of the tongue or wrong answer after being stopped by a cop, another armed whacko who decided enough's enough, or lawmakers who think the rest of us have it too good as it is and start taking away what little most of us have left. Yes, we have every reason to be afraid ... day in and day out.

And, let's be realistic. No, let's be honest with each other: most of us live our lives in a state of repressed terror. Oh, sure, we act like we've got thing under control. We act like we have the (or at least some of the) answers. But, deep down, especially at night, when the lights are off and we can't sleep, we're well aware of our terror of the darkness that surrounds us.

Quite recently, I read something that describes this perfectly:

We are, we believe, seeing some long-standing fractures and psychological tensions within [life's] sphere coming to a head: ‘Old certainties’, old landmarks, familiarities, longstanding ways of being – all are eroding, leaving people bewildered and angry – and ready to lash out (at the world because they feel it is no longer what they know and want it to be). The ‘world around them’ is perceived as ‘doing this to them’ (destroying their handholds in life which kept them psychologically secure). It – all of it – as it were, has become ‘their enemy’.

We feel threatened from all sides, regardless of our political and religious beliefs: black lives mattering, gay rights, abortions, financial bailouts and coup d'etats, terrorism, radicals of all kinds, the absence of G-d in government, an economic system gone haywire, illegal immigrants, tax give-aways for the rich and for corporations, intrusive government action, disrespect of authority, and the list goes on and on and on and on, and each of these items is, of course, an "enemy" to someone.

What fascinates me most about the situation, the threats, the list, is that it is all of our own making. Yes, dear reader, you and I and everyone else is responsible for how things are and why there are so many enemies "out to get us". They are all demons of our own creation, and they make the darkness upon which they thrive.

The absurdity of neoliberalism, period

Sometimes I don't know if are progressing, in any sense of the word, or if we are regressing, almost in every sense of the word. The signature value of the small vignette I presented last time still haunts me. It is precisely the attitude of two of the most revered political figures of the 20th century: Thatcher and Reagan.

They were absurdists in their own right. Thatcher openly asserted in absurdity that society doesn't exist, and Reagan, the actor in the role of president, thought Milton Friedman was a brilliant man.

For those of you who may be unaware, Friedman wrote the neoliberalist bible, Capitalism and Freedom, though I doubt that many of you have ever read it (I have, but I would like the time back). It's one of those "classic" texts that uses a whole lot of words to say, well, absolutely nothing, which is as much as trickles down from his trickle-down approach to economics ... or "voodoo economics", as it was called before it became "respectable". Thatcher, Reagan, Friedman are mere examples, just like the liberal-arts college president from last time, share one primary characteristic in common: they may be in charge, but at heart, they're know-nothings.

But, know-nothings are nothing new in the United States, at any rate. Mid-19th century they made a name for themselves and a bit of political splash, short-lived as it deservedly was. But what goes around, comes around and it's apparently back in fuller force again. The run-up to the Republican nomination for president is one example; but our college president, too many "educational reformers" on both sides of the Atlantic, the Troika or Quadrika, as they like to call it these days since the Eurogroup is now involved (yes, an informal association with no formal authority and not legitimized in any way is now playing an "important role" in the European debt crisis. It would seem the absurdity has gone full bloom.

We have non-economists implementing nonsensical economic theory and non-educationalists implementing irrelevant educational policy. We have millionaires trying to show how well they relate to common folk. There are experts of all sizes, shapes and colors who love going on TV to show us how little they know, but so many believe them anyway. We have union-busters going on about right-to-work, polluters and fossil-fuel fetishists denying climate change (and getting away with it), and it all boils down to the simple fact that if you can't but a monetary value on it, it has no value at all.

Stated differently, the only value that counts is money value. A step forward? A step backward? Even a step at all?

As usual, the real answer is my favorite, "e) None of the above".

I refuse to accept that as an option. I refuse to acknowledge that money is the measure of all things. I refuse to adjust to a world that is too ignorant to discuss any more. I continue to resist the temptation to just throw up my hands and say, all those absurdities make sense. They don't, and they never will.

The long and short of it all, if you think economics is primary and neoliberalism is the only reasonable approach to the world, you're not part of the problem, you are the problem.

The absurdity of neoliberal education

Shortly after writing the last post, I was pointed to an article which went a good ways toward answering my final question. It is well worth reading in its entirety, to say the least, even though I'm sure most of you won't bother. (If you are interested, however, you can find it here.) William Deresiewicz wrote it for Harper's, and its title tells the story: "The Neoliberal Arts: How college sold its soul to the market". One vignette therein facepalmed me:

A couple of years ago, I sat down with the newly appointed president of a top-ten liberal-arts college. He had come from a professional school (law, in his case), as so many college deans and presidents now seem to.

I started by telling him that I had just visited an upper-level class, and that no one there had been able to give me a decent definition of “leadership,” even though the college trumpeted the term at every opportunity. He declined to offer one himself. Instead, he said, a bit belligerently, “I’ve been here five months, and no one has been able to give me a satisfactory definition of ‘the liberal arts.’ ”

I offered the one I supplied above: those fields in which knowledge is pursued for its own sake. When you study the liberal arts, I added, what you’re mainly learning to do is make arguments.

“Scientists don’t make arguments,” he said (a statement that would’ve come as a surprise to the scientists on the faculty). “And what about painters? They don’t make arguments.”

I tried to explain the difference between the fine and the liberal arts (the latter are “arts” only by an accident of derivation) with little success. “So what do you think the college should be about?” I finally asked him.

“Leadership,” he said.

This is absolutely "brilliant": the "boss", the equivalent of the CEO in the private sector, has no experience "in the business (was at a professional, not an academic, institution), does not know what the "product" is. What is more, He isn't even aware that there are different "arts", let alone arts at all, and in the end, he thinks his institution is about something that he can't even say what it is.

And that my dear readers pretty much sums up the heart of the problem, not only with education, but with neoliberalism in general. Nowhere in its entire ideological realm is competence, intelligence, insight, or actual qualification necessary. Buzzwords suffice along with a big enough paycheck to think that you have something to say.

There are simply too many of these folks "in charge", but how can you discuss or debate with any of them (not to mention those who would like to be like them and would like to emulate them and have even less to offer), if they have no idea what they are doing, and, what's worst of all, don't even know what an argument is.

Buffalo Springfield nailed it

"Nobody's right, if everybody's wrong." A line from a Buffalo Springfield song ("For What It's Worth"). As true now as it was then, maybe even more so. Why? Because a pernicious infection that began so long ago has borne its fruit.

What fruit, you may ask? How about: over-political correctness, either-or thinking, an either-you're-with-us-or-against-us attitude, advocating love-it-or-leave-it, and many, many more. There's so much fruit we don't know whether to make marmalade or some kind of alcoholic beverage. The former might be better for us, but most of us favor the latter.

My point is that this isn't a new phenomenon, it's only taken on a more aggressive and bitter dimension. There was a time we could talk. There was a time we could debate and discuss. There was a time when justified and substantiated views meant something. Those times are gone.

What's so amazing, if you ask me, is that those times are considered to be "the good old days", when everything was anything but good: enforced and dictated conformity, institutionalized racial discrimination, submission to authority, and a-place-for-everything-and-everything-in-its-place thinking carried the day. Yes, for the greatest part we were "told" how to think and feel, yet in those (not-so-) "good old days", there was still a modicum of dissent possible; discussion was still possible, debate was still possible. It was simply accepted that the person with the best argument(s) won. And then it all changed.

Out of that repressive, conformity-seeking "cultural" attitude, out of that forensically-based, argumentatively challenging norm, we created a winner-takes-all, right-or-wrong, in-or-out view of the world. Buffalo Springfield saw it happening. We're living the consequences of the thought.

The most negative form of all of this is, of course, "political correctness". What's good or bad, right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable is dictated from the surface of things. Words, concepts, notions, ideas cannot be explored because some people find some words "offensive". I'm here to tell you that words are nothing more than words. Yes, there are those who are offended when they hear the word "fuck" and there are those who are elated when they hear the word "Jesus", but how do we know where and when and to whom and for what reasons some people are uplifted and others discouraged by such words. Again: they are but words.

Humpty Dumpty taught us that words mean whatever we think they mean. But the words haven't changed, only the "we's". And now, every "we" feels that it deserves equal time and equal treatment and equal consideration, and I believe that that is absolutely correct. What I don't believe is that equal anything means equal acceptance. It only means "you may say". How others deal with it is a whole different issue.

Don't get me wrong: anyone who denigrates or demeans or dismisses what another says simply because s/he "doesn't like it" is as ignorant as s/he who gets upset because someone from another perceptual framework doesn't understand the term as the in-group understands it. It's time for us to get over the words and get down to what we are really talking about. And, to do that, we have to be able to accept, acknowledge, differ, discuss, and debate what we are saying.

Oh, I don't long for "the days", but I do wish for possibility to talk about it. Why is that so hard?

The knowing ignorant

It should be the case that we agree that there's only so much on this planet to go around. To put it in technical terms, there is a finite amount of resources available to humankind. We're clever, that is true, and we have learned to do a lot with our waste, with our garbage and we can do a lot of sustainable things and we can recycle a lot. But regardless of how hard we try, we can't make up for what we don't have.

Last time, I pointed out that if there were only 370% (that is, over three-and-a-half times) more resources than are currently available, everyone on the planet could live as well as we do. We all know, that's impossible, and so I wanted to take the opportunity to point out another impossibility, but one that we believe in just as fervently as we do that hard work and personal responsibility are the key to our salvation.

For those of you who may have forgotten, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the value of all the goods and services produced by a country. For the USA, it's about $17 tr (that's trillion, 1 with 15 zeros after it); for the EU it's around 18 tr; and for the world as a whole it's almost $75 tr. What the GDP tries to calculate is the actual worth of real value in products and services that a country, or the whole world, produces. This is an estimate, to be sure, but it is an estimate about real things, tangible products and experienced services. It's not a fiction, rather it is an attempt to put a number, a (in this case) dollar value on what we make and what we do.

Money, on the other hand, is not really a real thing, rather it is a number linked to an account. The USA, for example, may have a GDP of $17 tr, but that does not mean that there are 17 trillion dollar bills (or their equivalent) floating around in the world. Most of the "money" is just a number on a balance statement or an account statement. Yes, that's how our monetary system works and it is really not much of a problem as long as the money we think we have is backed by something real somewhere (a house, a business, an iron-ore mine, or whatever).

But, here's the kicker (at least to me): in 2008 when the financial crash came, when everything threatened to go belly-up, when the banks screamed bloody-murder and needed to be bailed out, the reason, you may recall were risky investments that threatened to collapse. We heard a lot about so-called "financial derivatives" and, in particular, "CD swaps" (bundled packages of investment papers created by the banks), and how not being able to "honor these obligations" threatened to destroy the entire banking system (i.e., the too-big-to-fail issue).

What most people don't know, and what the banking industry doesn't really want you to know, and what too many are willing to overlook is that the value of the CD-swaps alone (yes, the most precarious, but not the only doubtful, "investment instrument") was six time the WDP (world domestic product). In plain-text: the paper that was a problem, was valued 6 times higher than all the products and services that the world was able to produce at the time. In other words, it was backed by nothing. It was a fiction. It was just a number on a piece of paper, so to speak.

Those in charge at the time knew that this was unreal. Governments around the world (except, for example, in Iceland) acted as if there was no alternative but to save the banks. That there was nothing to save is inconsequential. That the losses were fictitious doesn't matter. They knew, but got us to believe, that the only way "out" was to save them.

And now we have the consequences: the banks are in charge, and the rest of us have nothing to say. Oh we have so much to be proud of, especially of how little we know and how little we are willing to do about it.

The willing ignorant

Every person reading this blog has got it (as good as) made. You've got internet access, food in your fridge, a steady place to sleep, and a roof over your head. That makes you part of the top 25% worldwide. In more absolute terms, there are no fewer than 5,250,000,000 individuals on this planet who are worse off, if not far worse off, than you.

And, still you complain.

Don't get me wrong, you have reason for complaint. I mean, even if you lead a relatively luxurious life, there is an ever so thin slice of elite that makes your life look like one of abject poverty and doing-without. What you share with those below you is disempowerment: you'll never have what "they" have. What you share with those above you, though, is a permanent desire for more, even if it means that those below you will have less. Greed has never known bounds, either in intensity, or in breadth.

The usual "justification" (i.e., rationalization) is that if everyone else worked harder and took on some personal responsibility, they could do better too. This is, I hate to say it, pure, unadulterated bullshit. If hard work were any kind of measure, women in Africa would rule the world, but they don't. And if personal responsibility meant anything at all, large numbers of bankers would be in prison, but they aren't. These aren't reasons. They're only excuses.

But, I'm not here to criticize your lack of comprehension of the obvious, nor am I here to criticize your morals. Those are things you have to come to terms with for yourself and on your own. What I wanted to contribute, however humble, is a mere simple math lesson to hopefully expose the error in your attitude. And it goes like this:

The USA represents about 4% of the world's population, yet they consume 25% of the world's resources. The EU (in whatever sense you may define it) represents about 7% of the world's population and they consume about 40% of the world's resources, and when you throw in Japan, we looking at about 16% of the world's population consuming around 80% of the world's resources. So, what does that mean?

China has a population of over 1 billion people; India has surpassed China as the most populated country on the planet. Thrown in Brazil and Africa and all that's left over and you've got almost three quarters of the world's population trying to make do with 20% of its resources. If we expected them to work hard, take on some personal responsibility so that they could be like us, it would be possible if the world had 370% remaining for them. You don't have to be a math wiz to realize that as it is, and as we're (and I mean everyone reading this and me, and all our friends and relatives and ...) living, there simply isn't enough to go around, regardless of how hard anyone works and irrespective of how much personal responsibility one accepts.

In other words, it's simply time to acknowledge that the problem isn't with "them", rather "we're" the problem. And it's time for us to act accordingly.

A message from the mirror

Though a lot of folks I know don't like to hear it, "facts" in and of themselves mean nothing. They just are. I'm talking about real facts now, such as "grass is usually green" or "the Magna Charta was signed in 1215" or "the atomic number of oxygen is 8". None of these really means anything as they stand. I mean, who really cares one way or the other? They must be placed in some kind of context for them to become meaningful.

There are other "facts" which really aren't facts in the true sense of the word, rather they are beliefs or opinions or the like. For example, "the sun rises in the east" is not a fact, it is a metaphor to describe a phenomenon. Due to the earth's rotation, it looks like the sun is rising in the east but in actual fact the earth is simply turning. Or, "a healthy diet is essential for good health". Well, not in all cases. Some people survive and thrive on what might kill others, and enough people eating healthy diets get sick anyway. There's more here that needs to be considered for the statement to reflect an actual fact.

What the preceding examples all have in common is good, old-fashioned, sloppy thinking. We humans can very often make do with being sort of right and sort of on target and sort of in the know. Life is very tolerant like that. Oh sure, there are times and instances when exactitude means the difference between life and death, but in the grand scheme of everyday things, these are really rather rare. In most cases, "almost" is almost always good enough.

Now, given that this is the case, why do we humans demand so much, especially so much of others? And, as a corollary to that, why are most of us bothered, on the other hand, by others demanding so much of us? I wonder about that a lot these days. Could it be that we're only getting back what we are giving out? Could it be that we are (perhaps unknowingly) expecting more of others than we expect of our ourselves? Could it be that we feel shortchanged in our own treatment as human beings that we're trying to even the score? I don't know. Like I said, it's just something that I've been thinking a lot about lately.

When we look in the mirror all we can see is whatever is there to be reflected, no more and certainly no less. Sure, it's reversed from side-to-side, but we can handle that. The mirror has long been used as an effective metaphor for life and all that happens therein, so it can't hurt to stop for a moment and think about whether we may be expecting to see more in the mirror than the mirror has to offer.

The long and short of it is that whatever you happen to be experiencing, and how you feel you are being treated by everyone else is almost certainly merely a reflection of how you are treating others and what they are experiencing as a result. I'm not saying this is how things are, I'm only saying this is how things could be. Perhaps that's something you can reflect upon.

You don't have to have lost your eyesight to be blind

You can't solve a problem you can't identify. You also can't find solutions to most of life's problems on your own either.

There are many who look for guidelines to help them find their way through life: it might be religious precepts (like the 10 Commandments or Buddha's 8-Fold Path), it might be a sense of moral dignity, it really doesn't matter. When all is said and done, I truly believe that all the "Paths to Righteousness" or "Enlightenment" or "Salvation", I really don't care what you think you have to call it either, can be reduced to one very simple statement. Yes, that's how complex, how complicated human life on this planet is: one rule, guideline, suggestion is all we need.

My friend Stan Tenen at the Meru Foundation has pointed out very clearly that all religions worldwide share one basic precept: they have some form, some expression of what is most commonly known as the "Golden Rule" (which can (and does) include even atheists, in the form of Kant's categorical imperative). And, on the more-than-secular side, the Australian comedian Jim Jefferies has reduced this notion to even simpler terms: "Try not to be an asshole."

We don't need any more than that ... BUT, and believe me this is a big "but": there are no exceptions. If you want to reduce things, reality, life, whatever, to simplest terms, this is it.

For most of us, however, this is too much to ask, and so we come with any number of excuses why that can't possibly be T-H-E solution. Truth be told, it's not a solution, it's a way to prevent solutionless problems from arising. That, on the other hand, is too big a deal for oh, so many people, especially those who love to go on and on about personal responsibility, in all its shapes and forms.

So, there you have it in a nutshell. That's it. Now, how many exceptions do you believe you should be allowed to make?

You don't have to have lost your hearing to be deaf

A long time ago, I tried to point out the difference between complexity and complicatedness. I'm sure a lot of folks didn't understand what I was talking about, but what I had to say then is every bit as relevant today as it was then.

Folks: the world isn't complicated, our lives our; our understanding of reality is; our beliefs and what we hold to be true and good are complicated. Lord knows. But none of it is complicated. Yes, the world, reality, nature, modern society, whatever, are complex. There is always more at work than we can ever know. Lord knows. But, it's not like that makes all that much of a difference.

Truth be told (and I'm here to tell you), life, existence, reality, whatever you want to call it, may be complex, but it is not complicated. You, they, I, all of us, have to deal with "life" (whatever we experience it to be) as it presents itself. There is hardly a thing we can do about what it is that confronts us. We have to deal with whatever it is that shows up. But ...

Being the simple person that I am, I have spent years, decades, searching for a simple rule of thumb that would help me deal with the vagaries of life, and I found that two, simple rules help me one whole helluva lot. What comes, comes; you've got to deal with whatever it is, and 99.9% of what comes our way has to do with decisions we made in the past. Sure, people get hit by busses, come down with terminal illnesses, and more, but there is not a single thing we can do about any of that. We have to learn to deal with it. I deal with it by trying my damnedest to remember every good thing about my involvement with those who have been taken or stricken. If they're still alive, then I want to do whatever I can to help make their lives a little less trying. Not always easy, to be sure, but always worth while.

On the other hand, it's not just what comes to me in life that matters. I, like everyone else, have an effect, often an impact on the world around me. I need to be aware of that, too. I'm not perfect (and most people I know will attest to that fact) nor do I think I ever will be. Nevertheless, I have to think about my part of life's equation.

How many of you are truly aware of yours?

Just how insane does it have to get?

The past couple of weeks have been trying, at least for me that have been. I'm not talking about my personal life. It's as "normal" as it's going to get, but what I see going on all around me is taking its toll.

It's not just the colonization of a nation within the European Union; it's not just the war-mongering and sabre-rattling towards Russia including supporting fascists in the Ukraine; it's not just the Turkish flip-flop on not knowing whether the Kurds or ISIS is the biggest perceived threat to them. No, it's the insanity that accompanies even the smaller issues.

It's the sheer ignorance that comes with ignoring anything that looks like a fact and stating one's opinion as if it was worth listening to. It's the hypocrisy of claiming to help when all you are really doing is harm. It's the perverse way that history gets twisted to make us think that Iran, for example, was responsible for 9/11, or that we can't identify terrorism when it's homegrown, or we rush to suspect terrorism where there is none but it suits our purposes, or how it is possible to believe the answer to gun violence is more guns, or how it is possible, in the allegedly freest country in the world that a former general can float the idea of internment camps for those not loyal enough to America. And this, in the 21st century.

There can be no violence great enough that will make us believe that violence is not the answer. There is no belief so distorted that it can't hide reality from us. There is no self-righteousness so great that it can't allow us to believe that we're the good guys and everybody else is bad.

That's our world today ... day in and day out. It's not just that the inmates are running the asylum, they've got most of us cheering them on.

When are my fellow countrypeople going to get over themselves?

The older I get, the easier my mind gets boggled. Sometimes I wonder just which planet I'm actually living on. It's becoming increasingly clear to me that it's not the same planet as my fellow countrypeople.

The most recent case? The lunacy surrounding the Obama administration reaching a nuclear deal with Iran. As one who lives outside the borders of the good ol' USA, I can tell you: all you're doing is making life difficult for the rest of us.

Just in case you don't know: there has been "trouble" (and I don't care how you define it) in the Middle East ever since the West got over-involved and decided that establishing the State of Israel and ignoring the Palestinians was a good idea. It was wrong then, and it's still wrong today.

And before all you think-you-know-it-alls start condemning me: I'm all for a State of Israel. I'm neither anti-Semitic nor anti-Jewish, but I am anti-stupidity and anti-blindness. Both characteristics you're showing everyone else. One of these days you have to grow up and realize that

1. Israel is a secular state; it is a nation, like France or China or even the USA. It's just a country.
2. Most Israelis may be Jews, but not all Jews are Israelis. There is a difference between ethnicity and citizenship and between either of those and religious affiliation.
3. There are more people who adhere to Judaism than are actually Jews. Judaism is a religion, not a nationality or even an ethnic distinction.

Now, I realize that I lost most of my readers in that list. The reason is that the phenomenon is more complex than many minds would like to accept. Be that as it may, we have to differentiate between secular, national interests and other interests.

For more than 40 years (very biblical, in and of itself), we've been agonizing over the Iranians. Those screeching the loudest now had no problems then, when their beloved St. Ronnie was illegally supplying them with both technology and weapons because we disliked Saddam even more. When we kissed Saddam and made up, it was the evil Iranians all over again. I know that most of you, in your innate and misguided sense of right and righteousness, believe that a whole people should be punished because of what their government does ... unless, of course, the rest of the world should want to punish all of the US because of what their government has done. In that case, of course, everyone would be screeching even more ... as hypocritical as that may be.

And just what, pray tell, are our "interests" in this part of the world -- other than oil, that is -- and why do we think we, as Americans, have any right to enforce them to begin with?

We now have the opportunity to "take it all down a notch", but that could possibly, conceivably, potentially mean that the USA blinked. And we all know, we can't have that. Whatever deal may have been reached, to the majority of my American friends, it was a sign of weakness, and you may never, ever show anyone, anywhere even the slightest indication of weakness. Our whole sense of self-worth would be destroyed.

Yes, that's how most adolescents think. Young people, not yet matured, not having found themselves all think just like that, and the intellectual adolescents of America are having their tantrum, again. It's time to grow up. It's time to not only think like an adult, it's time to start acting like adults.

If you all wanted to remain adolescent amongst yourselves, I'm not sure I would care, but what you do has a real impact on my life, but like most adolescents, you don't realize that your actions have big effects on others.

When you're part of the problem, you're not part of the solution

Recently, as most of you know, four Marines were killed and two military personnel and a police officer wounded when a young man went on a shooting spree in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This was, without a doubt, a cowardly, dastardly, criminal act, and I have nothing but sympathy for all the victims and extend my most heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of those wounded, but, particularly, who died that day.

Nevertheless, I must take issue with all those who in the meantime have decided to exploit this tragedy for their own petty political and ideological gain, and in particular with all those who have shown, through their reaction, that they are really part of the problem and evidence that the underlying problem in this, and so many other similar events, is not going to be resolved.

Not a month ago, a Dylann Roof gunned down nine innocent people in a Charleston church. Oh, yes, there was outrage, but it was a misguided and most likely sick individual who was responsible. The primary reaction was a hot and heartless debate over the Stars and Bars, and other than a number of cases of arson at other black churches, the reaction to the deaths themselves was, and I hate to say it, fairly normal.

The perpetrator this time, no less misguided, no doubt no more mentally balanced than young Master Roof, but with an Arabic name, has taken the lives of heroes. Although there is no hard evidence that the shooting was terrorist-induced or motivated (though that's the direction the investigation is taking ... his name is enough), those four poor Marines who lost their lives are being abused to serve petty, deep-seated, misguided feelings that make it next-to-impossible to make progress toward a more just and peaceful world.

All our military is voluntary. When you sign up, you are aware that one day you may sent to the front lines (unless you manage to secure an occupational speciality that makes you one of the five people supporting those who are taking the fire). It's part of the risk you take in taking the job. These four young men, however, were not killed in the line of duty, they were killed while on duty, just like any security guard who is killed by a bank robber, or someone who is working in a warehouse gets killed because the safety regulations were not observed. Just because you wear a uniform, doesn't make you a hero ... heroes are heroes because they do something "above and beyond" like a young teacher who saves her class from a gunman gone amok by hiding them and taking the shot herself.

But this subtle, but important, distinction is lost when we another, more insidious, factor is at work: it's the simple fact that too many -- and this means most of the people I know -- believe that some lives are simply more important than others. A soldier's life, be s/he merely at work or in the line of fire in an unjust war, is not any more important that a young Ethiopian who starves to death because the National Fruit Company decided they could make more profit from bananas there. An American's life is not worth any more than a French or Russian or Chinese or Ecuadorian life. We are all human beings and we all should have the right to live.

But, at that moment, when you buy into the fact that any life is more important than any other life, you have crossed the problematic boundary. Some deserve to live and others may -- or may even deserve -- to die, but who is it who decides? At that moment, you set yourself above the rest of humanity, as if you had the right to decide. I, for one, do not want, nor do I desire to ever have that responsibility, yet, many -- too many -- people take it without ever really knowing what they do.

The time game

There a quite a few people I know who yearn for the "good old days", you know, those times when the world was still OK. Most people are referring to their childhoods, and for those I've known since then, I can tell you that the times then weren't all that great.

But, we think they were (or at least like to think they were). Our perception of them over the passage of times makes them appear that they were. Most of all, we wish they were. Hindsight is 20-20. Time heals all wounds. Or, as Heraclitus noted, Time is a game played beautifully by children.

We are, however, no longer children. The relentlessness of the seeming endless march through morning, noon, and night. Our continual obsession with the past, our total ignorance of the present, and our self-induced fear of the future haunt us mercilessly. And we think that somehow time moves unerringly from some point in the past toward that most-feared point in the future, death. Then we remember, sometimes only fleeting, how beautifully we played the game of time when we were children.

What bothers most of us and what bothers us most is the fact that it seems to be moving faster, that it seems to be slipping away from us. We invented clocks to mark the hours and somehow know that a minute then was really no different from a minute now, but it certainly seems different. We all know that as we grow older our sensation of time accelerates, and given the fact that our lives are now driven by the clock, it seems all the worst. And then we find ourselves wasting time, even (ruthlessly) killing time ... how sick do we have to get before we realize that we've that we no longer have any idea how the time game is played.

So here we are, all grown up; our own persons; doing our own thing and making our own decisions; pretending to be large and in charge, bragging that we've paid our dues and know how to play the game ... but that's a much different game we think we know how to play. Sure, there are lots of folks who can play the get-what-you-want game, the pulling-the-wool game, the talk-big game, the act-brave game, and many more besides. But the real game, the most important game of all is the one we forgot how to play.

Too bad, too sad, it was the most fun game of all.

The day the sun stands still

Tomorrow, at 16:39 UTC (or 4:39pm Universal Coordinated Time for those of you not yet in the 21st century) the sun will stop (which is what the word "solstice" actually means). In the Northern Hemisphere it marks the longest day and shortest night of the year, astronomically the real beginning of summer, but for those with other modes of time reckoning, mid-summer. Especially in places that are dark a lot, it is a day of merriment and celebration.

Solstices occur when the sun is at its zenith; that is, at its highest point, in relation to the earth's equator. Humankind has known about them for almost as long as there have been humans on this planet, and in our earliest civilizations they played a special and significant role. It was nature that determined how we calculated and counted our notions of time, not according to the averaging of the frequencies of certain isotopes of uranium selected for this particular purpose (which is how our most precise time is established.

Still, Mother Nature, the Cosmos, doesn't really care how sophisticated we humans think we are. On 30 June this year 23:59:60 UTC (midnight, in common terms), a leap second will be added to UTC in order to synchronize atomic clocks with astronomical time to within 0.9 seconds. Oh, how proud we must be. OK, I'm enough of a geek to find this kind of stuff cool, but what really fascinates me about it is what it says about us as a species. We humans have the privilege and benefit of being able to reflect upon such things, even if the vast majority of us (a) don't know that such things even exist and (b) when we do, we simply fail to take advantage of it.

The summer solstice, of course, is the counterpart to the other yearly solstice, the one in winter. That one is much more well known (though barely) because it occurs near to Christmas and the winter festivities have stuck with us longer. Occurring exactly half a year apart, they have different meanings, primarily because of the physical differences that we denizens of this planet experience at these particular times. The festivals of the winter solstice, throughout history, have been spiritual ones; the summer ones, physical: lots of drinking, dancing, cavorting, merry-making ... like in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. We should remember, however, that things are exactly opposite in the Southern Hemisphere. There it is winter that starts and they should be celebrating their spiritual festivals, but they aren't going to be doing so for the most part because Northern Hemisphereans colonized the Southern Hemisphere and decided that everyone needed to be just like us.

It's really sad when you stop to think about it: one half of the earth was moving from the spiritual to the physical while at the same time the other half was moving in the opposite direction. The earth, as it were, was really a giant, living Ying-Yang. But we found a way to change it and work against the flow of time and nature that had served the planet for billions of years. And look at us now. Now wonder the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still" only became a cult classic. That was a film about know-it-alls who were making life miserable for others. And that's what we do best.

Perhaps, in part, because we started ignoring the days the sun stops.

It's that time of year again

To the pagans of ancient times, the end of April and the end of October were special times: this was their celebration of the beginning of Spring and Autumn, the start and mid-point of a year, the celebrations that had to do with balance.

We don't think like that anymore. One day is like the next, one season like any other, even if we all have our personal preferences. We live by the clock, not by the sun; we are aware of the time of year, but never of its significance. We moderns are so arrogant, we have no idea how ignorant we are.

Prior to the railroads, we lived by the sun. We arose when it was light and retired when it was dark. Our days in winter were much shorter than those in summer, and we acted and interacted accordingly. Now, we have not only standardized our "time", we forcefully distort (e.g., Daylight Savings Time), regardless of what it costs us financially, personally, or even spiritually.

OK, I outed myself: I'm old school. The particular numbers on a clock, the position of the clock's hands don't really mean a whole helluva lot to me. It's not because I don't care, not at all, but rather because it doesn't matter.

Six in the morning? Some people get up, others continue to sleep. Twelve noon? Some people are looking for (or enjoying) lunch, others are back at work or waiting. The evening news comes at five, six, seven or eight ... it doesn't matter. We pay little attention anyhow. The news only tells us whether we can move into evening-relax mode or have dinner or, well, whatever.

But for me, today, Walpurgisnacht (Walpurgis' Night) is always special. It is a forgotten holiday, but a traditionally mystical-magical day (night). We have retained part of that magic in May Day Dancing and festivals, but of course not in America, because May Day is also the "communist" Labor Day. Our modern, sterile, ignorant-of-tradition, and ignorant repression of the natural cycle of nature have obscured and thereby made meaningless the inspiring beauty and enlivening of nature's rhythms.

In truth, I feel sorry for all those contemporaries who can only live in a clock-determined, clock-driven world. I am saddened by all those who cannot escape their self-created prisons of time. I am disheartened that I cannot make clear to them that they have enslaved themselves to an illusion we call time.

Many people that I know are enamored by and love their radio-controlled watches and clocks, because, well, you really know what time it is. That this "absolute time" is a mere average of 11 different "nuclear clocks" should give us pause to wonder just how exact and precise an average really is. If nothing else, it is a fixation on a detail that merely obscures the bigger picture: the wonderful and wondrous cycles of nature.

This is what I think of on this particular day of the year. Not because of the absurdity of our modern obsessions, but because of the respect it gives me for those who came before and who understood.

Yes, that's our modern malady: we know, but we really don't understand.

The arrogance of ignorance

Those of us alive today and in a position to be reading a blog, like this one, are, on the whole, a rather arrogant lot. Just look at what we're capable of: the best of technology, the vastness of knowledge, the widespread access to information, the high level of our standard of living, our overall rate of literacy and general level of education. We are witness to wonders only dreamt of by our forebears.

This tends to make us arrogant, you know? Who else has accomplished so much? Who else has made as many advances as us in the last, oh, just say, half-a-century? We've deposed monarchies, de-mythologized religion, discovered some of the deepest secrets of matter, send quasi-intelligent probes to distant planets. We've globalized trade, spread democracy around like fertilizer, and are literally capable -- even if not so inclined ... at the moment -- of destroying the planet. Who has ever done what we have done? No one, ever. We're the best that's been here yet, or so we like to think. Yes, arrogance is as simple as thinking you're better than someone else.

But, for all we can do, what do we really know? Do we really understand nature? Can we explain the phenomenon of consciousness? If we're so smart and powerful, why can't we ensure that every person on the planet has clean water and enough to eat, a roof over their heads, or that we all can live free of fear? Who knows what money really is, or how it works, or how our finance systems function, or what ideologies are and which ones we're individually and personally susceptible to? Why can't we recognize injustice when it stares us in the face? Why can't we do what is right, even if we know that to do so would perhaps reduce our own power? Who knows the difference between data, information, knowledge and wisdom? When did data become more valued and important than wisdom, in fact? Who understands the difference between a society, a culture, and political system? Who of you can even describe the difference between wave and particle theories of physics, or even know that there are different theories? Why is it that in the most informed, allegedly enlightened, knowledgeable, and supposedly advanced ages the world has ever known, we have so many who don't know the sun revolves around the sun and the sun around the center of our galaxy and our galaxy ... well, you get the idea.

There is so much we just don't know, either individually or collectively, but it doesn't stop us from looking down upon those who came before us: be it just a couple hundred years (that silly Descartes still believed in a soul) or a couple of millennium (the Ancient Greeks couldn't calculate their way out of a wet paper bag) and other than piling up rocks, what do the Ancient Egyptians have to show for themselves? Yeah, nobody has ever had their stuff together like we do, eh?

We look down on those who came before us for two primary reasons: (1) we consider them less developed, rather childlike and, OK, I'll say it, primitive, and (2) we can't begin to understand them; that is, meet them on their terms. Arrogance, you should know, is simply a form of blindness, no more and no less. If you think you know it all, what can you possibly learn from someone else? Truth be told, we're neither informed nor as smart as we like to think we are, and so we're blind to what we might be able to learn from those who came before us.

No, for the observant reader of the past few posts, it should be clear that yesterday still has a lot to tell ... if we had but the ears to hear, and the eyes to see.

Lullabies from La-La-Land

On the whole, I'm a pretty easy-going guy. In general, I don't get too upset about too many things. But, like everyone else, I have things that can just set me off and having to deal with things that could have been easily avoided is right up there at the top of the list.

OK, I'll admit it: what irks me is that fact that most of the folks I know would rather sit on their well-padded backsides and tell themselves that everything's OK instead of recognizing that we're all being taken to the cleaners. We're being duped, and dumbed down to boot. I'm not saying there is a conspiracy. Power doesn't need a conspiracy, it only needs to take things as they come. We've been deluded, and most of it has been our own doing. Because we love to be deluded ... it takes so much responsibility off our own shoulders.

We like to think that life is so much easier these days, that we've somehow progressed as a species, that we've overcome so many limitations that our forebears suffered under. This is largely untrue. Some societies have suffered long and hard, and have suffered more because others, allegedly more civilized societies, have made life miserable for them. Just ask the Africans or Native Americans. They both enjoyed more freedom, health, and natural wealth than we like to admit. And for all the comforts of modern living, like indoor plumbing and the Internet, we're not really all the better off for it. We've got gene-modified food and we have no idea if it's good for us or not; we have industry processed food and we know it's bad for us. We have artificial light and no more natural routines, be they daily or yearly. We have bad air, bad water, and a whole lot of bad ideas. Our life expectancy is longer, yes, but that's simply an actuarial bet, not a fact. And who would want to live in Hell for 80 years?

No, life is a struggle. It was very early on in our history as a species, and the one thing we really haven't changed -- but could have -- was our struggle for life. Yes, we are barraged by stimuli our ancestors couldn't imagine in their wildest nightmares. Yes, we are faced with food and environment that makes us sick instead of nourishing us. Yes, we devote inordinate amounts of time and energy trying to "get ahead" only to realize we are slowly sliding behind. Oh yes, we've come such a long, long way and life isn't any easier today than it was 100,000 years ago. The specifics have changed, but the big picture really hasn't. Oh, don't we have so much to be proud of?

And you see, all of this was avoidable. It doesn't have to be this way. Again and again throughout our history people have tried to get others to see that we weren't doing all of us a favor. But, we haven't been smart enough, and lord knows, not wise enough to stop and listen.

All of the ills of modern society are the result of rules we have made for ourselves. Yes, we made it up. It is, in the truest sense of the word, a fiction. We are in a position to make the world into just about anything we want, and we can do it to the benefit of all or the benefit of the few. Why we have chosen the latter path is incomprehensible to me.

The clock is ticking however. It is precisely all those things that we thought had brought us further that will be the seeds of our undoing. We simply believe it is otherwise. But, we love to be deceived.

Same difference

If there is anything I love about this life and this world, it's the diversity. Really. It can't be colorful enough, diverse enough, multi-culti enough for me.

Here we are, all of us, on one small planet, somewhere in the middle of a rather small solar system, somewhere at the edge of a galaxy, in the endless vastness of space. The universe is huge and we've got pea brains. How is that supposed to work? Still, those pea brains produce enough whatever to allow us to go to the moon, cure some diseases, think about weird stuff, and also pollute the planet, destroy the atmosphere and bring ourselves to the brink of destruction. Tell me why that is, in and of itself, not worth contemplating?

In all of my musings, of course, I keep coming back to one point: even though we're all so different -- actually unique as individuals -- there is so much about us that is still the same: our feelings, our sorrows, joy, pain, desires, wishes, hopes, and aspirations. We'd all, it appears, like to live a decent life (whatever that means) and not have to worry as much as we do about as many things as we do. I get the feeling that we'd all just like to know that our children are doing OK, that they are healthy and (at least sometimes) happy, that they have enough to eat and, when the situation calls for it, can celebrate and be happy about births and marriages and birthdays and whatever else is reason for joy.

OK, I'll admit it, I haven't been everywhere. But, wherever I've been, this is what I have seen and felt that people want. From all the TV shows, documentaries and travelogues that I have read, I get the impression that this is what most people want. I'm beginning to think -- though admittedly all evidence is not yet in -- that this is somehow a feature of the human condition. I really don't know what the difference is between me, a Wall Street banker, a worker in a German factory, a French civil servant, a peasant in China or an Aborigine in Australia. Oh, our circumstances are very, very different, but how we all feel about the world around us ... well, I can't really see how different it is. We feel the same joy and pain, we suffer from the same diseases ... where is the fundamental, existential difference? I just don't see it.

On the outside, we're very different: our hair, eyes, skin, stature, build ... you name it ... are very, very different. On the inside, our intelligence, our attitude, our self-understanding, our face-to-the-world ... if you know what I mean ... are very different as well. But deep down ... and I mean really deep down, at the core of our being, at that space-time that defines us as being "human" ... well, I'm not sure there's all that much difference at all. I haven't been able to locate that difference, but I've sought far and wide. I've tried to find it in every person I have ever met. But, as it turns out, the more I look, the more I find out that in the most important, essential and deepest ways, there just isn't a lot of difference between Mike and Jane and Michele and Rolf and Dimitry and Joanna, and Jose and Qiang and Kwame and ... well, you get the point.

It takes a while before you realize that we're really not all that different from one another. And it takes a little longer to realize that we're all more alike that different. But once you do, I can assure you, the world becomes a simpler place, and as a result, it becomes a better, more livable place as well.