A new look at the new year

Resolutions and New Year's go together like milk and chocolate. To be honest, though, I gave up on resolutions a long time ago. The intentions were there, the intentions were good, they were, well, well-intended, but let's face it: we don't, won't and can't just flip a switch and change. That's not how we function.

As I noted last time, 2015 was pretty much a waste in the grand scheme of things. I know that every individual in every generation for as long as there have been humans walking this planet has looked out at the world around him and wondered if this is as good as it gets. Figuring that it probably is, everyone opts for making the best of it for themselves, and we end up with the same, old same-old. If you always think what you always thought, you'll always get what you always got. Simple. And accurate, if you ask me.

It's not just the cynic in me that figures the coming year won't be much better. It's like the cartoon I recently saw on Facebook:

The speaker asks the audience, "Who wants change?"
All the hands go up
The speaker then asks "Who wants to change?"
All the hands stay down.

Yeah, change is good, as long as it is other people who are doing the changing. And that's why I'm not all that excited and hopeful that 2016 will be much better.

So, even though I have no formal resolutions for the new year, I am plotting a course for change. Things just can't go on as they have the in past. It's time all of us starting thinking about the kind of world in which we want to live. For my part, I'm tired of the all the ignorance, hypocrisy, intolerance, selfishness, and self-absorption I'm forced to deal with. I've had enough of opinions for their own sake, of uncritical judgements, baseless assertions and unjustified statements. And, I've certainly put up with unreflected, unthought-thorough, simplistic, and prejudiced positions for far too long.

But, maybe I've picked the wrong year for all of that. After all, the Americans are going to pretend they're still a democracy and have a presidential election this year, so I'll most likely be inundated with all that I'm tired of, had enough of and don't want to put up with any more.

It's not shaping up to be much of year, is it?

Belief or knowledge?

One of things I learned very quickly while studying at a German university (though I had, in a somewhat lighter mode, been exposed to the approach in my undergraduate days in the States) is that if you are going to use terms (or, better, "concepts", "notions", etc.) you should be clear on what you mean by them. This applied just a well to new, technical terms as it did to everyday concepts as well. As I've been bantering around one such term in the past few posts, I thought it might be worthwhile to use it as an example of what I'm talking about.

The word I've been using, of course, is "belief". We all know what it means, regardless of what might be in the dictionary (for, after all, dictionaries are not authorities, rather they are the documentation of what is generally accepted at a given point in time ... words change meanings over time, which is another reason why it's good to stop and think hard about them every once in a while, like I'm doing now). One method of helping to make definitions and understandings clear is to compare or contrast them to similar terms and notions. One such helpful term in this case would be "knowledge". In other words, what do the two ideas have in common, but perhaps more importantly how they are different. Let's take a look.

A "belief" is something we think is true. We are convinced, for any number of reasons (or for no reason at all) that what we believe is true. It's "how things are" or "what something means" or anything along that line. By contrast, knowledge is something that we know is true. We are convinced in particular because there is some kind of verifiable evidence that others are aware of and acknowledge and hence we agree is "how things are" or "what something means". It would seem that the difference between "belief" and "knowledge" is the difference between thinking and knowing.

This difference is subtle, to be sure, but it is important. Others may believe what we believe; that is, others are aware of something and acknowledge it, yet the difference lies in the fact that the "evidence" is missing. Oh, believers may even believe they have evidence, but upon closer examination we find that it is not hard and fast evidence, rather it is an indication, a phenomenon of sorts, that the believers interpret in some way. To be fair, on the hard-evidence side, there is often data that needs to be interpreted, but here there are often strict rules of interpretation to assist in the interpretation process.

In the general and normal course of everyday life, this fine distinction isn't always that important, but it is becoming increasingly so, and for all the wrong reasons. When people have beliefs that contradict knowledge and insist that their beliefs are more significant/important/convincing/correct than knowledge, we have a bit of a problem. When beliefs go from being mere beliefs to this stage we can safely speak of ideologies, rather than mere beliefs. An ideology is, then, a set of beliefs (a way of thinking) that has been elevated to absolutivity; that is, it is presented as if it is knowledge. But, it simply is not.

Too many public discussions and too many decisions these days are being based on ideologies, not knowledge, and it's starting to become a serious problem.

If not reading, how about reflection?

While I do have my optimistic moments, I'm not the fool many take me for. I know well that most people I know wouldn't read much that is antithetical to their beliefs. The authors of those texts might have a point ... who knows? they might even be right ... and what do you do then? When our beliefs are challenged, the vast majority of us simply reject what we're being told (or what we're reading). It's a lot easier to simply deny than it is to change our minds. How sad is that.

Having said that, however, I'm not convinced that most people know why they believe what they believe. A lot of our beliefs are simply carry-overs from our childhood. Our parents believed certain things, we accepted them, and we believe them now as well. In our teen and young-adult years, our friends or people we admired or looked up to believed things and we decided to believe what they believed because we thought or felt or believed that we were like them. In our adult lives, we believe things sometimes simply because we would like things to be a certain way; our world would be much less threatening and stressful if things are as we believe. What all of these modes of coming-to-beliefs have in common, it is clear, is that they are passive in nature. We don't have to do anything to come to these beliefs, we merely need to accept them and make them our own.

That's fine in as far as it goes, but it's a rather weak foundation, especially when we think of how many people are out there claiming, arguing, hammering home, and trying to impose their beliefs on others. If someone wants to make a strong case for his or her beliefs, then I would like to think that they had at least thought about them seriously, that they had invested some energy in understanding what it is they believe and that they knew why they believed what they believed. Unfortunately, that's hardly ever the case. Beliefs are funny like that: all you have to do is believe them. Personally, I prefer people with convictions (thought-through and grounded beliefs), even if I don't share them myself.

So, now that summer is upon us, and now that many of us are thinking about time off or vacations or just lying out in the sun or going to the beach, I have little illusion that most of you will be taking a book with you. For those who are, I commend you, and I certainly hope you read it. For those of you who are not choosing that option, may I suggest a less strenuous, but I believe more challenging, and, perhaps, even more rewarding activity: reflecting. Yes, why not take the time in which you're not really doing anything else, and think about what you believe. Ask yourself why you believe it. Do little thought experiments about what it would be like, or what the world would be like, if you, or most people or anyone else, didn't believe what you believe. You really ought to try it. It can be a very enlightening experience, if done intensely and seriously enough.

No one's asking you to do anything but think ... about what you think and why. Who thinks they can handle it?

The myth of freedom

As promised last time, I'm going to turn to the other half of Ben Franklin's equation: liberty, or freedom, as we most commonly call it. No, I'm not going to go into a discussion of the details of differentiation between the two. We all have a general understanding of the word, and we all profess with certainty that we are, in fact, free, but just short of an outright, apparent dictatorship, we couldn't be more wrong.

Another wise man, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, once remarked that "None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free." I would maintain that this statement applies to some degree to just about all of us, but it hits the proverbial nail on the head as far as Americans are concerned. Going back even further, no one less than Aristotle noted, that whoever prefers security to freedom is rightfully a slave. That pretty much describe post-9/11 America.

You can't voluntarily gut your own Bill of Rights, limiting or suspending your rights to freedom of expression, speech, and assembly, eliminating of the right of habeus corpus, allowing yourself to be arrested on mere suspicion of terrorism only to be potentially turned over to the military and suspension of all legal rights, gutting the 4th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution, allowing your elected representatives to gerrymander you out of the value of your vote, standing by while certain segments of the population are denied even their right to vote, and introducing so much money into politics that only those who have have a say and think you are living in a free country. You can't see one video (since you don't often see it on the news) of the dispersal of an Occupy demonstration or almost any demonstration for that matter and think that you live in a free country. And, especially if you are a person of color, you cannot begin to imagine how tenuous your own existence is should the State decide to clamp down on you, as was the case in the wake of the Ferguson demonstrations, for example.

None of that, my dear friends and readers, speaks of freedom. None of it. Each and every one of these is evidence of how severely your rights, and hence your freedoms, have been restricted. The worst of it all, of course, is that Americans, at any rate, demanded that it be done to them. They voluntarily gave these rights and freedoms up, in the name of -- quite ironically -- national security. Mr. Franklin was right all the way around.

One important point to keep in mind, however, is that none of these rights is ever coming back. Oh, we were all told that these were temporary steps necessary to get the situation under control, but I'm going to let you in on a little secret: power never relents; once you give up anything, especially your rights and your freedom, you never, ever get it back. Mr. Franklin said you don't deserve them anyway, and I happen to think he is right.

Enter Mr. Goethe. Yes, those who took all that away from you have not tired since telling you, impressing upon you, suggesting to you, convincing you that nothing has really changed. But it has. Those who took all that away from you lied to get it, just like they lied to start the wars that would increase your fear which would demand more action and more restriction and more control. Enter good old Aristotle: keep me safe and I'll do your bidding.

Americans, for the most part, have never really been all that free, but they are less free now than they have ever been. Depending on where you live, you know which sports teams to root for, which church to attend (and you'd better attend one of them), which religion to believe in, which party to vote for, and whom to associate with. Peer pressure has never been writ larger than in America, and, I have to admit, America is really good at it. But whether you're pressured by your peers or by the police or by the legal system, it doesn't really matter. In the end, you adjust, adapt, and submit. You like to think you're free. You love to tell yourself you are, but in reality, you're just grist for the mill.

The myth of security

Since I left off with Ben Franklin last time, it seems fitting to, in a way, pick up where I left off, with Ben again. Among the many other notable things he said, he pointed out that "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Let's just deal with the latter of these notions; I'll come back to the other one next time.

What Franklin described as "safety" in his day is what we call "security" nowadays. A little less than a decade-and-a-half ago, my fellow Americans fell for this one in a big way. The events of 9/11 drove the stake of fear into their isolationist hearts and they were confronted with a dose of reality that made them more than willing victims. Total data collection, unwarranted wiretapping and evesdropping, computer-analysis of all email communication, the rise of unchecked police power, the suppression of rights unseen since the founding of the country, and for what?

Nothing, really. Oh sure, go to the airport and you'll be inconvenienced, but are we safer? Are we more secure? Are we better protected? Not in the least.

In spite of all the invasions of privacy, the intrusions into our personal lives, the repression in public spaces, and other inconveniences we've been made to suffer, not a single terrorist act, in the US or anywhere else in the world, including the most recent attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris, was prevented. We've even toppled governments (elsewhere of course), carried out physical assassinations (e.g., Bin Laden) or have murdered countless innocent civilians (the drone program), and we've still got an Islamic State and Boko Haram and a vast number of wannabe organizations that are threatening all of us in ways that we couldn't imagine not all that long ago.

Of course, it's not only national security that is at issue. Though the rates of violent crimes is declining throughout the Western world, America in its gun fanaticism is seeing an increase in the number of accidental homicides. The more guns, the more people are going to be killed. Anyone can be shot, given the flimsy nature of house construction or the thinness of the walls in apartment dwellings. Without a system of health insurance, anyone and everyone is exposed to health dangers that can't be addressed, and the recent outbreaks of previously eliminated contagious diseases are cause for concern. And then we have the lack of labeling of food products, the machinations of the processed food industry, the secrecy surrounding fracking company chemicals, the multitude of accidental poisonous spills, the decline of environmental protection worker health and safety regulations and, well, you've got the perfect combination for a high probability of death by just about anything other than old age.

Americans, for sure, but increasingly we in Europe, are facing a noticeable lack of both safety and security, both generally and in Mr. Franklin's sense of the word. The world has always been something of a dangerous place, but the illusion of safety and security we have created for ourselves is probably the greatest danger of all. Our surest thing is a blatant false sense of security.

The myth of unity

You can think what you want about America's Founding Fathers. I have -- I'll be honest -- more than just mixed feelings. Yes, yes, yes, they might have been products of their times, but history is replete with great thinkers and doers who looked beyond and were not just victims of their own particular time and place of birth. That's part of my dilemma, I suppose: if these guys were such great visionaries (as is so often claimed) why couldn't they see beyond their own cultural context, why couldn't they envision something more universal, why were they tripping over their own feet to set a standard for the world to come?

To me, the most enigmatic of all the Founding Fathers is Benjamin Franklin. I'll admit it: he has been ever since I was forced to read his autobiography in 11th grade. Granted, I didn't always do what I was told, but I waded through that one. I was taken aback by the contradictions and enthralled by the moments of genius. I couldn't believe any text could be that boring, but found such inspiration for life, that I live quoting the man.

It was Uncle Ben (not he of rice fame) who inspired me for this post. Ben, when arguing before the Continental Congress on what the colonies should do in regard to the Crown, let loose a most impressive statement: "Either we hang together, or we hang separately." What wise words.

Right here at the beginning of American history, at a time when the idea of the individual was concreticizing in the Enlightenment mind, Mr. Franklin quipped out a truth that would stand the test of time. He knew, and the circumstances dictated, just as they do today, that it was in togetherness, in overcoming petty differences, in seeing the bigger picture, in cooperation in the face of adversity, in solidarity that something new could be achieved. The world recognizes the French Revolution, which transpired 13 years later, as the irruption into modernity, but it was Mr. Franklin's simple statement that made that other revolution possible. Yes, in the Enlightenment, in the Age of the Individual, in the transition from collectivism to individualism, Uncle Ben reminded us that we are only strong and capable of survival when we band together, when we collectively react, when we cooperate, not when we compete.

Since then, as history as patently demonstrated, the individualists have done what they could to gain the upper hand. Our own current, post-modern attitude is that the individual is supreme, but Ben knew, and we know deep inside, that the individual is nothing without the collective to support him (or her, as the case may be).

The antithesis of the Roman adage to divide and conquer is Mr. Franklin's admonishment to pull together. Not quite 100 years later, one Charles Darwin would generalize this idea into his theory of evolution. It's as obvious as the noses on our faces, but there is a significant number of individuals these days who would like the rest of us to think otherwise. And they are doing a damn fine job of it, I hate to admit.

We -- America, any modern, Western country, any significant political organization or grouping -- praise the individual, raise him to almost godly status, but we know, and have known for quite a long time, that real strength lies in coming together. That's why our ideal of unity is a mere myth. It does not and cannot exist. We mouth the words, but we live our actions: me first, everyone else second; as long as I have mine, you're free to try and get yours; it's every person for themselves.

No, Ben was right. if we don't hang together, we'll hang separately. It really is that simple.

The myth of justice for all

If you don't have shared values; if you erroneously believe that you can do everything yourself; if you refuse to recognize that where and when we are born has a lot to say about what's even possible in our lives; if the notion of personal responsibility is perverted into a justification that it's your own fault if things are better for you; and if you believe that only the individual is capable of anything positive; it is, well, simply beyond my ability to imagine, let alone comprehend, how you can think that we're all treated equally in the eyes of the law.

In the United States, money is free speech, though there's no hint of that in the First Amendment. In the Western World in general, there is the legal precedent that social standing, background or history, may not be considered in assessing your standing in society. For anyone who wants to see -- and I realize that means "damn few" -- it is clear that different measures are applied to different individuals in our everyday reality.

To me, the most emblematic, the most telling, the strongest statement of the negation of the notion of "justice for all" is the notion of "affluenza". Don't get me wrong, I'm quite a fan of linguistic dynamics, of the ability of a language to change and adapt to the world around it, of neologisms, and more, but "affluenza" ... well, that one, I must admit, stopped me in my tracks.

It was, I believe, a judge in Texas (otherwise not known for its forward-thinking decisions) who declared that a young man who was drugged and drunk and who drove into a crowd of people, killing several of them, was, in fact, innocent (and sentenced accordingly) because he suffered from "affluenza": he came from such a rich family, that he was no longer able to determine the difference between wrong and right. It wasn't an isolated incident; the defense has been successfully invoked since then. How, in the name of all that's holy, does that make any sense at all? How can money absolve you from moral responsibility? Well, in a "society" in which the only real value is money, money talks, and the guilty walk.

There was no outrage. There were no demonstrations against the injustice. There was no outcry, no anguish, no speechlessness, unless you take the silence that thundered across the land as speechlessness. It was just another day in paradise, just more business as usual, another instance of "nothing to see here". It passed as good as unnoticed. And all of us, whether you like it or not and whether you want to admit it or not, had our hands stained with blood that day. Some community service, a few hours doing something for others so that maybe, just maybe, it starts to dawn on you that there are other people on this planet other than yourself ... that was it.

On the same day, not a small number of people of color were frisked, searched, pulled over from traffic, arrested, incarcerated, sent to prison, and executed for alleged crimes that they may or may not have committed. (When you have an error rate of 5-10% of innocent people being executed, you can't really claim anything for the "system" other than it doesn't work.) And there was no outrage, no demonstrations, no outcry, no anguish, no speechlessness, just business as usual.

You're a person of color in America, you're an immigrant, most likely Muslim, here in Europe. You're different in that you are not what we aspire to be. Too many want to suffer from affluenza. They dream of it. They long for it. Justice should be blind, but only so long as she doesn't see me.

And now what?

Yes, and now what? Good question. If I only knew.

For those of you who may not be aware, the number 7 plays a significant role in our lives. In the Middle Ages, a child became an "adult" at 7 because s/he could distinguish between right and wrong. Later, we moved decided that 14 was the age at which an individual could decide about his/her own beliefs as s/he had reached the age of reason. Even later, we decided that one was actually an adult when one turned 21, and a lot of places think so even today. Humans are, it is true, subject a 7-year cyclic development pattern, and in our tradition, we have 7 days of the week as well. In the Ancient World, there were (and still are) 7 visible planets ... the list goes on and on, but I believe you get the point.

What many more of you may not be aware of is that each individual's year is divided into 7 phases as well. It starts when you're born and it stops when you die. These aren't biorhythms in the true sense of the word, just phases that, surprisingly enough, are analog to the phases we experience in our 7-year developments throughout life. If I were to give you "key words" to associate with each of these phases, they would be (1) Action, (2) Consolidation, (3) Transition, (4) Stabilization, (5) Creation, (6) Harmonization, and (7) Rest. It is an interesting exercise to reflect upon one's own life in terms of these key words and one's own development over the years. It is also interesting to think about when one did what in one's current life and how those actions/deeds/accomplishments reflect those key words as well. Be that as it may, I have found that these cycles play a unignorable part in my own life, and as fate would have it, I have just entered my own 7th cycle for this year as well. I don't know about you, but I find myself in dire need of recharging my physical and mental batteries starting 6-7 weeks before my birthday. And that's where I am right now.

In all this talk of change, lately, I believe it is time for me to make a few changes myself. Besides begin in need of a bit of rest, I feel the very strong need to start bringing a few things together, harmonizing them if you will, in general. What this means in very practical terms is that here, where the Celtic New Year is upon us (a mere coincidence, I can assure you) -- after all, it is Halloween (which is hardly a holiday in these parts, though I know my American friends and acquaintances will be outdoing themselves), which marked the transition from the light to the dark part of the year -- I shall be slowing down a bit.

For the past couple of years, I've been posting every second day. The next post, however, and those that that follow will be in three-day intervals for a while ... at least until the end of the calendar year (and isn't it interesting just how many "calendars" we each have). I need more time to think. I want more time to reflect. I feel it; there is reason for it; it makes sense (to me); so, I don't see why I should fight it.

I hope all of you who have been true to my blog thus far will continue to be so. (You are part of a very small -- but as I like to think, very select -- group of individuals. You are, of course, free to share these posts with whomever you may please.) I thought it only fair to let you know of the change.

As our good friend Heraclitus was fond of saying, panta rhei.

A good example?

"Set a good example" is what my dear, sweet mother (God bless her soul) used to tell me. I'm sure she thought she was encouraging me to play the game, to toe the line, to fit in, to not make waves, to not draw undue attention to myself, or maybe even to brave the ire of my peers while reaping the acknowledgement of TPTB. I don't fault her for it. She, like most of us, was a product of her times. It was good to obey. But, as we found out later, those giving the orders were not above reproach. As we've moved down the historical timeline, we've found out as well, too many of those who have the say should really not be saying anything at all.

Nevertheless, since I've been encouraging everyone else to speak up, to get involved, to start thinking about what is and is not important to them, it seems only fitting that I make a start. That is the "good" example I will set. Here's a partial list, of course in no particular order and linked to key words which are simply a shorthand for the issues involved, of things I cannot abide:

• hypocrisy - this is really nothing more than a double standard; if what you think/believe/want/do is not what everybody should think/believe/want/do, give it up; this also includes (along with "dishonesty" (see below)) "underhandedness";
• dishonesty - which may be a combination of everything listed thus far, but it does have the added dimension of lying to ourselves as well as to others;
• intolerance - which applies across the board (gender, lifestyle, political persuasion, culture, "race", etc.), and if you don't know the difference between "tolerance" and "acceptance", you need more help than I can give you;
• violence - domestic, legal, psychological, foreign-policy, yes, the list is endless, are all the same; if you think any kind of violence is OK, you don't understand the concept;
• obsequiousness - (I know, I know, a big word ...) that is, easily yielding to and fawning over (self-chosen) authority; emphasizing the "rules" and a "law-and-order" mentality should be included here;
• cowardice - which, of course, includes being silent when one should speak up, not speaking truth to power, sitting on your butt when you know you should be doing something, and more;
• egotism - which has, in these times, mutated into a kind of "autism", one that insults real autistic individuals; you're just self-absorbed and you're not that important; in fact, you're not important at all;
• greed - that is, simply thinking you are entitled to more than anyone else; also thinking "having" is more important/better than "being"; and
• exclusionary faith - if you think you've got the right one and everybody else doesn't, you don't have any faith at all; you're most likely just being hypocritical on top of everything else;

Now you know. What more can I say?

Is there anything left to save?

For reasons that I will go into at another time, at last check, in my mind, the following things are seriously, if not irreparably, broken (and this applies universally):

• ourselves (self-absorption, self-centeredness, greed)
• our societies (competition instead of cooperation; blame-the-victim mentality)
• our environment (global warming, excessive carbon emissions)
• our political system (totalitarian regimes, pseudo-democracies, special interests)
• our monetary system (irrespective of currency, debt-based)
• our financial system (value of debt grossly exceeds value of what we can produce)
• our economic system (too few have's & too many have-nots, unequal opportunity)
• our infrastructure (insufficient tax revenues, privatization, special interests)
• our education system (test-score mania, privatization, excessive costs)
• our justice system (Bradley Manning, incarceration rate, SCOTUS)
• our value system (theocracies, pseudo-theocracies, social Darwinism)

Oh, I suppose the list goes on, but that's about all I can handle at the moment. I'm neither whining nor complaining. Rather, I'm merely observing. For each one of these areas there are, without a doubt, more than enough "experts" running around with diagnoses and panaceas, and for the most part, these are well-meant, but nevertheless wrong. Each one looks at its own given area and ignores that some other area is equally affected. If we weren't so screwed up ourselves, our societies would be in better shape. If we had a reasonable monetary or financial system, the economy wouldn't be such a problem, and there's a lot that could be done about the environment, education, and infrastructure. That kind of thing.

Overarching everything, though, I would place our value system, for it is this that determines, at least in a sense, what it is we care about at all. Although religion once attempted to do that (and I'll let history be the judge of how successful it has been ... for it was, and to a certain extent still is, the case that religion provided different cultures a common meeting ground), that, too, has devolved into a mumble-jumble of creeds, factions, and belief systems that simply legitimize -- well, attempt, rather unsuccessfully, I might add, to legitimize -- one group's superiority over another. That is especially what religious fundamentalism (of any flavor) is all about.

It is possible, by virtue of some yet-foreseen miracle that we might be able to salvage (I'm not sure about save) perhaps the infrastructure, perhaps parts of the environment (but I doubt enough), but that's about it. Without a value system, an agreed-to set of values that are valid and applicable to everyone -- regardless of race, color, religion, creed, culture, or nationality -- we will never be able to decide which of the items on that list we should even try to save.

Why am I less than optimistic? Well, because of the first item on that list: ourselves. When it comes to change, we all know, that is definitely something that everyone else needs to do, but not ourselves, and that's one reason we can never work off the list. If you can't get past the first item, you've no chance of ever getting to the end. It will just be the end.

A word about saving

"To save" is one of those wonderful English verbs that can get our minds churning in different directions. It lends itself to ambiguity, double-entendre, and even punning. It's worth thinking about words from time to time.

We can "save" our money; that is, we can put it somewhere (under the mattress, buried in a coffee can in the back yard, in a bank ... all of which yield about the same rate of interest) so that we have it later. We can save our dessert at dinner and eat it later. Saving, in this sense, has to do with keeping something for later use.

We can also "save" a drowning man, or block a field goal and "save" our team from defeat. In other words, saving, in this sense, has to do with rescuing someone or something, preventing it from being destroyed, preserving it in some way. There is an overlap, of course, with our money (or desert) example: spending our money or eating our dessert now means we have destroyed it (perhaps in a very good cause) and not preserved it.

However, "save" can also be used in the sense of "redemption". It is said that Jesus saves, that we can be saved from our sins. Granted, this has an aspect of preservation as well. For the Christian, his or her soul remains unharmed, will a lost soul will be tortured for eternity. (After all, what choices does a Loving God have for those who insist on disobeying?)

The thoughts I have been expressing for the last couple of posts fall naturally into the second category above: keeping things from being destroyed. When considered seriously, we see that my last posted question: "What's worth saving?" pretty much answered itself: not a whole lot. Our money is broken; our financial system is broken; our economic system is broken; our society is broken; our communities are broken. Our relationships are as run down as is our infrastructure. So, when I start wondering about what is worth saving, well, the answer is rather obvious: not much at all. I don't know about you, but when I find broken things lying around, I tend to throw them away. Our consumer goods are generally not worth fixing, and we've taken this wonderfully wasteful model and applied it the rest of our lives as well.

Our political, economic, and social structures are in such a state that we certainly don't want to bury them on a desert island like so much treasure. They've pretty well lost their value. What is a political system worth when the individual has nothing to say? What is an economy worth when only a tiny percentage benefits from it? What is a society worth when its is based on fear and loathing of "others"? They are in such disrepair that we can't prevent them from being destroyed. We've already destroyed them, which is why they are no longer the treasures that we once thought they were. And Lord knows, we can't keep them from going to Hell. In fact, for a growing number of people, they have become Hell itself.

Whatever we do decide to do is going to demand of us courage. We've pretty much got to start over and that means from a state of maximum uncertainty. I'm not sure how good we are at that anymore.

What's worth saving?

You might think this post will be a primer on taking care of your money in troubled times. You couldn't be more wrong. These past few hot and lazy weeks of summer have sent my thoughts to cooler climes. Well, cold, might be a better word. I can't help but think there are some cold, dark times ahead.

Those who know me also know that I'm not the world's biggest optimist. Oh, sure, there are those times when I am willing to admit that this or that will pass, regardless of how we feel about it, but the overall tenor of what I'm feeling these days makes me think these things will pass ... away.

Much of what I write is intended to rouse enough emotion that we pull together and go out there (wherever "there" is) and save those things that should be important to us: the arts and literature, education, society, our democratic systems of government ... you know, the usual suspects. Are they even worth saving?

The truth of the matter is that we value art based on its asking price in the market, not because of the insights it might provide into human nature. Who reads ... or can read -- really read, as in critically and thoughtfully ... and literary success is judged by the number of copies sold. Dan Brown and John Grisham may write entertaining and filmable novels, but what do they tell us about the human condition or show us about our common plights? What kind of education have we got when we've reduced everything to reguritatable facts and testable items? That's mere schooling, not education. What kind of society is it that is based on mistrust, dishonesty, scheming to gain advantage, securing one's own interests at the expense of others, wealth and prestige? And I don't even have to say any more about "democratic systems of government" when corporations and monied interests pick and sponsor the candidates and then tell them which of their own hand-written legislation to pass. That's simply not democracy anymore.

The disciplines and systems that we once held to be valuable have been degraded into consumable decorations. They exist in name only so that we can lie to ourselves and tell ourselves that what we do and how we live and where we live is still OK. It isn't.

Two-thirds of the world's population know that they live in abject poverty with little or no hope for improvement and that their lives will simply be painful, brutish and short. The other third's lives are not really much better, but they can deceive themselves into thinking that what little they have is worth saving, not realizing that they really don't have much of anything left to save.

The morality of politics?

If you've been following along for the past couple of weeks, you most likely know what I think the answer to the question posed by this post is. Politics is just a way we go about organizing and structuring our lives together (in the public sphere), and as such, it is fairly neutral in and of itself. Having said that, however, it is also clear that the only ones who can organize and structure is us; that is, we human beings, and as such we are, or at least should be, moral beings. Can the two -- morals and politics -- mix?

The ideal answer is "yes"; the perceived answer is "hardly"; the real answer is "no".

Each and every one of us is face with moral, that is to say, ethical, decisions every day. Our morality has to do with what we believe to be right and good and true, regardless of where we draw our motivations for coming to such beliefs. We have seen that there are some issues which are inherently dilemma-like when it comes to the moral domain: killing, stealing, harming others, lying, and more. What we have also seen is that it is these very issues are part and parcel of political dealings, be they domestic or foreign, local, national, or beyond. In other words, we can't neatly partition off those aspects of political life that are uncomfortable or that make us uneasy, or put us in situations that might confront us with making moral choices. That is, however, what I believe most of us do in the end: we simply avoid.

The stands you take politically are, whether you like it or not, moral stands. You must be clear on what your moral values are, and you must be clear on how truly you uphold such values. Morality isn't partially anything. There's not a little bit of unethical. There's no rightness that's well-sort-of-in-this-particular-situation. You need to decide and you need to be aware.

I have brought this up merely because much of what I hear for argumentation in the political realm is based on alleged religious principles, on higher-order beliefs, and what some might even call divine ideals. Condoning cruelty, oppression, violence, the inflicting of pain and suffering, and the denigration of others to serve our own interests are simply wrong. To uphold such practices, especially when they are made policy, is obviously wrong. To turn one's back and remain silent, for whatever reason, is moral weakness.

There is so much talk these days of the "moral high ground", of what is right and what is wrong, of what are values are (or should be), and in most of what I see and hear, there is little moral foundation at all. It is not up to me -- nor is it my intent -- to tell you what you should believe. I can only admonish you to become aware enough of what you do believe that you are willing to stand up to that every day of the week and in every decision that you make, and in every position that you take.

Our invariably most egregious moral shortcoming is simply that we are not aware.

And I'm not the only one

A while back I was chided by a Facebook friend for referring to the United States as an alleged democracy. He pointed out that we were a republic. I tried to explain to him that I was referring to the process not the structure (Americans - well at least some of them - are allowed to vote ... though oddly enough it is a privilege; that is, proscribed by law; not a right; that is enshrined in the constitution). He never responded so I don't know if I made myself clear or not.

During and after the recent election, and particularly after all the flailing that has been going on regarding deficits, budgets, state-of-the-union addresses and gaffed water breaks, it struck me that there really isn't all that much really democratic about America at all anymore. I'm used to having thoughts that my neighbors don't, but I was pleased to see not long thereafter a piece by Zeese & Flowers on truth-out.org that made me feel less alone. Sometimes it's nice just knowing you're not the only one.

The article provided a lot of support for my friend's argument, though I'm sure the point he was trying to make was very different. We are a republic (structure of our political organization) and the say we are apparently supposed to have in how that structure is implemented has long been meant to be carefully circumscribed; limited, if you will, not just limited government but also limited influence on that limited government as well. We, the people ... we human beings that are, in the end, are to be governed, are not the focal point of anything. In the end, it's not about people. It's about property.

I'll be the first to admit that I missed that point, but in that I'm not alone either. In fact, in the meantime, I'm getting the impression that we've been sold a bill of goods, which is not an inappropriate a metaphor as we might like to think. Oh sure, the last round of voter-disenfranchisment measures that were attempted, to varying degrees of success, in the last American election should have given us all pause to think. That we persist in our delusion that we have something to say, electorally, is something we need to think very hard about. More than ever, Emma Goldman's words ring true in my ears, "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." In a sense, that is precisely what was being done. The trajectory of events since the last Great Financial Crisis should also give us pause to think: the more "property" (what you have) that you have provides you with many more rights and privileges than the rest of us. It just hadn't struck me so directly how deep-seated this idea really is.

Making things more important than people is ethically questionable and morally wrong. For the religiously inclined among you, it is the foundation of idolatry. If our highest value is property then we have no values at all, for the value of property is subject to the whims of the market. We all need to think about this more, I can assure you. It has taken me a while, to simply get past the catchiness of the phrase, but Proudhon was right: "Property is theft". The true significance of that, however, is not what the "owner" thinks s/he has gained, but what has been taken from the rest of us: our dignity as human beings.

Is that what we hold dear?

No, not far-fetched at all.

If all of this were only restricted to the Yanks, it would be bothersome (and shameful for those of us who still carry US passports), I suppose, but we could chalk it all up to just another instance of the insularity of the United States. Unfortunately, this isn't the case at all. Giroux also references a recently released report by the Open Society Foundations which details the systematic and global use of torture by the CIA (which comes as no real surprise) as a policy and practice that is supported by over 50 other countries, most of whom like to claim theyare , too, democratic nations living under the rule of law. At best, these are merely hollow, self-praising accolades as well. If you know another is doing wrong and you aid, abet, support, or even remain silent to that wrong, you are complicit in the wrongdoing and hence guilty of the same thing yourself. For those who still believe in "sin", these are sins of ommission: sometimes it's what you do that is wrong; but sometimes it's what you don't do.

What I am missing in all of this is the widespread (it should be global) outrage over such evil conduct. Torture is wrong. The indiscriminate killing of civilians not involved in warfare is wrong. (Well, war is wrong, but I'll leave that out for the moment so as not to lose the fence-sitters at this point.) The execution of anyone never indicted, tried, and convicted of a capital offense is wrong, but I hear not outcry; I hear no anger, and I hear no clamoring for justice. But what I do hear is silence. And what little else I hear are timid, half-hearted attempts at justification (an ends-justify-the-means thing?), and that borders on active complicity in my book.

Saying something is justfied does not justify it. Saying something is legal does not make it legal. Following proscribed procedures and making something legal does not make it morally right. Knowing something is wrong and not opposing it is a wrong in and of itself.

It is long past time to decide where you stand, what you believe in, and what you believe to be right. It's not an easy decision, and I would caution about making it too lightly. Still, decide you must, and much sooner than later. Well?

A bit far-fetched perhaps?

That's what some of you are no doubt thinking, I'm sure. But I have to say, I don't think so. I don't think I'm even pushing the envelope.

I'll admit that the discussion has been a bit abstract, perhaps even a bit academic, but the issue at hand is anything but that. How we talk about something doesn't change its nature; it only reflects our relationship to that something at a given point in time. A couple of real-life circumstances can perhaps make this clearer. Let's look at one here:

We like to think that we -- in the US, in Germany -- live in nations guided by the rule of law, that we have certain, inalienable (human) rights that are both respected and protected by those we have elected to serve us. After all, isn't that our naive assumption about how democratic societies work? (This is assuming, of course, that we live in such societies.) It turns out, however, that things are perhaps not quite as they appear.

In a recent opinion piece on truth-out.org, Henry A. Giroux took the Obama administration to task for its approach to the so-called "War on Terror", the use of drones, and a shift in policy that includes America's own citizens in its highly questionable tactics. Giroux minces no words in pointing out just how far a democratically elected government will go in nullifying, if not simply eradicating, long-standing, accepted and constitutionally-guaranteed rights. He describes the current state of America as "authoritarian", but I don't think that goes nearly far enough to describe what is happening. When you think about the gallons of pepper spray that have doused how many Occupy and other protestors, the word "repressive" crosses my mind as well.

Fighting fire with fire is never a sound tactic when dealing with anything other than a brush or forest fire. As the Kabbalists have long declared, "you become what you hate". And, this seems to be a fitting description of America these days. This isn't a matter of left or right, of Democrat or Republican, what was started under one of those banners is being continued and even enhanced under the other. Becoming what one hates affects everyone, regardless of their political persuasion.

So, on just who or what are you focusing your own hate?

OK, OK, what's your point?

It's a fair question, I'll admit it, but I'll also tell you right up front, you'll probably not like the answer.

We all like to think of ourselves as moral beings, upright individuals with strong sense of right and wrong. If you've been following closely and perhaps even reading between the lines, you'll find that truth be told we're just as immoral as the next scoundrel, the one we despise, the person whom we probably dislike the most. It's a hard lesson to learn, believe me. In the School of Reality, you get to do the lesson over and over and over again till you get it right. Some manage before the end of their days, some don't.

If that didn't sound like a consoling word, that's only because it wasn't. You don't get any points for almost getting it. You not only have to get it, you have to practice it, otherwise there are no points to be had.

To take just the examples we've looked at thus far (killing, stealing, harming others), if you see any of them happening, if you are witness to any of them in any way and you say nothing, or you do nothing ... if you just let it slide, for any reason whatsoever, then you are just as guilty as the one who is actually performing the act.

We could apply the same measure to any number of other things, such as lying or breaking promises (e.g. marriage vows, contracts, informal agreements), and the results would be the same: in not speaking out against the immorality we become a party to it. If some kinds of killing and some kinds of stealing and some kinds of harming and some kinds of lying and some kinds of promise-breaking are OK, we have to ask ourselves not only why, but who decides which ones these are? Who adjudicates in matters of morals? Ourselves? Our religion? And what if we have no religion, but we still claim to be moral beings? If you pick and choose when and how you apply your morality, you're really little more than an opportunist who is merely looking out for his or her own advantage. (I have to admit, I have a bit of a problem taking such people seriously or thinking that what they have to offer is of any value at all.)

For those of you who believe that I'm making this unnecessarily complicated, I must say, that when you get right down to it, I'm the one who's eliminating the complications and getting down to the true matter at hand. If we believe we are truly moral individuals, then we have to act like it. We have to commit to that morality and be prepared to stand up for it, especially in hard times.

That demands courage, I know. It's not easy to step in and make others aware of their wrongdoing. To be perfectly honest, I don't hold it against any of you personally that you can't quite bring yourselves to this. It's fairly human, after all. And all I ask is that in recognition of this fact, you neither act like, nor claim to be a moral person. For that would be stretching the truth, which is a form of deception; that is, lying, and we all know, lying isn't very moral.

Harming others is moral?

For the sake of completeness, our brief survey needs to look at the last of the examples I raised a few posts ago. If we agree that harming others is not right, what precisely do we mean by that?

I'm pretty sure we would all agree that hitting someone with the intention to hurt them, pushing someone in front of a bus, shooting them with a gun, and more would all be considered harmful. In each and every case there is the intent to cause discomfort or pain in the recipient of our attention. That's all pretty straightforward. When we think back over the past few points, it will become clear that we all come to agreement rather quickly and there is little debate about all matters physical. If the body or property of an individual is concerned, we are quick to recognize the wrongness of the acts being committed. The problem is, however, that most of what goes on in life and most of what there is in the world simply can't be seen. It lies beyond our physical senses, but it is no less real. For example:

If you tell your child (or student, or co-worker, or ) everyday that s/he is stupid. Is this harming them? What if they start believing it and then even start acting like it? Does it then become OK because we are correct in our observations? What about other forms of psychological coercion or abuse? Aren't these just as harmful. What about harsh words? Yelling? Cursing? Isn't it possible to be just as aggressive verbally as it is to be aggressive physically? I think we would all agree that it is.

Why is it then, that there are really no specific laws to cover these cases? We could say that the other laws cover them, but if they did, why are so few people tried and found guilty of these crimes?

What about things like, working overtime without pay? or insisting an employee work longer hours and not record them? Isn't that harmful to the person as well? What about insisting on poor working conditions and not providing any kind of compensation or insurance to cover the negative side effects? What about insisting that an employee work so long and hard that his or her family suffers? What about threatening an employee regularly with firing if they don't work harder? Or can we consider forcing an employee to perform an illegal act under threat of retribution (e.g. firing) ... can we consider that "harming others"? I wish I were making this up, but I'm not. And I think if we all stop for a moment and think about it, we all realize that there any number of situations and circumstances in each of our lives in which we felt "abused" in some way by those who we thought were, or should have been, concerned with our welfare. Yes, these, too, are immoral acts and we tolerate them again and again and again. My question is why?

Naturally, I can't speak for anyone in particular, but generally speaking it would seem to me that we feel helpless and powerless in the face of the threat or the perpetrator. But, taking a stand, speaking up, or even taking sides is what is required of us. When we fail to "do what is right" we contribute to the growing immorality of the world around us. I'm pretty sure that's not what any of us really want, but I'm just as sure that most of us don't have the slightest idea what to do about it.

Stealing is moral?

It should come as no surprise that if killing turned out to be a difficult moral concept ... well, OK, as a moral concept it's not all that difficult, but how we try to moralize the immoral certainly is ... it is not going to be all that much easier with stealing. The law the world round also makes various distinctions, sometimes depending on the value of the thing stolen, or its size, or sometimes simply whoever was the owner. All of this is, of course, irrelevant for our discussion here, for like with killing the last time, we need to think very specifically whether there is ever a case in which stealing is moral.

Granted, our review of killing merely revealed that killing is never moral, regardless of how hard we try to justify it. We can make some headway legally, I suppose, but on moral grounds, the rightness of the laws permitting such acts can be challenged. Killing is wrong, and trying to justify it on any grounds just makes you wrong too. But stealing? Surely there must be a difference here. Stealing isn't even in the same class with murder, is it? Well, is it? We should probably agree here at the onset what we mean by stealing (or theft, if you prefer more formal words). When I use the term here; that is, in this post; I mean the acquisition of something belonging to another without their consent. Be patient, please, for I know there are a couple of rubbery words in that definition, but how they should be understood will (hopefully) become clear before the end of the post.

There are lots of ways to do this: one could take whatever it is when the owner isn't watching (what we usually call burglary); or, the owner could be watching and we force him or her to give us what we want, say, by threatening him with a weapon of some sort (what we generally refer to as armed robbery); or another possibility is that the owner is watching but not paying enough attention (e.g. shoplifting). These are the obvious forms of stealing, however.

There are less obvious forms, too, and they generally involve deceit. I could get someone to lend me something and I simply never give it back. A variation of this would be borrowing something under certain conditions that would get me off the hook for having to return whatever it was I borrowed, knowing full well (or at least being pretty sure) that those conditions will come about and not informing the lender of such. It sounds of course like this only has to do with borrowing and lending, but this last scenario also covers sales of many kinds. If I lead you to believe you can make a lot of money by giving me money or buying a "security", but I know that I'm going to dump that security the first chance I get and make money off of that too (of which you will see none), that's pretty much the same thing. In fact, we usually call that a scam and that's fundamentally what happened in the most recent financial meltdown.

And this is where things get grey and cloudy. I'm fully aware that those responsible for the crash knew what they were doing, and I'm also aware that they were operating, for the most part, within the framework of current law, but what they were doing was immoral and no amount of legal argumentation will ever make it right. The realist in me knows that you can't really punish immoral behavior, at least not like you can illegal behavior, but to then turn around and treat these people as if they were honorable, upstanding, worthy members of our society is ... well, disgusting, to put it mildly.

What we need to keep in mind, though, is that even passively defending the perpetrators allies you with them and their actions; that is, it makes you as immoral as they are. And yes, in case you are wondering, what amazes me more than anything else coming out of the 2008 crash is the sheer absence of moral outrage. It gives us pause to think about whether we should even consider ourselves a moral society anymore, or if morality is even worth thinking about. It should be, but is it?

Killing is moral?

One would think this would be fairly straightforward. It's not right to kill other people. But for some odd reasons, legally, at least, we've come up with a lot of exceptions: the Americans have "degrees" of homicide; almost every country makes some kind of distinction between willfully and accidentally killing someone, or between planning the crime or simply committing it in an act of rage or hyperemotion. And, I suppose that there are good reasons for this - legally - but it really doesn't detract from the immorality of the act, does it? After all, it's for good reason that you can still be punished legally even if you accidentally kill someone. It would seem that these are not exceptions after all, but I thought about this some more. What about the state/country/government? Why are they exempt?

Willfully killing a human being is called murder, and the state murders in two primary ways: capital punishment and war. You can twist and turn it any way you want, but while capital punishment may be legal, as it is in the US, China, or Iran, it is never moral. Oh sure, there are lots of folks who go to great lengths to justify the laws on religious grounds, but as we saw last time, morality is broader in scope than religion, so if your religion sanctions state-committed murder, you may just be an devotee of an immoral religion. Seems oxymoronic, if not downright paradoxical, to me, but I can only call them as I see them. When all is said and done, a state has simply given itself the right to commit murder without sanctions. But again, that doesn't make it moral, only legal.

A very similar case obtains with war. States, for whatever reasons, reserve the right to wage war. I'm not arguing that a possible case can be made for defending oneself against invasion, but what about the aggressors? According to their states, they are not murdering, they are "only" waging war. We have to ask ourselves though, when is a war a war. That may sound silly at first, but what the US did in, say, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan certainly looked a lot like war, those events are referred to as wars, but the US never "officially" declared war in any of those cases. I mean, there is a mechanism is place for making sure everyone knows what you're doing is actually that special case in which you've exempted yourself from the rules applying to murder. And if you don't do that? You see my dilemma?

We can even take this one a step further: what is the case with the innocent women and children who are killed in US drone attacks in, say, Pakistan? We're talking about Pakistani citizens who have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism, innocents who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Isn't that murder? Referring to them as "collateral damage" is probably more heinous than killing them. They were human when they were killed; their not even that anymore if they are only damage.

You may not like the outcome, but when considered morally, if killing is immoral, then all killing is immoral. We may tolerate some kinds of killing, but our tolerating them does not lessen their immorality. If our morality means something to us, then we need to start thinking very hard about how much immorality our morality can tolerate. I have found that my threshold is very low. What about you?