- The Little Drummer Child
- Frosty the Snowperson
- We Three Monarchs of Orient (Are)
- (I'm Dreaming of an) Integrated Christmas
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Politically Correct Songs for Christmas
On this Christmas Day, I was reflecting that many of our traditional Christmas songs are not politically correct and therefore need a bit of revision. So, here are a few of my suggested changes:
Monday, December 23, 2013
Pare a Pair of Pears
I noticed a linguistic curiosity today. No, it doesn't have to do with pears or paring them; it has to do with pairs.
We speak of a pair of gloves, a pair of socks, a pair of shoes, even a pair of dice; and those are all clearly sets, or pairs, of two things.
But we also speak of a pair of pants, a pair of scissors, a pair of glasses—eyeglasses, that is. In these cases it's much less clear that we're dealing with two things. I do have a pair of kitchen scissors that separates into two parts--sometimes too readily—presumably for ease of cleaning. But these pairs are normally not two separable things. So why do we treat them, linguistically, as two? Maybe it is because they are sort of bifurcated. You could say that about a pair of pants, pretty clearly. And maybe scissors. But it might be stretching things a little bit to apply this theory of mine to glasses.
Well, people who study language (and I include myself here) come to recognize that you often can't apply "logic" to language. Any language is its own system, and it has very little regard for any external system such as what we call "logic."
Copyright © 2013
We speak of a pair of gloves, a pair of socks, a pair of shoes, even a pair of dice; and those are all clearly sets, or pairs, of two things.
But we also speak of a pair of pants, a pair of scissors, a pair of glasses—eyeglasses, that is. In these cases it's much less clear that we're dealing with two things. I do have a pair of kitchen scissors that separates into two parts--sometimes too readily—presumably for ease of cleaning. But these pairs are normally not two separable things. So why do we treat them, linguistically, as two? Maybe it is because they are sort of bifurcated. You could say that about a pair of pants, pretty clearly. And maybe scissors. But it might be stretching things a little bit to apply this theory of mine to glasses.
Well, people who study language (and I include myself here) come to recognize that you often can't apply "logic" to language. Any language is its own system, and it has very little regard for any external system such as what we call "logic."
Copyright © 2013
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Who Spoke for the Indians?
In the 1850s, the 1830s—in fact for decades before the Civil War—there were well-organized, powerful, and certainly very vocal individuals and groups calling for an end to slavery—at least in the North.
On the other hand, the Indians (Native Americans) were being treated very badly and even exterminated; and I have never heard that there was even one individual who raised his voice in protest against this.
The treatment of the Indians is a sad, disgusting, tragic, criminal, and extremely long story. The saga could just go on and on.
Just a very few examples: During the presidency of Andrew Jackson, the Cherokees and several other tribes living in the Southeast of the United States were forcibly removed. With no more than the possessions they could carry on their backs they were forced to walk all the way to Oklahoma, even through bad winter weather. Many, especially the oldest and the youngest, died of disease or starvation. (Once they got there, they were told, Oklahoma, or "Indian Territory," would be theirs forever; and that turned out to be just one of innumerable, countless promises to the Indians that turned out to be totally meaningless.)
Similarly, in 1864, the Navajo were also "removed," and made to walk several hundred miles, and for a while were impounded in basically a concentration camp where nearly half of them died. (There is a lasting legacy of this in that all Navajo now alive are descendents of some 2,000 who survived this so-called Long Walk and so are inbred and suffering from diseases that result from the build-up of recessive genes.)
When the Indians were not being made to go on long forced marches like these, they were otherwise being killed by being given smallpox-infected blankets; being shot; having their villages burned and their crops destroyed; or having the buffalo, their source of food and nearly everything else in the case of the Plains Indians, exterminated. Or once on reservations and removed from their hunting grounds and thus no longer able to provide for themselves, they were not receiving food destined for them because of corrupt Indian agents.
Indians who somehow survived all the genocide by shooting and starvation had to undergo having their culture destroyed. Indian children, once in the power of whites—missionaries or teachers in special Indian schools—were forbidden to speak their language. Along with their native religious beliefs, which of course were also suppressed by the missionaries, language is virtually synonymous with culture, so that to deprive a people of their language is to virtually destroy their culture.
Of course I am viewing all this from the perspective of a relatively enlightened person of the 21st century. But where was the person who was a bit ahead of his time, or was more humane, and who said, "These are people, they deserve to live, it's wrong to kill them, to try to wipe them out"?
Copyright © 2013.
On the other hand, the Indians (Native Americans) were being treated very badly and even exterminated; and I have never heard that there was even one individual who raised his voice in protest against this.
The treatment of the Indians is a sad, disgusting, tragic, criminal, and extremely long story. The saga could just go on and on.
Just a very few examples: During the presidency of Andrew Jackson, the Cherokees and several other tribes living in the Southeast of the United States were forcibly removed. With no more than the possessions they could carry on their backs they were forced to walk all the way to Oklahoma, even through bad winter weather. Many, especially the oldest and the youngest, died of disease or starvation. (Once they got there, they were told, Oklahoma, or "Indian Territory," would be theirs forever; and that turned out to be just one of innumerable, countless promises to the Indians that turned out to be totally meaningless.)
Similarly, in 1864, the Navajo were also "removed," and made to walk several hundred miles, and for a while were impounded in basically a concentration camp where nearly half of them died. (There is a lasting legacy of this in that all Navajo now alive are descendents of some 2,000 who survived this so-called Long Walk and so are inbred and suffering from diseases that result from the build-up of recessive genes.)
When the Indians were not being made to go on long forced marches like these, they were otherwise being killed by being given smallpox-infected blankets; being shot; having their villages burned and their crops destroyed; or having the buffalo, their source of food and nearly everything else in the case of the Plains Indians, exterminated. Or once on reservations and removed from their hunting grounds and thus no longer able to provide for themselves, they were not receiving food destined for them because of corrupt Indian agents.
Indians who somehow survived all the genocide by shooting and starvation had to undergo having their culture destroyed. Indian children, once in the power of whites—missionaries or teachers in special Indian schools—were forbidden to speak their language. Along with their native religious beliefs, which of course were also suppressed by the missionaries, language is virtually synonymous with culture, so that to deprive a people of their language is to virtually destroy their culture.
Of course I am viewing all this from the perspective of a relatively enlightened person of the 21st century. But where was the person who was a bit ahead of his time, or was more humane, and who said, "These are people, they deserve to live, it's wrong to kill them, to try to wipe them out"?
Copyright © 2013.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Oh, No, Not Another Post about Guns!
I've blogged about guns a number of times, and I've resolved to not write anything further on the subject. I've said it and I don't want to keep saying it. I don't want to get repetitious and tedious, for anyone who is a regular reader of this blog.
However, the shootings keep up, and my thoughts and perspective might keep evolving. So—here I go again.
The problem of the school and mall shootings (and so forth) that we have in the US, very tragically and all too frequently, have two ingredients: the easy availability of guns in this country, plus mentally ill people who are out on the street rather than being confined or institutionalized. This is simple logic and I don't think it can be refuted or denied.
It's mainly the first of these that I've written about a number of times, and I still maintain that the power and influence of the NRA (National Rifle Association), together with loose or broad interpretations of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, seem to stand in the way of our politicians' doing very much about that component of the problem.
As to the second part of the problem, I recently came across some interesting information. President Ronald Reagan instituted policies—funding cuts--that largely emptied our mental hospitals and sent mentally disturbed people out onto the street rather than ensuring that they were either treated or kept confined where they could not cause serious mischief; and evidently we still have the results of those policies with us such that dangerous people are not being treated, and can get a gun with plenty of ammunition and shoot numerous people.
Copyright © 2013.
However, the shootings keep up, and my thoughts and perspective might keep evolving. So—here I go again.
The problem of the school and mall shootings (and so forth) that we have in the US, very tragically and all too frequently, have two ingredients: the easy availability of guns in this country, plus mentally ill people who are out on the street rather than being confined or institutionalized. This is simple logic and I don't think it can be refuted or denied.
It's mainly the first of these that I've written about a number of times, and I still maintain that the power and influence of the NRA (National Rifle Association), together with loose or broad interpretations of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, seem to stand in the way of our politicians' doing very much about that component of the problem.
As to the second part of the problem, I recently came across some interesting information. President Ronald Reagan instituted policies—funding cuts--that largely emptied our mental hospitals and sent mentally disturbed people out onto the street rather than ensuring that they were either treated or kept confined where they could not cause serious mischief; and evidently we still have the results of those policies with us such that dangerous people are not being treated, and can get a gun with plenty of ammunition and shoot numerous people.
Copyright © 2013.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
The Bible and Gay Marriage
Yesterday, a favorable vote in the House of the Illinois legislature meant that Illinois will become the fifteenth state (plus the District of Columbia) to permit same-sex (or "gay") marriage.
I am very happy about this, but it brings to mind the debate, which has occurred many times and took place here recently. That is, some religious folks and conservatives have argued against gay marriage and, at other times and places, other measures to ensure or enhance rights of gay people by pointing to their Bibles.
My personal argument against these people and their point of view on this subject is that we in the United States live in a secular society, not in a theocracy. If it were Muslims who wanted to blur the line between church and state by imposing Islamic sharia law (as have, for example, the Taliban in Afghanistan), there would be a loud outcry. But apparently it matters whose religion is the source of the views and proscriptions that some would like to incorporate into the civil law.
Another example of mine: Jewish people (in the US and of course elsewhere), if they are observant Jews, believe that one should not eat pork. Now suppose that I, as a Jew, argued in the legislature that since I believe that eating pork is a sin (and the Bible—Leviticus—says, I believe, that the eating of pork is an "abomination"), then no one in the US should be permitted by law to eat pork. I'd love to hear the screams and shrieks of those African-American ministers who fought against gay marriage in Illinois when their pork chops are taken away!
And, round about the year 1850, the Bible was pointed to as not only permitting, but positively endorsing, slavery.
A column today by Neil Steinberg in the Chicago Sun-Times had the same idea but he used different examples. He said that if you stone your daughter for speaking disrespectfully toward you, it won't serve you as a defense to point to your Bible. Nor can you perform a sacrifice in your driveway and point to your Bible as permitting it or requiring it. As Steinberg said, "That battle has been lost."
Just as 150 years after the slavery debate our views have changed, and no one would try to defend slavery, maybe in another 10 or 15 decades people will look back to these times and see that it was ridiculous to point to the Bible as justifying the inferior treatment of gay people.
Copyright © 2013.
I am very happy about this, but it brings to mind the debate, which has occurred many times and took place here recently. That is, some religious folks and conservatives have argued against gay marriage and, at other times and places, other measures to ensure or enhance rights of gay people by pointing to their Bibles.
My personal argument against these people and their point of view on this subject is that we in the United States live in a secular society, not in a theocracy. If it were Muslims who wanted to blur the line between church and state by imposing Islamic sharia law (as have, for example, the Taliban in Afghanistan), there would be a loud outcry. But apparently it matters whose religion is the source of the views and proscriptions that some would like to incorporate into the civil law.
Another example of mine: Jewish people (in the US and of course elsewhere), if they are observant Jews, believe that one should not eat pork. Now suppose that I, as a Jew, argued in the legislature that since I believe that eating pork is a sin (and the Bible—Leviticus—says, I believe, that the eating of pork is an "abomination"), then no one in the US should be permitted by law to eat pork. I'd love to hear the screams and shrieks of those African-American ministers who fought against gay marriage in Illinois when their pork chops are taken away!
And, round about the year 1850, the Bible was pointed to as not only permitting, but positively endorsing, slavery.
A column today by Neil Steinberg in the Chicago Sun-Times had the same idea but he used different examples. He said that if you stone your daughter for speaking disrespectfully toward you, it won't serve you as a defense to point to your Bible. Nor can you perform a sacrifice in your driveway and point to your Bible as permitting it or requiring it. As Steinberg said, "That battle has been lost."
Just as 150 years after the slavery debate our views have changed, and no one would try to defend slavery, maybe in another 10 or 15 decades people will look back to these times and see that it was ridiculous to point to the Bible as justifying the inferior treatment of gay people.
Copyright © 2013.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Humans' Encounter with Space Aliens
A recent article on Huffington Post said, in its headline, that an expert has said that the world should prepare for encounters with other-world aliens.
Although the article, and the comment it was reporting, focused on the prospect that Mankind will encounter other intelligent beings as Man voyages further and further out into space, we've been largely conditioned (by sci-fi movies) to think in terms of aliens landing on earth in their "flying saucers."
I don't want to weigh in on the likelihood that aliens are going to land on earth—let alone the question of whether they have already done so. But I do want to speculate a bit on what an alien "encounter" might be like.
First, I fear that Mankind's first reaction might well be to let loose the military or the police and those first aliens—even if coming in peace—might well be killed by us.
Second, thought should be given to how we are going to communicate. In the movies, the aliens speak English and say, "We have learned your language by monitoring your radio and television broadcasts." Well, I don't think we ought to count on that; and the issue of how we might communicate is not an easy or obvious question.
Next, I've amused myself by thinking about how aliens might differ from us. Entirely apart from how aliens might differ from us in physical appearance (and there's no reason to think they're going to have two eyes, one nose, one mouth, two arms and two legs, etc.), how about if their minds are very different from ours? Maybe they will be beings who are incapable of lying and will have no comprehension of what lying is or of how and why we can and do lie.
Last, suppose they are creatures who never make mistakes. They might say to us, "Well, if you intended to do [such-and-such], why did you not do that? Why did you do something else?"
Copyright © 2013.
Although the article, and the comment it was reporting, focused on the prospect that Mankind will encounter other intelligent beings as Man voyages further and further out into space, we've been largely conditioned (by sci-fi movies) to think in terms of aliens landing on earth in their "flying saucers."
I don't want to weigh in on the likelihood that aliens are going to land on earth—let alone the question of whether they have already done so. But I do want to speculate a bit on what an alien "encounter" might be like.
First, I fear that Mankind's first reaction might well be to let loose the military or the police and those first aliens—even if coming in peace—might well be killed by us.
Second, thought should be given to how we are going to communicate. In the movies, the aliens speak English and say, "We have learned your language by monitoring your radio and television broadcasts." Well, I don't think we ought to count on that; and the issue of how we might communicate is not an easy or obvious question.
Next, I've amused myself by thinking about how aliens might differ from us. Entirely apart from how aliens might differ from us in physical appearance (and there's no reason to think they're going to have two eyes, one nose, one mouth, two arms and two legs, etc.), how about if their minds are very different from ours? Maybe they will be beings who are incapable of lying and will have no comprehension of what lying is or of how and why we can and do lie.
Last, suppose they are creatures who never make mistakes. They might say to us, "Well, if you intended to do [such-and-such], why did you not do that? Why did you do something else?"
Copyright © 2013.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
How the US Government Could Save Money--and Save You on Your Taxes
Conservatives don't want to pay taxes that fund social-welfare programs. I know this because I have heard at least a few individuals say that to me, face-to-face.
They say that money is taken from them in the form of taxes and given to people who don't want to work. (At heart this idea is racist: They are really talking about African-Americans and the sentiment relies on the old racist canard that African-Americans don't want to work--never mind pointing out to them that huge numbers of job applicants have turned out, with lines going around the block, when there has been a widely announced hiring event in their communities, as shown in photos and video clips.
I will tell you, them, whomever—where tax dollars are really going to waste.
For one thing, the United States sends billions of dollars to the government of Afghanistan; and in turn, in the course of just one year, a billion dollars of Afghan aid was "lost to corruption." For another thing, Afghan President Karzai is an opportunist who has given power—and immunity from prosecution—to men who in another time and place would be counted as war criminals.
Much as I might support the aspirations of women in Afghanistan to have those rights which Taliban rule in Afghanistan would deny them, I see a relic of the cold war here: The United States got involved in Afghanistan after the country was wrecked and ruined by civil wars, fighting between war lords and factions that followed the withdrawal of the Soviets. (To remember our history: In Vietnam, the French lost and pulled out and America thought it could do better, but could not and lost also. Similarly, the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan and apparently the US felt it could do better, and the final results of that may not be in but it does not look optimistic.)
So, I have to suspect that US efforts in Afghanistan have been a waste of your and my tax dollars. And here is another one: Businesses like Walmart, and fast-food companies like McDonald's who pay their workers inadequate wages.
These companies are allowed to pay their workers a minimum wage which has not gone up, in real dollars (or even in nominal dollars) for decades.
A Walmart worker who is single earns a wage which puts her at about the poverty level. If a Walmart, or McDonald's, worker earns minimum wage but supports a family of four on his or her income, that worker's income is supplemented by aid from the government which costs us an average of about $1700 for that family. So, what Walmart or McDonald's does not pay the worker, you and I pay.
Walmart is making huge profits. Basically every American taxpayer, by having to add to the insufficient income that the Walmart or McDonald's worker receives from her employer, is paying his taxes ultimately into the pockets of the owners of Walmart and McDonald's. It would save us, the middle-class Americans who pay taxes, money if those companies were compelled to pay a living wage.
Copyright © 2013.
They say that money is taken from them in the form of taxes and given to people who don't want to work. (At heart this idea is racist: They are really talking about African-Americans and the sentiment relies on the old racist canard that African-Americans don't want to work--never mind pointing out to them that huge numbers of job applicants have turned out, with lines going around the block, when there has been a widely announced hiring event in their communities, as shown in photos and video clips.
I will tell you, them, whomever—where tax dollars are really going to waste.
For one thing, the United States sends billions of dollars to the government of Afghanistan; and in turn, in the course of just one year, a billion dollars of Afghan aid was "lost to corruption." For another thing, Afghan President Karzai is an opportunist who has given power—and immunity from prosecution—to men who in another time and place would be counted as war criminals.
Much as I might support the aspirations of women in Afghanistan to have those rights which Taliban rule in Afghanistan would deny them, I see a relic of the cold war here: The United States got involved in Afghanistan after the country was wrecked and ruined by civil wars, fighting between war lords and factions that followed the withdrawal of the Soviets. (To remember our history: In Vietnam, the French lost and pulled out and America thought it could do better, but could not and lost also. Similarly, the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan and apparently the US felt it could do better, and the final results of that may not be in but it does not look optimistic.)
So, I have to suspect that US efforts in Afghanistan have been a waste of your and my tax dollars. And here is another one: Businesses like Walmart, and fast-food companies like McDonald's who pay their workers inadequate wages.
These companies are allowed to pay their workers a minimum wage which has not gone up, in real dollars (or even in nominal dollars) for decades.
A Walmart worker who is single earns a wage which puts her at about the poverty level. If a Walmart, or McDonald's, worker earns minimum wage but supports a family of four on his or her income, that worker's income is supplemented by aid from the government which costs us an average of about $1700 for that family. So, what Walmart or McDonald's does not pay the worker, you and I pay.
Walmart is making huge profits. Basically every American taxpayer, by having to add to the insufficient income that the Walmart or McDonald's worker receives from her employer, is paying his taxes ultimately into the pockets of the owners of Walmart and McDonald's. It would save us, the middle-class Americans who pay taxes, money if those companies were compelled to pay a living wage.
Copyright © 2013.
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Right-Wing Lies about "Obamacare"
I have blogged twice (September 21, 2012 and August 5, 2013) about lies generated by right-wing or conservative commentators, politicians, and bloggers, and spread by emailers who forward e-mails.
Obamacare--that is not the correct term but was originally a derogatory term coined by these right-wing people and now it seems to have stuck as the common term by which to refer to the Affordable Care Act--has been the victim of much misinformation.
Many people may remember Sarah Palin's assertion, quite some time ago, that there would be "death squads" which would decide whether elderly patients would receive treatment or would be allowed to die. I hope that anyone who heard that has since come to understand that there are no such things as these death squads.
More recently, Rush Limbaugh asserted that Obamacare is in effect a massive tax increase. Again, false.
One other assertion is that under the new health care plan, doctors would be obliged to ask patients about their sex lives.
I get very troubled by such deliberate dissemination of lies. If you are a person who always tries to believe the best about people, maybe you believe that these are well-intentioned and that the people who have spread these false ideas had reason to believe they were true. If you are more cynical, then you probably will believe that the people who say these things know they are false and say them anyway.
I think it was Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propoganda, who said that you only have to repeat a lie enough times and people will believe it. Unfortunately, this is true; and as I said in one of my earlier blog postings, people who hear or read these things are not always critical of what they hear and take it as fact and truth.
Obamacare--that is not the correct term but was originally a derogatory term coined by these right-wing people and now it seems to have stuck as the common term by which to refer to the Affordable Care Act--has been the victim of much misinformation.
Many people may remember Sarah Palin's assertion, quite some time ago, that there would be "death squads" which would decide whether elderly patients would receive treatment or would be allowed to die. I hope that anyone who heard that has since come to understand that there are no such things as these death squads.
More recently, Rush Limbaugh asserted that Obamacare is in effect a massive tax increase. Again, false.
One other assertion is that under the new health care plan, doctors would be obliged to ask patients about their sex lives.
I get very troubled by such deliberate dissemination of lies. If you are a person who always tries to believe the best about people, maybe you believe that these are well-intentioned and that the people who have spread these false ideas had reason to believe they were true. If you are more cynical, then you probably will believe that the people who say these things know they are false and say them anyway.
I think it was Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propoganda, who said that you only have to repeat a lie enough times and people will believe it. Unfortunately, this is true; and as I said in one of my earlier blog postings, people who hear or read these things are not always critical of what they hear and take it as fact and truth.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Government Shutdown
One hour ago the US government had to shut down, because a budget had not been passed by the Congress, and so there is no money to run the government and pay its employees
Most likely a great majority of Americans don't understand what the consequences of this are going to be. I am sure we will be hearing of new consequences every day that this goes on. One thing is certain, there will be a big impact on the economy. Today, the day preceding the actual shutdown, the US stock markets took a bit hit in anticipation of the government shutdown.
Let's look at why this happened. The immediate cause is that the US House of Representatives refused to pass a budget without a provision that would have delayed the implementation of "Obamacare" by one year; and the Senate would not accept a budget law that contained this provision.
So maybe, if an agreement could not be reached, you have to figure both sides were inflexible and would not compromise.
I think the House, and particularly the Republicans in the House, are to blame. There are many Republican congressmen, many of them allied with the Tea Party, who have been obsessively resolved to undo Obamacare. Forty-two times the House has voted—unsuccessfully—to repeal Obamacare. Should we admire their persistence? That might be a fit subject for debate.
My take on it is that the Tea Partiers will sacrifice the economic welfare of the country to their own ideology—they'd say "principles," I am sure—and are absolutely determined not to compromise at all.
Someone once said that politics is the art of the practical. That does not mean the art of absolute and uncompromising ideology, which is something quite different.
But you can step back yet one step and blame the people who elected the Tea Partiers, these well-nigh insane ideologues who would not accept the defeat of their 42 attempts to repeal Obamacare but instead were willing to maneuver the economic welfare of the US to the brink of a cliff, holding the raising of the debt ceiling, which would let the government continue to operate, hostage. You know the "game" of "chicken," where two young men drive their cars at one another until one loses his nerve and veers and thus avoids the collision? How many people have been killed in that "game"? Well now the same thing has happened with the US economy.
Copyright © 2013
Most likely a great majority of Americans don't understand what the consequences of this are going to be. I am sure we will be hearing of new consequences every day that this goes on. One thing is certain, there will be a big impact on the economy. Today, the day preceding the actual shutdown, the US stock markets took a bit hit in anticipation of the government shutdown.
Let's look at why this happened. The immediate cause is that the US House of Representatives refused to pass a budget without a provision that would have delayed the implementation of "Obamacare" by one year; and the Senate would not accept a budget law that contained this provision.
So maybe, if an agreement could not be reached, you have to figure both sides were inflexible and would not compromise.
I think the House, and particularly the Republicans in the House, are to blame. There are many Republican congressmen, many of them allied with the Tea Party, who have been obsessively resolved to undo Obamacare. Forty-two times the House has voted—unsuccessfully—to repeal Obamacare. Should we admire their persistence? That might be a fit subject for debate.
My take on it is that the Tea Partiers will sacrifice the economic welfare of the country to their own ideology—they'd say "principles," I am sure—and are absolutely determined not to compromise at all.
Someone once said that politics is the art of the practical. That does not mean the art of absolute and uncompromising ideology, which is something quite different.
But you can step back yet one step and blame the people who elected the Tea Partiers, these well-nigh insane ideologues who would not accept the defeat of their 42 attempts to repeal Obamacare but instead were willing to maneuver the economic welfare of the US to the brink of a cliff, holding the raising of the debt ceiling, which would let the government continue to operate, hostage. You know the "game" of "chicken," where two young men drive their cars at one another until one loses his nerve and veers and thus avoids the collision? How many people have been killed in that "game"? Well now the same thing has happened with the US economy.
Copyright © 2013
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Humor
They say money talks. I hear mine talking to me, saying Bye-bye!
*******
TV infomercial: Are you ashamed of your ears? Are you so embarrassed by your ears that you wear earmuffs when you go out, even in the summer?
Well, after years of research, medical science now has the answer for you--an astonishing new medical breakthrough called VenEars™.
You don't have to let your ears embarrass you any more. Now you can have ears that will attract notice and admiration from the opposite sex. Just look at these before-and-after photos!
And VenEars are your own natural ears! You wear them swimming, during sports, even when you're sleeping!
Find out what VenEars can do for you to make you beautiful and self-confident as never before! And, they're affordable on most budgets. Visit your licensed, certified VenEars provider today to see how VenEars can change your life.
Copyright © 2013.
*******
TV infomercial: Are you ashamed of your ears? Are you so embarrassed by your ears that you wear earmuffs when you go out, even in the summer?
Well, after years of research, medical science now has the answer for you--an astonishing new medical breakthrough called VenEars™.
You don't have to let your ears embarrass you any more. Now you can have ears that will attract notice and admiration from the opposite sex. Just look at these before-and-after photos!
And VenEars are your own natural ears! You wear them swimming, during sports, even when you're sleeping!
Find out what VenEars can do for you to make you beautiful and self-confident as never before! And, they're affordable on most budgets. Visit your licensed, certified VenEars provider today to see how VenEars can change your life.
Copyright © 2013.
Monday, September 16, 2013
Yet Another Shooting
It's happened again, another mass shooting.
I've hoped that one of these times, it would prove to be a tipping point and there would be a loud outcry from millions of Americans saying, "Enough! This has to stop," and effectively pressuring their leaders to do something about these shootings and control guns.
Guns, to my mind, are nasty things. Some people think they need a gun in their home for "protection," but that produces accidents where a very young child picks up the gun and shoots herself or a sibling or parent. (Do a Google search for "father shoots son." It will turn up news items on sons being shot by fathers and fathers being shot by sons—often accidentally.)
But there are those individuals, and the NRA (National Rifle Association), who get paranoid at the very mention of any sort of controls on guns whatsoever. If owning a gun is not a God-given right, it's a Constitutional right. Never mind that (1) there can be a lot of arguing over the meaning and/or intention of the Second Amendment; and (2) there has been a significant history of jurisprudence holding that guns can be regulated.
It's no secret that the NRA is very powerful. The NRA very recently, in Colorado, backed the successful recall of two state senators who had voted for gun-control measures.
The NRA claims it's just a bunch of owners of guns for hunting and handguns possessed for protection or target practice. Why, then, do they oppose legal limits on assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines?
One thing that should be understood is that the NRA has not only gun-owning individuals as its members but gun manufacturers as well who, of course, want to see more guns and more ammunition bought. For them, one or two or three guns per household is not enough (and I believe that, as a national average, we already have more than one gun per household).
Other countries can scarcely believe that America is so gun-crazed and that we put up with these shootings again, and again, and again.
Copyright © 2013.
I've hoped that one of these times, it would prove to be a tipping point and there would be a loud outcry from millions of Americans saying, "Enough! This has to stop," and effectively pressuring their leaders to do something about these shootings and control guns.
Guns, to my mind, are nasty things. Some people think they need a gun in their home for "protection," but that produces accidents where a very young child picks up the gun and shoots herself or a sibling or parent. (Do a Google search for "father shoots son." It will turn up news items on sons being shot by fathers and fathers being shot by sons—often accidentally.)
But there are those individuals, and the NRA (National Rifle Association), who get paranoid at the very mention of any sort of controls on guns whatsoever. If owning a gun is not a God-given right, it's a Constitutional right. Never mind that (1) there can be a lot of arguing over the meaning and/or intention of the Second Amendment; and (2) there has been a significant history of jurisprudence holding that guns can be regulated.
It's no secret that the NRA is very powerful. The NRA very recently, in Colorado, backed the successful recall of two state senators who had voted for gun-control measures.
The NRA claims it's just a bunch of owners of guns for hunting and handguns possessed for protection or target practice. Why, then, do they oppose legal limits on assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines?
One thing that should be understood is that the NRA has not only gun-owning individuals as its members but gun manufacturers as well who, of course, want to see more guns and more ammunition bought. For them, one or two or three guns per household is not enough (and I believe that, as a national average, we already have more than one gun per household).
Other countries can scarcely believe that America is so gun-crazed and that we put up with these shootings again, and again, and again.
Copyright © 2013.
Friday, September 13, 2013
Why the Rich Are Getting Richer (and you and I are getting poorer)
The news recently has it that income inequality in the United States is at its greatest since the 1920s. That upper 1% owns a staggeringly disproportionate share of the nation's wealth: I think the number is that 1% owns 19% of the wealth.
And if you go "down" to the upper 10%, they control 47% of the nation's wealth.
1) In the past year, the individuals on the Fortune 400 (list of 400 wealthiest individuals) saw their incomes rise 19%.
2) Unemployment among those with an annual income of $20,000 is 23%, whereas unemployment among those with an income of $150,000 was 3.2%.
Update, September 18, 2013. Here is a link to a Huffington Post article that says inequality is at a record high, and that the median income has fallen for five years in a row: Median income falls 5 straight years, inequality at record high
Copyright © 2013.
And if you go "down" to the upper 10%, they control 47% of the nation's wealth.
- The declining membership and power of unions is one factor. Think Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's successful efforts to strip bargaining rights from public employees. Similar things have recently happened in a few other states.
- For another thing, it's been laws that favor wealthy individuals and large corporations and keep tax rates on the upper income brackets low. Thank your Republican senators and congressmen for that. (In the days of FDR and the New Deal, the top incremental rate of the income tax actually was 98%; today it's 38.5%. Yet the super-rich organize Tea Party rallies and shout that taxes are too high, but they are not trying to lower taxes for you and me, but for themselves.)
- And the lobbyists who do the bidding of extremely wealthy individuals and corporations and even submit to legislatures draft laws which are friendly to their bosses. A number of corporations have banded together in a consortium called ALEC for the purpose of lobbying, and ALEC has been quite effective. (Generally, corporations' legislative aims are fewer regulations as well as lower taxes.)
- And of course court decisions, such as the infamous Citizens United decision which gave essentially free reign to the super-rich to anonymously contribute to election campaigns.
- Yet another culprit: It was recently asserted—and I've heard this twice, now--that the policies of the Federal Reserve Board favor the rich by fostering low inflation over low unemployment. Obviously, if a lot of people are unemployed, that lowers their personal income level and income levels overall.
- Another way that the Federal Reserve's low interest policies are supposed to be favoring the rich: The low interest rate lets the rich borrow cheaply. They borrow, using their homes and/or their wealth as collateral, and buy commodities. (More properly, commodities futures, which are contracts to buy or sell commodities such as precious metals; oil; wheat or corn; coffee, orange juice; and the infamous "pork bellies.") It is true that it's mainly the rich who trade in commodities because the amounts of the contracts, in dollars, are very large.
1) In the past year, the individuals on the Fortune 400 (list of 400 wealthiest individuals) saw their incomes rise 19%.
2) Unemployment among those with an annual income of $20,000 is 23%, whereas unemployment among those with an income of $150,000 was 3.2%.
Update, September 18, 2013. Here is a link to a Huffington Post article that says inequality is at a record high, and that the median income has fallen for five years in a row: Median income falls 5 straight years, inequality at record high
Copyright © 2013.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
A Better Model of Homo sapiens
If you believe that God created mankind, I'd like you to consider this: I don't think He did a very good job. (This might appear blasphemous to some people, but the spirit in which this is intended is more one of whimsy. Or, it's what the physical scientists would call a "thought experiment.")
Here are some ways in which I think a new, improved model could be better than the existing model; or--pretty much the same thing, I guess--how I would design Man if I were doing it.
First, how about a human being who is incapable of lying? We would not have to worry about being cheated, conned, etc. Think how that might revolutionize politics! We would not vote for candidates only to find out, once they were in office, that they were not going to keep their promises to us.
Or, a model of human who was less fond of killing his own kind.
How about a human being who was incapable of believing incorrect things? We would not have superstition (like albinos in Africa being killed because their bones are thought to have magical or medicinal value, or rhinoceroses being killed to extinction because the Chinese believe their horns have aphrodisiac properties).
Of course there's a difficulty here: If human beings were fashioned such that they only believed that which is true, we might have the problem, in designing our new, improved model of human, that there might just be some uncertainty as to what is true. Even in Science, that which is true today can be shown to be false tomorrow.
So, this is just an exercise in fanciful thinking. But you have to admit, the prospect of a race of beings who could not lie is intriguing. (Any writer of science fiction: Feel free to use this idea in a story of yours.)
On a more serious note, for anyone who would like to indulge in further contemplation of the Nature of Man, I recommend the (long) poem by the 18th-century English poet Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man.
Here are some ways in which I think a new, improved model could be better than the existing model; or--pretty much the same thing, I guess--how I would design Man if I were doing it.
First, how about a human being who is incapable of lying? We would not have to worry about being cheated, conned, etc. Think how that might revolutionize politics! We would not vote for candidates only to find out, once they were in office, that they were not going to keep their promises to us.
Or, a model of human who was less fond of killing his own kind.
How about a human being who was incapable of believing incorrect things? We would not have superstition (like albinos in Africa being killed because their bones are thought to have magical or medicinal value, or rhinoceroses being killed to extinction because the Chinese believe their horns have aphrodisiac properties).
Of course there's a difficulty here: If human beings were fashioned such that they only believed that which is true, we might have the problem, in designing our new, improved model of human, that there might just be some uncertainty as to what is true. Even in Science, that which is true today can be shown to be false tomorrow.
So, this is just an exercise in fanciful thinking. But you have to admit, the prospect of a race of beings who could not lie is intriguing. (Any writer of science fiction: Feel free to use this idea in a story of yours.)
On a more serious note, for anyone who would like to indulge in further contemplation of the Nature of Man, I recommend the (long) poem by the 18th-century English poet Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Junior Wizard, or T*rr*rist in Training?
When I was a boy I was quite interested in chemistry. It may have started when my older sister gave me a very nice chemistry set.
But after a while I wasn't content with just the experiments described in the booklet that came with the chemistry set, nor with making a few simple things.
The father of my best friend in grade school owned a pharmaceutical supply business. I was allowed to go to their retail counter and buy anything I wanted: any chemicals, any apparatus. Maybe I had a special privilege because they knew me. I might even have been given a discount.
I bought lot of nice professional apparatus—beakers, flasks, stands for holding all that stuff. And I bought the ingredients for making gunpowder.
My gunpowder never worked, probably fortunately. I could have hurt myself. Also, I think that if it had worked, and if I had used all of the quantities of the ingredients I had obtained—which I never came close to doing—I could probably have blown up two or three houses.
Clearly that was a far more innocent time—when I could walk into that store and come out with the ingredients for gunpowder, in quantities of maybe a pound or two each—and not raise any eyebrows. Nowadays it would be, "Just stay there for a minute, please" while the guy goes in the back and phones the Department of Homeland Security. And then I'm taken in for questioning.
But after a while I wasn't content with just the experiments described in the booklet that came with the chemistry set, nor with making a few simple things.
The father of my best friend in grade school owned a pharmaceutical supply business. I was allowed to go to their retail counter and buy anything I wanted: any chemicals, any apparatus. Maybe I had a special privilege because they knew me. I might even have been given a discount.
I bought lot of nice professional apparatus—beakers, flasks, stands for holding all that stuff. And I bought the ingredients for making gunpowder.
My gunpowder never worked, probably fortunately. I could have hurt myself. Also, I think that if it had worked, and if I had used all of the quantities of the ingredients I had obtained—which I never came close to doing—I could probably have blown up two or three houses.
Clearly that was a far more innocent time—when I could walk into that store and come out with the ingredients for gunpowder, in quantities of maybe a pound or two each—and not raise any eyebrows. Nowadays it would be, "Just stay there for a minute, please" while the guy goes in the back and phones the Department of Homeland Security. And then I'm taken in for questioning.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
New Math?
There have been some funny things going on regarding numbers, mainly in advertising, but I saw a similar thing in a PBS documentary TV program.
Evidently it's not expected, anymore, that people can understand fractions. Thus you don't or must not say, for example, "This product will cost you one-fourth as much to use." Instead it's expressed as "four times cheaper." To me that does not make any sense and I can only surmise that it means "one-fourth as expensive."
Some actual examples I've seen: "10x softer" (dentures are 10 times softer than teeth). I'm not sure this makes any sense. What are you counting down from? There is no "softness" scale, but there is such a thing as a hardness scale. So, to make good sense, it should be "one-tenth as hard."
Or (this one from PBS), hydrogen is "13 times lighter." Possibly that makes sense but, again, I feel it's expressed backwards and should be "one-thirteenth as heavy."
This one takes the cake for being meaningless: A certain product being pitched on TV "reduces body fat by over 200%." Well, you can reduce something by a certain percentage, but only up to a little over 99%. You get to 100% and it's all gone. So how can anything be reduced by 200%?
This should fall under the headings of how ridiculous and deceptive advertising is, and how things are dumbed down for the average boob-in-the-street. Another instance of the dumbing down of (or to) Americans?
Copyright © 2013.
Evidently it's not expected, anymore, that people can understand fractions. Thus you don't or must not say, for example, "This product will cost you one-fourth as much to use." Instead it's expressed as "four times cheaper." To me that does not make any sense and I can only surmise that it means "one-fourth as expensive."
Some actual examples I've seen: "10x softer" (dentures are 10 times softer than teeth). I'm not sure this makes any sense. What are you counting down from? There is no "softness" scale, but there is such a thing as a hardness scale. So, to make good sense, it should be "one-tenth as hard."
Or (this one from PBS), hydrogen is "13 times lighter." Possibly that makes sense but, again, I feel it's expressed backwards and should be "one-thirteenth as heavy."
This one takes the cake for being meaningless: A certain product being pitched on TV "reduces body fat by over 200%." Well, you can reduce something by a certain percentage, but only up to a little over 99%. You get to 100% and it's all gone. So how can anything be reduced by 200%?
This should fall under the headings of how ridiculous and deceptive advertising is, and how things are dumbed down for the average boob-in-the-street. Another instance of the dumbing down of (or to) Americans?
Copyright © 2013.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Truth and Lies on the Internet
The Internet is a wonderful thing, as a source of information, there's no doubt. I personally rely on it for finding out a lot of things via Wikipedia and Google searches: how to do some homeowner-ly task, consumer reviews of products, health information, and much more. And this from someone who has a lifetime habit of turning to books and libraries to find things out.
Unfortunately, the Internet is a two-edged sword. It can also be used to spread incorrect "information."
About a week ago I was reading an article, "Ten Brands that Are Likely to Disappear in 2014," on the financial web site 24/7 Wall Street. This article said that Volvo cars are likely to disappear from the US market next year. I forwarded this information to two friends of mine who own Volvos.
One of those friends got somewhat alarmed and wondered if she should sell her car. The other one took a more critical view of the story and did some research on her own, finding a statement from Volvo's US arm that they have no intention of leaving the US market.
That got me thinking about the fact that you can easily locate contradictory information on the 'Net, and then I had to wonder about what percentage of Internet content might be reliable and what percentage not.
Shortly after that incident I received an email, one of those viral emails that has been forwarded many times before reaching me. The immediate source of this one was an old friend from high school with whom I re-established contact a few years ago. (I could tell a bit about this person that might be interesting but I don't want to get too far off my subject. Suffice it to say here that he is politically conservative whereas he knows, or should know, that I am not.)
This email listed some of the problems that the State of Illinois and the city of Chicago have. The problems are undeniable but, according to this email, these problems are attributable to Democrats because—as the email asserted numerous times—there are no Republicans in Illinois. This is patently false. It mentioned former Illinois Governor George Ryan as being in prison and implied that this is among the many examples of the things that are wrong with Illinois. This is wrong because Ryan was recently released from prison. More importantly, the email conveniently ignored the fact that Ryan is a Republican.
The City of Chicago has a tradition of voting Democratic; this long history might deserve comment, but again I don't want to go too far afield. However, the suburban counties that surround Chicago typically are Republican and elect Republicans on both the state and federal levels.
If anyone cares to look at the facts rather than making unfounded assertions, the makeup of the Illinois legislature (General Assembly) is thusly: Senate, 40 Democrats and 19 Republicans. House, 70 Democrats and 47 Republicans. Thus, the Democrats do have a majority in both houses of the Illinois state legislature; but I'd say that's a far cry from there being NO Republicans. The facts for the US Congressmen (Representatives) from Illinois are that there are 12 Democrats and 6 Republicans. In the US Senate, there is one Democratic Senator from Illinois and one Republican.
So—back to the email from my high-school classmate. The person who originated that email had very little regard for facts or truth. And I have found in the past that other emails—also forwarded to me by the same classmate—were also full of exaggerations, half-truths, and out-and-out falsehoods.* At the risk of making a rather sweeping generalization, I'm going to say that those on the Right very often play fast-and-loose with the truth. (I base that assertion partly on the fact that, on matters regarding homosexuality, they have been known to shamelessly promulgate lies.)
I think that those who forward these emails are just as guilty as those who first write them. Unfortunately, every person who receives such an email and believes it and forwards it is doing the world quite a disservice by adding to the general store of incorrect information out there.
However, on a brighter note, if the Internet is the problem, it can also provide the cure. I'd like to acquaint my readers with two 'Net sites that are dedicated to countering incorrect information that circulates on the 'Net—to setting the facts straight. They are FactCheck.org and Snopes.com.
___________
*I can recall three previous emails that this person forwarded to me. Two of them were anti-Obama and, when I did some checking, they were factually incorrect. The third was anti-Muslim.
I used to berate my students for what I felt was their mindless, mechanical, uncritical note-taking. I said, "My words go into your ear, through your neck and shoulder, down your arm and onto your paper, with no thought involved. I could say 'Black is white' and you would write down 'Black is white.'"
The point of this posting was that we tend not to be critical of what we hear and read. How many people would take the trouble to check on the content of an email they'd received, if they were planning to forward it or even if they were not?
Note added August 18, 2013. Also see my Friday, September 21, 2012 posting, "Lies from the Right, in Your Email Inbox."
Copyright © 2013.
Unfortunately, the Internet is a two-edged sword. It can also be used to spread incorrect "information."
About a week ago I was reading an article, "Ten Brands that Are Likely to Disappear in 2014," on the financial web site 24/7 Wall Street. This article said that Volvo cars are likely to disappear from the US market next year. I forwarded this information to two friends of mine who own Volvos.
One of those friends got somewhat alarmed and wondered if she should sell her car. The other one took a more critical view of the story and did some research on her own, finding a statement from Volvo's US arm that they have no intention of leaving the US market.
That got me thinking about the fact that you can easily locate contradictory information on the 'Net, and then I had to wonder about what percentage of Internet content might be reliable and what percentage not.
Shortly after that incident I received an email, one of those viral emails that has been forwarded many times before reaching me. The immediate source of this one was an old friend from high school with whom I re-established contact a few years ago. (I could tell a bit about this person that might be interesting but I don't want to get too far off my subject. Suffice it to say here that he is politically conservative whereas he knows, or should know, that I am not.)
This email listed some of the problems that the State of Illinois and the city of Chicago have. The problems are undeniable but, according to this email, these problems are attributable to Democrats because—as the email asserted numerous times—there are no Republicans in Illinois. This is patently false. It mentioned former Illinois Governor George Ryan as being in prison and implied that this is among the many examples of the things that are wrong with Illinois. This is wrong because Ryan was recently released from prison. More importantly, the email conveniently ignored the fact that Ryan is a Republican.
The City of Chicago has a tradition of voting Democratic; this long history might deserve comment, but again I don't want to go too far afield. However, the suburban counties that surround Chicago typically are Republican and elect Republicans on both the state and federal levels.
If anyone cares to look at the facts rather than making unfounded assertions, the makeup of the Illinois legislature (General Assembly) is thusly: Senate, 40 Democrats and 19 Republicans. House, 70 Democrats and 47 Republicans. Thus, the Democrats do have a majority in both houses of the Illinois state legislature; but I'd say that's a far cry from there being NO Republicans. The facts for the US Congressmen (Representatives) from Illinois are that there are 12 Democrats and 6 Republicans. In the US Senate, there is one Democratic Senator from Illinois and one Republican.
So—back to the email from my high-school classmate. The person who originated that email had very little regard for facts or truth. And I have found in the past that other emails—also forwarded to me by the same classmate—were also full of exaggerations, half-truths, and out-and-out falsehoods.* At the risk of making a rather sweeping generalization, I'm going to say that those on the Right very often play fast-and-loose with the truth. (I base that assertion partly on the fact that, on matters regarding homosexuality, they have been known to shamelessly promulgate lies.)
I think that those who forward these emails are just as guilty as those who first write them. Unfortunately, every person who receives such an email and believes it and forwards it is doing the world quite a disservice by adding to the general store of incorrect information out there.
However, on a brighter note, if the Internet is the problem, it can also provide the cure. I'd like to acquaint my readers with two 'Net sites that are dedicated to countering incorrect information that circulates on the 'Net—to setting the facts straight. They are FactCheck.org and Snopes.com.
___________
*I can recall three previous emails that this person forwarded to me. Two of them were anti-Obama and, when I did some checking, they were factually incorrect. The third was anti-Muslim.
I used to berate my students for what I felt was their mindless, mechanical, uncritical note-taking. I said, "My words go into your ear, through your neck and shoulder, down your arm and onto your paper, with no thought involved. I could say 'Black is white' and you would write down 'Black is white.'"
The point of this posting was that we tend not to be critical of what we hear and read. How many people would take the trouble to check on the content of an email they'd received, if they were planning to forward it or even if they were not?
Note added August 18, 2013. Also see my Friday, September 21, 2012 posting, "Lies from the Right, in Your Email Inbox."
Copyright © 2013.
Friday, July 26, 2013
The Spanish Train Derailment
The world news recently has been full of reports on the horrendous train wreck in Spain that, at latest count, killed 80 people. Preliminary information suggests that the cause was that the train driver was going too fast, entering a curve on the line at more than twice the speed limit for that stretch.
It has made me remember the accident with the ocean liner the Costa Concordia, about a year ago where again human error was at fault: the ship was deliberately sailing too close to an island and struck submerged rocks, causing a very long gash in the ship's hull—a bit like the famous 1912 incident in which the Titanic hit an iceberg.
Every day we put ourselves at the mercy of train drivers, ship's captains, airline pilots. Subway drivers, bus drivers, taxi drivers. And we trust these people to have proper care for our lives and to perform their jobs safely and responsibly.
I do not ride in a taxi for years at a time but the last time I did, I upbraided the driver for using his cell phone while he was driving. But unfortunately, in many cases—the train, the plane, even the bus—we probably are not aware of the conduct of the person who is at the controls. We routinely ride these conveyances without giving any thought to whether the person who is in charge is mindful of the lives in his or her hands.
If we stop to think about it, we'd like to believe that the person at the helm is sober, reasonable, sensible, responsible. And they are, in the majority of cases. But clearly, once in a while, they are not as we might wish. It's difficult to understand why the Spanish train driver or the captain of the Costa Concordia would improperly operate the machine he was controlling.
So we are left, as in so many cases, with a mystery of human behavior. Of course the person who begins to dwell on all the perils of life will lock himself in his house and never venture out. We would not consider that normal behavior. So 99.99 percent of us must go through life with trust and optimism, or in blissful ignorance, however you want to view it.
And life requires that. I had a conversation with my sister recently. She is 78 years old, and I was talking about our respective "conditions." I mentioned that I perhaps have been fortunate, not having had any of the "big" illnesses or conditions such as cancer, heart attack, or stroke. So, I concluded, I expect to live to a pretty old age. But then we got into how you never know what peril might strike. I adduced the case, a few years ago, where a person was walking down the street in Chicago, as ignorant and oblivious as can be, when a giant icicle happened to fall from the top of a tall building—and the poor and innocent pedestrian was killed by it.
So what is the moral? We are daily at the mercy of perils that are often unseen. Maybe we are daily shielded by our guardian angel, if you want to believe that. But we go sailing forth more blindly than the captain of any ship.
Copyright © 2013
It has made me remember the accident with the ocean liner the Costa Concordia, about a year ago where again human error was at fault: the ship was deliberately sailing too close to an island and struck submerged rocks, causing a very long gash in the ship's hull—a bit like the famous 1912 incident in which the Titanic hit an iceberg.
Every day we put ourselves at the mercy of train drivers, ship's captains, airline pilots. Subway drivers, bus drivers, taxi drivers. And we trust these people to have proper care for our lives and to perform their jobs safely and responsibly.
I do not ride in a taxi for years at a time but the last time I did, I upbraided the driver for using his cell phone while he was driving. But unfortunately, in many cases—the train, the plane, even the bus—we probably are not aware of the conduct of the person who is at the controls. We routinely ride these conveyances without giving any thought to whether the person who is in charge is mindful of the lives in his or her hands.
If we stop to think about it, we'd like to believe that the person at the helm is sober, reasonable, sensible, responsible. And they are, in the majority of cases. But clearly, once in a while, they are not as we might wish. It's difficult to understand why the Spanish train driver or the captain of the Costa Concordia would improperly operate the machine he was controlling.
So we are left, as in so many cases, with a mystery of human behavior. Of course the person who begins to dwell on all the perils of life will lock himself in his house and never venture out. We would not consider that normal behavior. So 99.99 percent of us must go through life with trust and optimism, or in blissful ignorance, however you want to view it.
And life requires that. I had a conversation with my sister recently. She is 78 years old, and I was talking about our respective "conditions." I mentioned that I perhaps have been fortunate, not having had any of the "big" illnesses or conditions such as cancer, heart attack, or stroke. So, I concluded, I expect to live to a pretty old age. But then we got into how you never know what peril might strike. I adduced the case, a few years ago, where a person was walking down the street in Chicago, as ignorant and oblivious as can be, when a giant icicle happened to fall from the top of a tall building—and the poor and innocent pedestrian was killed by it.
So what is the moral? We are daily at the mercy of perils that are often unseen. Maybe we are daily shielded by our guardian angel, if you want to believe that. But we go sailing forth more blindly than the captain of any ship.
Copyright © 2013
Monday, July 22, 2013
Knowing What God Wants
Some years ago I introduced two of my friends to one another. I invited them both to my condo, probably mainly because they are both Catholic.
I was in the kitchen doing my host-ly thing but I could overhear the conversation from the living room. I came rushing out of the kitchen when I heard one of them say, "I always wear coat and tie to Mass because I think it shows respect for God." I said, "How do you know what God does or doesn't like? I think you're projecting your middle-class values onto God. Maybe he could not care less what you wear to church."
Then we have the pastor and members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas—largely all members of the family of Rev. Fred Phelps. These are the people who picket the funerals of military personnel with their signs that say "God Hates Fags."
And the Crusades marched (and slew tens of thousands, both Muslims when they got to the Middle East and Jews they encountered along the way) under the banner Dieu le veut, 'God wills it'.
My anger with my Catholic friend and with these other strongly stated positions is that I've always felt that it's arrogant to assert that you know what God wants or likes—or doesn't like.
We have preachers who continually exhort their flock by telling them that God wants them to do this or that—sometimes to vote for a certain candidate (never mind that that is not allowed as long as they want to keep their status as tax-exempt with the IRS).
Of course there are those who say "I know what God likes and wants because I read it in my Bible, and the Bible is God's word." Well, even if you believe that the Bible was in some way authored or dictated by God, there are the questions—blithely ignored by fundamentalists—of whether our modern texts are correct in all particulars. First, there were many biblical books that did not get included in the modern Bible; the decisions as to what would or would not be included in the Canon were made by men who might just be fallible.
Then there are questions about the accuracy of the texts themselves. There are contradictions, evident omissions, and errors in the texts we have today. In any text that has been copied by hand through the ages, errors will creep in. Not to mention mistranslations of the Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew. There are many cases where modern scholarship has suggested a better translation, yet these corrections have not made it into most versions of the Bible.
So, if you take these things into account, knowing "what God wants," or having a good authority as to what God wants or likes—well, I think that if you look at the facts, no one should be so certain that he knows.
Copyright © 2013.
I was in the kitchen doing my host-ly thing but I could overhear the conversation from the living room. I came rushing out of the kitchen when I heard one of them say, "I always wear coat and tie to Mass because I think it shows respect for God." I said, "How do you know what God does or doesn't like? I think you're projecting your middle-class values onto God. Maybe he could not care less what you wear to church."
Then we have the pastor and members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas—largely all members of the family of Rev. Fred Phelps. These are the people who picket the funerals of military personnel with their signs that say "God Hates Fags."
And the Crusades marched (and slew tens of thousands, both Muslims when they got to the Middle East and Jews they encountered along the way) under the banner Dieu le veut, 'God wills it'.
My anger with my Catholic friend and with these other strongly stated positions is that I've always felt that it's arrogant to assert that you know what God wants or likes—or doesn't like.
We have preachers who continually exhort their flock by telling them that God wants them to do this or that—sometimes to vote for a certain candidate (never mind that that is not allowed as long as they want to keep their status as tax-exempt with the IRS).
Of course there are those who say "I know what God likes and wants because I read it in my Bible, and the Bible is God's word." Well, even if you believe that the Bible was in some way authored or dictated by God, there are the questions—blithely ignored by fundamentalists—of whether our modern texts are correct in all particulars. First, there were many biblical books that did not get included in the modern Bible; the decisions as to what would or would not be included in the Canon were made by men who might just be fallible.
Then there are questions about the accuracy of the texts themselves. There are contradictions, evident omissions, and errors in the texts we have today. In any text that has been copied by hand through the ages, errors will creep in. Not to mention mistranslations of the Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew. There are many cases where modern scholarship has suggested a better translation, yet these corrections have not made it into most versions of the Bible.
So, if you take these things into account, knowing "what God wants," or having a good authority as to what God wants or likes—well, I think that if you look at the facts, no one should be so certain that he knows.
Copyright © 2013.
Thursday, July 11, 2013
We Love to Kill Things
We love to kill things.
We put herbicides and pesticides on our lawns. Yeah, kill those weeds! Kill those nasty grubs! (There is a TV commercial for a weed-killer chemical that shows a man with his spray wand, photographed from a low angle—making the man look like a warrior or a superhero.) Never mind that we might be killing beneficial insects, worms, butterflies, and even birds.
Then there is "recreational hunting." The very term is shocking to me. One hundred years ago (and probably still today to a lesser degree) the "Great White Hunter" would go on safaris in Africa to shoot lions, tigers, elephants—with the result that today there are very few tigers left in the world and elephants are much reduced in population. And this is true of many other animals. (It must be admitted that habitat destruction, usually as a result of growing human populations, is also a big factor in the decline of a lot of species of wildlife.) Many animals were hunted to extinction. Bison, which had roamed the Plains in huge herds and numbered in the millions, were reduced to only a few individual animals. The passenger pigeon also numbered enormous flocks—and now they are totally extinct.
Scientists--both self-styled and apparently real scientists--were not immune to the lure of killing. They would kill birds to study them. They used a gun called a "fowling piece." That's how all the dead birds in museum collections came to be there.
There were some online comments about people who will deliberately run over turtles in the road. And this happens also with squirrels, opossums, and lots of other animals, of course. A lot of "roadkill" does not result from unavoidable accidents but, sadly, many a driver is apparently playing Great White Hunter while driving his car.
Some people just don't like wildlife. I have a friend like that. He destroyed a bird's nest on my property before I could stop him, and not long ago when we saw a garter snake, he moved toward it with some hostile intent before I did, this time, stop him.
So there is this attitude that hates or fears Nature and the Wild. In the Nineteenth Century and through the middle of the Twentieth and still today there has been this idea of Man triumphing over Nature, of "taming" it. So we build dams, dig canals, bulldoze mountains--do a lot to rearrange the landscape.
Fortunately there is a growing recognition that the welfare of Man—Homo sapiens—is very closely tied up with that of the rest of the natural creation. Thus we have the environmental and conservation movements.
Some individuals show even a Hindu-like respect for life. When my boyfriend is here, if there's an insect in the house, he tries to capture it (and succeeds!) and then releases it outside.
This philosophy can be taken to what many people would consider extremes. I once knew a guy who would not kill cockroaches in his apartment. The result was that the wall in his kitchen was pretty literally wallpapered with cockroaches. On the one hand I admire his reverence for life, but many people would say that there are sanitation considerations involved here. I have no problem with capturing bugs to release them outside, as my friend does; although, I'll admit, when he's not here I'll swat that fly or squash that bug.
Update July 15, 2013.
Given the time of year that it is, I inevitably have had some flies in my house. I got out the ol' fly swatter and dispatched a couple of them. Then I was watching one and started to feel sorry for it and see its intelligence. They'll crawl along a window, thinking--reasonably enough--that the daylight or what looks like the outdoors that they can see on the other side of the glass is the key to finding their way outside. Well, I tried A.'s method of catching them and, after one or two tries, I did catch it and released it outside. It felt good to have preserved its life. I hope Someone is alloting me some good karma for that.
Update July 18, 2013
I am somewhat surprised at myself for my failure to mention Homo sapiens' propensity for killing members of his own species. Not only is modern man arguably quite warlike, but modern archeological research has been producing evidence that Man has always been warlike. The very word war evidently is not abhorrent to the great majority of Americans; if it were, our government would not so blithely deliver to us a War on Poverty, War on Drugs, etc. Of course these "wars" (at least in principle) do not kill anyone, but I simply ask you to think about the choice of words.
Copyright © 2013
We put herbicides and pesticides on our lawns. Yeah, kill those weeds! Kill those nasty grubs! (There is a TV commercial for a weed-killer chemical that shows a man with his spray wand, photographed from a low angle—making the man look like a warrior or a superhero.) Never mind that we might be killing beneficial insects, worms, butterflies, and even birds.
Then there is "recreational hunting." The very term is shocking to me. One hundred years ago (and probably still today to a lesser degree) the "Great White Hunter" would go on safaris in Africa to shoot lions, tigers, elephants—with the result that today there are very few tigers left in the world and elephants are much reduced in population. And this is true of many other animals. (It must be admitted that habitat destruction, usually as a result of growing human populations, is also a big factor in the decline of a lot of species of wildlife.) Many animals were hunted to extinction. Bison, which had roamed the Plains in huge herds and numbered in the millions, were reduced to only a few individual animals. The passenger pigeon also numbered enormous flocks—and now they are totally extinct.
Scientists--both self-styled and apparently real scientists--were not immune to the lure of killing. They would kill birds to study them. They used a gun called a "fowling piece." That's how all the dead birds in museum collections came to be there.
There were some online comments about people who will deliberately run over turtles in the road. And this happens also with squirrels, opossums, and lots of other animals, of course. A lot of "roadkill" does not result from unavoidable accidents but, sadly, many a driver is apparently playing Great White Hunter while driving his car.
Some people just don't like wildlife. I have a friend like that. He destroyed a bird's nest on my property before I could stop him, and not long ago when we saw a garter snake, he moved toward it with some hostile intent before I did, this time, stop him.
So there is this attitude that hates or fears Nature and the Wild. In the Nineteenth Century and through the middle of the Twentieth and still today there has been this idea of Man triumphing over Nature, of "taming" it. So we build dams, dig canals, bulldoze mountains--do a lot to rearrange the landscape.
Fortunately there is a growing recognition that the welfare of Man—Homo sapiens—is very closely tied up with that of the rest of the natural creation. Thus we have the environmental and conservation movements.
Some individuals show even a Hindu-like respect for life. When my boyfriend is here, if there's an insect in the house, he tries to capture it (and succeeds!) and then releases it outside.
This philosophy can be taken to what many people would consider extremes. I once knew a guy who would not kill cockroaches in his apartment. The result was that the wall in his kitchen was pretty literally wallpapered with cockroaches. On the one hand I admire his reverence for life, but many people would say that there are sanitation considerations involved here. I have no problem with capturing bugs to release them outside, as my friend does; although, I'll admit, when he's not here I'll swat that fly or squash that bug.
Update July 15, 2013.
Given the time of year that it is, I inevitably have had some flies in my house. I got out the ol' fly swatter and dispatched a couple of them. Then I was watching one and started to feel sorry for it and see its intelligence. They'll crawl along a window, thinking--reasonably enough--that the daylight or what looks like the outdoors that they can see on the other side of the glass is the key to finding their way outside. Well, I tried A.'s method of catching them and, after one or two tries, I did catch it and released it outside. It felt good to have preserved its life. I hope Someone is alloting me some good karma for that.
Update July 18, 2013
I am somewhat surprised at myself for my failure to mention Homo sapiens' propensity for killing members of his own species. Not only is modern man arguably quite warlike, but modern archeological research has been producing evidence that Man has always been warlike. The very word war evidently is not abhorrent to the great majority of Americans; if it were, our government would not so blithely deliver to us a War on Poverty, War on Drugs, etc. Of course these "wars" (at least in principle) do not kill anyone, but I simply ask you to think about the choice of words.
Copyright © 2013
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Suburbanites and SUVs
This is perhaps two essentially separate subjects, but the connection is "the suburbs."
I saw a statistic, several years ago, that showed that half of all Americans live in suburban communities. Many of these children grow up unfamiliar with the downtowns of their cities: frequently, maybe not atypically, they get to see the city only on rare school field trips. I think that's unfortunate because the city, especially the city's downtown, tends to be where the cultural resources--museums, orchestras, etc.--are. You're likely to have more exposure to these things if it doesn't take an expedition to get to them.
They grow up with the perception that the city is dangerous and crime-ridden. Because of their limited, suburban childhoods and this (hopefully erroneous) stereotype, when they grow up they replicate the pattern and often would not even consider living "downtown" but only in suburbs. So the suburban adults may go downtown for their jobs, but hurry to get home via their commuter trains once the work day is over. Outside of working hours they are never to be found downtown. On the weekends, here in Chicago, the people that you see downtown are probably tourists.
If the culture is downtown, the suburbs may tend to have an insular mentality. I live in a suburb (I'm tempted to say "unfortunately") and at one point was attending a weekly group that views and then discusses a film each week. I have tried to circulate among this group the calendars of some theaters and other film venues that are downtown or on the North side; but like good suburbanites, they pretty much will not seriously consider traveling out of their area, or perhaps it's out of their comfort zone.
The suburban kids' families probably own an SUV. So as children they rode around in an SUV (or, if not, then probably a minivan). They might even have taken their driving lessons in a small SUV. So, in a manner analogous to the address of their residence in their early and formative years, their idea of what is normal and what they should emulate when it comes to their own vehicle purchases once they're adults is such that they may not consider anything other than an SUV.
I think that's unfortunate, and I hate to see an SUV culture perpetuated from generation to generation. Readers of this blog may know that I hate SUVs and can give numerous reasons for that, but one that I feel strongest about has to do with ecological concerns. Americans with their large SUVs are harming the environment. It's not simply a matter of depleting the store of fossil fuels. More fuel consumed means more greenhouse gases out the tailpipe, so that large SUVs make a larger contribution to global warming.
We are beginning to hear from safety experts that driving while talking on a cell phone is dangerous, yet one sees that an awful lot. It makes me nervous when, in my rear-view mirror, I can see the driver behind me talking on a phone. It makes me fear getting rear-ended if driving is not the primary focus of that person's attention.
Many large SUVs weigh three tons (6000 lb, 2700 kg). I don't think that many people driving them consider that they have a deadly weapon in their hands—or hand! Hand, singular, because they have one hand on the wheel while their other hand is holding a phone. When you're taught to drive you're taught to use two hands on the wheel, and that's because it takes two hands to properly control a car or truck.
You know what I would do, if I could? I see so many drivers making a left turn, steering with one hand while the other hand is otherwise occupied. I'd take away their power steering. If it were appropriately difficult to turn a big vehicle like that—that is, if the effort of steering had some relationship to the vehicle's size—then they'd need two hands to drive. And then, guess what? No more holding that phone.
Update, July 11, 2013
I don't want to be perceived as anti-suburbs. (There are numerous reasons why people might want to live in a suburb, many of which are certainly valid: less expensive housing, avoiding noise and congestion, better schools. I personally moved where I am to be closer to a job I was starting at the time; and I remain here probably for the lower cost of housing. I also appreciate being able to deal with smaller, less bureaucratic and perhaps more responsive government agencies.) I meant to simply lament the fact that suburbanites all too often are cut off from the advantages of the cities that they live near.
Copyright © 2013
I saw a statistic, several years ago, that showed that half of all Americans live in suburban communities. Many of these children grow up unfamiliar with the downtowns of their cities: frequently, maybe not atypically, they get to see the city only on rare school field trips. I think that's unfortunate because the city, especially the city's downtown, tends to be where the cultural resources--museums, orchestras, etc.--are. You're likely to have more exposure to these things if it doesn't take an expedition to get to them.
They grow up with the perception that the city is dangerous and crime-ridden. Because of their limited, suburban childhoods and this (hopefully erroneous) stereotype, when they grow up they replicate the pattern and often would not even consider living "downtown" but only in suburbs. So the suburban adults may go downtown for their jobs, but hurry to get home via their commuter trains once the work day is over. Outside of working hours they are never to be found downtown. On the weekends, here in Chicago, the people that you see downtown are probably tourists.
If the culture is downtown, the suburbs may tend to have an insular mentality. I live in a suburb (I'm tempted to say "unfortunately") and at one point was attending a weekly group that views and then discusses a film each week. I have tried to circulate among this group the calendars of some theaters and other film venues that are downtown or on the North side; but like good suburbanites, they pretty much will not seriously consider traveling out of their area, or perhaps it's out of their comfort zone.
The suburban kids' families probably own an SUV. So as children they rode around in an SUV (or, if not, then probably a minivan). They might even have taken their driving lessons in a small SUV. So, in a manner analogous to the address of their residence in their early and formative years, their idea of what is normal and what they should emulate when it comes to their own vehicle purchases once they're adults is such that they may not consider anything other than an SUV.
I think that's unfortunate, and I hate to see an SUV culture perpetuated from generation to generation. Readers of this blog may know that I hate SUVs and can give numerous reasons for that, but one that I feel strongest about has to do with ecological concerns. Americans with their large SUVs are harming the environment. It's not simply a matter of depleting the store of fossil fuels. More fuel consumed means more greenhouse gases out the tailpipe, so that large SUVs make a larger contribution to global warming.
We are beginning to hear from safety experts that driving while talking on a cell phone is dangerous, yet one sees that an awful lot. It makes me nervous when, in my rear-view mirror, I can see the driver behind me talking on a phone. It makes me fear getting rear-ended if driving is not the primary focus of that person's attention.
Many large SUVs weigh three tons (6000 lb, 2700 kg). I don't think that many people driving them consider that they have a deadly weapon in their hands—or hand! Hand, singular, because they have one hand on the wheel while their other hand is holding a phone. When you're taught to drive you're taught to use two hands on the wheel, and that's because it takes two hands to properly control a car or truck.
You know what I would do, if I could? I see so many drivers making a left turn, steering with one hand while the other hand is otherwise occupied. I'd take away their power steering. If it were appropriately difficult to turn a big vehicle like that—that is, if the effort of steering had some relationship to the vehicle's size—then they'd need two hands to drive. And then, guess what? No more holding that phone.
Update, July 11, 2013
I don't want to be perceived as anti-suburbs. (There are numerous reasons why people might want to live in a suburb, many of which are certainly valid: less expensive housing, avoiding noise and congestion, better schools. I personally moved where I am to be closer to a job I was starting at the time; and I remain here probably for the lower cost of housing. I also appreciate being able to deal with smaller, less bureaucratic and perhaps more responsive government agencies.) I meant to simply lament the fact that suburbanites all too often are cut off from the advantages of the cities that they live near.
Copyright © 2013
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Tribalism
I recently came across the word tribalism. That was not the first time I'd ever seen the word; but coming across it this time struck me and made me think.
I checked out the entry for tribalism on Wikipedia. The article is interesting but I don't think it treats the word in the sense in which I'd understand it.
The concept of tribalism explains and connects at least two things I have blogged about. First, the idea of "we vs. they," which has loomed large in my mind for a long time as I think it explains a lot of human behavior, especially all manner of conflict and less-than-noble human behavior.
But tribalism—and this I owe to the Wikipedia article—also sheds a lot of light on and even explains another phenomenon I have blogged about: that of the fan. By this I mean the way in which people identify with sports teams and even sometimes attack fans of an opposing team.
Some examples of how people like to proclaim their tribal identity: Where I live it's pretty common for people to proclaim an ethic identity (e.g., Irish flag decals on their cars, Polish flags in front of their houses on Polish Constitution Day*, Puerto Rican flags on their cars on Puerto Rico Day; sports team banners on their cars or Chicago Cubs flags in front of their homes or even, in the case of my next-door neighbors, a Chicago White Sox banner in the window of their home).
Having given examples and thus a deictic definition, how should we understand more about the nature of tribalism? It has to do with identity and group membership. The tribe is a unit or level of organization of humans. At the lowest level there is the family (whether you want to understand it in the modern sense, which is usually that of the "nuclear" family, or in a more traditional sense of the "extended family," which might include more than one generation, cousins, uncles and aunts, etc.).
The tribe might be the next level up. It evidently is not truly well defined. But it doesn't have to be. Suffice it that the tribe is whatever one identifies with, between the family and the nation. (Nations or countries can be artificial, to a greater or lesser degree. Some examples: In Africa, countries were carved out rather arbitrarily by the colonial powers and included diverse tribes within the borders of one country, often tribes which were hostile to one another, with the result that we saw, in Rwanda, genocidal conflict between Tutsi and Hutu. Or Yugoslavia, a country that had been held together by the force of the dictator Tito, and, once he was gone, fell apart. And what could be a more artificial country than America, which--unlike any other country--is constituted of so many different constituencies--so many different tribes--thrown together?)
The tribe can be a religious sect, as in Iraq or Northern Ireland--both countries which have seen a tragic amount of what now is so commonly termed "sectarian violence"; an ethnic group, as in Yugoslavia; a tribe qua tribe, as in Rwanda; or a sports team, as I have said. Sometimes it's your high school or your kids' high school. It's whatever group, above family, that is the primary source of people's identity and to which they feel loyalty. It's the "we," for many purposes, as opposed to some other tribe which is "they."
It's "we vs. they" in the realm of religion that leads to a lot of intolerance, hatred, and even religious war. Here, it's the combination of tribal identity with the sense of the correctness and superiority of one's own belief, with there also being perhaps--and this seems to be the other side of the coin--a conviction regarding the error and even evil of those who believe differently, sometimes including the idea that it is right to wage war on those who believe differently.
And there is without a doubt a strong and ineluctable human impulse to categorize people as "we"—that is, belonging to our group—or "they"--of course all others. Jew and gentile, Mormon and gentile (odd how the meaning of gentile is relative to who is using the term). As someone who is trained in linguistics and anthropology, I have seen this pattern over and over again across the face of the earth: here is one group and, just beyond the hill or across the river, is another group—very often a kindred group, at least linguistically. So the two groups appear to be cousins. (A well-known example: Jews and Arabs.) And—ya know what?—they hate one another.
_______
*Note: If you display the flag of another country--and you are not an embassy of that country--the Flag Code, having the force of law, dictates that the non-American flag be displayed in subordinate position to the American flag.
Updated, June 23, 2013, July 11, 2013
Copyright © 2013
I checked out the entry for tribalism on Wikipedia. The article is interesting but I don't think it treats the word in the sense in which I'd understand it.
The concept of tribalism explains and connects at least two things I have blogged about. First, the idea of "we vs. they," which has loomed large in my mind for a long time as I think it explains a lot of human behavior, especially all manner of conflict and less-than-noble human behavior.
But tribalism—and this I owe to the Wikipedia article—also sheds a lot of light on and even explains another phenomenon I have blogged about: that of the fan. By this I mean the way in which people identify with sports teams and even sometimes attack fans of an opposing team.
Some examples of how people like to proclaim their tribal identity: Where I live it's pretty common for people to proclaim an ethic identity (e.g., Irish flag decals on their cars, Polish flags in front of their houses on Polish Constitution Day*, Puerto Rican flags on their cars on Puerto Rico Day; sports team banners on their cars or Chicago Cubs flags in front of their homes or even, in the case of my next-door neighbors, a Chicago White Sox banner in the window of their home).
Having given examples and thus a deictic definition, how should we understand more about the nature of tribalism? It has to do with identity and group membership. The tribe is a unit or level of organization of humans. At the lowest level there is the family (whether you want to understand it in the modern sense, which is usually that of the "nuclear" family, or in a more traditional sense of the "extended family," which might include more than one generation, cousins, uncles and aunts, etc.).
The tribe might be the next level up. It evidently is not truly well defined. But it doesn't have to be. Suffice it that the tribe is whatever one identifies with, between the family and the nation. (Nations or countries can be artificial, to a greater or lesser degree. Some examples: In Africa, countries were carved out rather arbitrarily by the colonial powers and included diverse tribes within the borders of one country, often tribes which were hostile to one another, with the result that we saw, in Rwanda, genocidal conflict between Tutsi and Hutu. Or Yugoslavia, a country that had been held together by the force of the dictator Tito, and, once he was gone, fell apart. And what could be a more artificial country than America, which--unlike any other country--is constituted of so many different constituencies--so many different tribes--thrown together?)
The tribe can be a religious sect, as in Iraq or Northern Ireland--both countries which have seen a tragic amount of what now is so commonly termed "sectarian violence"; an ethnic group, as in Yugoslavia; a tribe qua tribe, as in Rwanda; or a sports team, as I have said. Sometimes it's your high school or your kids' high school. It's whatever group, above family, that is the primary source of people's identity and to which they feel loyalty. It's the "we," for many purposes, as opposed to some other tribe which is "they."
It's "we vs. they" in the realm of religion that leads to a lot of intolerance, hatred, and even religious war. Here, it's the combination of tribal identity with the sense of the correctness and superiority of one's own belief, with there also being perhaps--and this seems to be the other side of the coin--a conviction regarding the error and even evil of those who believe differently, sometimes including the idea that it is right to wage war on those who believe differently.
And there is without a doubt a strong and ineluctable human impulse to categorize people as "we"—that is, belonging to our group—or "they"--of course all others. Jew and gentile, Mormon and gentile (odd how the meaning of gentile is relative to who is using the term). As someone who is trained in linguistics and anthropology, I have seen this pattern over and over again across the face of the earth: here is one group and, just beyond the hill or across the river, is another group—very often a kindred group, at least linguistically. So the two groups appear to be cousins. (A well-known example: Jews and Arabs.) And—ya know what?—they hate one another.
_______
*Note: If you display the flag of another country--and you are not an embassy of that country--the Flag Code, having the force of law, dictates that the non-American flag be displayed in subordinate position to the American flag.
Updated, June 23, 2013, July 11, 2013
Copyright © 2013
Friday, May 31, 2013
The Imperial President
Yesterday I was in the vicinity of Barack Obama's house in Chicago—where he lived before becoming President and where he and Michelle still stay when coming "home" to Chicago.
My route was going to take me within two blocks of Obama's house (which I had seen before he became President), so I asked the friend who was with me if he wanted to see Obama's house, and he said Yes.
Well, when Obama became President—and even before, when he was merely a candidate—the Chicago police blocked off the street near his house. The house faces a side street, but it's the second house or second lot up, so it is only a few hundred feet from a more major street, and you could see it from that major street as you drove by.
Well, you can't see it anymore, because it's screened from view by tall trees (I'd say they're arborvitae, maybe 8 or 10 feet tall (2.5 – 3 m)) that are planted thickly.
Earlier, when Obama was at home, there would be many Chicago police cars parked along this major street to provide security, but you could still get a glimpse of the house as you were traveling along the major street: you just had to look off to the side (left or right, depending of course on which direction you were traveling in), up the side street, and it was fairly plainly visible.
Of course the security, when Obama is in residence there, is understandable. After all, the United States has had several presidents assassinated.
But why is it necessary to screen his house from public view at all times?
When the President or Vice President (or even a lesser official like the Secretary of State) is coming to town, their motorcade from the airport gets exclusive use of the road. That is, all other traffic is barred from the road, and damn the inconvenience to the public.
A few months ago when Vice President Joe Biden was arriving in town and, again, all other traffic was barred from the highway—and this was during the rush hour—a radio DJ said, "Why can't Biden get stuck in rush hour traffic like everybody else?"
It looks as though we have gotten an Imperial President (and Vice President and maybe more, such as cabinet secretaries). This is not what the founders of our country and framers of our Constitution envisioned. The wanted the President to be a normal, everyday guy, accessible and approachable. In fact, up until some point (and I don't know exactly when), any ordinary US citizen could visit the White House and get to speak to the President.
Copyright © 2013.
My route was going to take me within two blocks of Obama's house (which I had seen before he became President), so I asked the friend who was with me if he wanted to see Obama's house, and he said Yes.
Well, when Obama became President—and even before, when he was merely a candidate—the Chicago police blocked off the street near his house. The house faces a side street, but it's the second house or second lot up, so it is only a few hundred feet from a more major street, and you could see it from that major street as you drove by.
Well, you can't see it anymore, because it's screened from view by tall trees (I'd say they're arborvitae, maybe 8 or 10 feet tall (2.5 – 3 m)) that are planted thickly.
Earlier, when Obama was at home, there would be many Chicago police cars parked along this major street to provide security, but you could still get a glimpse of the house as you were traveling along the major street: you just had to look off to the side (left or right, depending of course on which direction you were traveling in), up the side street, and it was fairly plainly visible.
Of course the security, when Obama is in residence there, is understandable. After all, the United States has had several presidents assassinated.
But why is it necessary to screen his house from public view at all times?
When the President or Vice President (or even a lesser official like the Secretary of State) is coming to town, their motorcade from the airport gets exclusive use of the road. That is, all other traffic is barred from the road, and damn the inconvenience to the public.
A few months ago when Vice President Joe Biden was arriving in town and, again, all other traffic was barred from the highway—and this was during the rush hour—a radio DJ said, "Why can't Biden get stuck in rush hour traffic like everybody else?"
It looks as though we have gotten an Imperial President (and Vice President and maybe more, such as cabinet secretaries). This is not what the founders of our country and framers of our Constitution envisioned. The wanted the President to be a normal, everyday guy, accessible and approachable. In fact, up until some point (and I don't know exactly when), any ordinary US citizen could visit the White House and get to speak to the President.
Copyright © 2013.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Is Less Government Better?
When Ronald Reagan was running for President of the United States, in 1980, he argued that government was too big—and even was evil. (Logically, one might have wondered why he wanted to be the head of something which he believed was bad. Presumably to cut it and gut it, and he did, cutting and rendering ineffective many government regulatory agencies.)
Someone said that "Reagan won that debate." Maybe he did insofar as many people today believe that less government is better. Economic conservatives and libertarians believe that the economy would be better, and everything would be rosy, "if we could get government off our backs." Something—presumably the workings of the marketplace—would ensure that businesses did not screw their customers, the public, and their employees.
I have said much of this before but I want to remind us of some of the things government does for us.
Government builds and repairs roads. It puts up stop lights, stop signs, and road signs.
It provides us with police and fire protection.
It ensures the safety of our food and our medications. Someone said that public health is the big success of government. Government finds the causes and sources of food-borne illnesses. It ensures that there is vaccine to protect us against flu and epidemic diseases. These are only a few of thousands of possible examples.
But I really want to look at one story, auto safety, because I was recently reminded of this by an article I read.
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader published a book called Unsafe at Any Speed. As a result of the changes in US cars to make them safer that were the ultimate result of Nader's crusading efforts and his book, US deaths from auto crashes dropped by 32%.
You just have to contrast the situation in the US with that of Brazil. In Brazil, safety standards for cars are very lax or nonexistent. The Brazilian government is just getting around to requiring air bags and anti-lock brakes in cars made and sold in Brazil. Worse, there are no government crash standards for cars in Brazil. If and when cars are crash-tested, the testing is neither carried out nor validated by the government.
Therefore, cars made in Brazil (by Volkswagen, Fiat, GM, and Ford) are often made without many of the spot welds to the body structure that the very same models would have if built in Europe. As someone put it, where the welds should be, "there's just a gap." With Brazilian car manufacture virtually unregulated, cars in that country are not safe and the rate of serious injuries and deaths in car accidents is much higher than in the US.
The US auto industry did not improve auto safety out of concern for the public's safety, and they did not improve auto safety until they were forced to—by the government and ultimately because of the activism of Ralph Nader. That has not happened yet in Brazil and will not happen until the Brazilian government enforces crash-safety rules similar to those of the US.
The case of the respective US and Brazilian auto industries speaks for itself, but I feel compelled to add: So much for government keeping hands off, just letting business alone and trusting that they will do the right thing.
Update July 8, 2013
The recent collapse of a clothing factory in Bangladesh is another example of what can happen in an environment of lax or even totally lacking government regulation and oversight. I believe about 100 workers were killed. Bangladesh has poor, if any, oversight of building construction and nothing like our OSHA which exists to ensure the safety of workers.
Update August 18, 2013
I learned something interesting not long ago. Maybe Ronald Reagan does not get all the credit (or blame, depending on your politics) for the "government is evil" idea. It seems that in the 1960s, when Governor George Wallace of Alabama was trying to preserve segregation and keep black students from entering schools in his state, he faced the prospect of federal intervention and began to rail about the goverment in Washington being too powerful and evil-ly trying to dictate to the sovereign state of Alabama and tell them what to do and make them change their long-cherished ways. That should make people look at motivations of those who complain about "interference" from the federal government.
Copyright © 2013
Someone said that "Reagan won that debate." Maybe he did insofar as many people today believe that less government is better. Economic conservatives and libertarians believe that the economy would be better, and everything would be rosy, "if we could get government off our backs." Something—presumably the workings of the marketplace—would ensure that businesses did not screw their customers, the public, and their employees.
I have said much of this before but I want to remind us of some of the things government does for us.
Government builds and repairs roads. It puts up stop lights, stop signs, and road signs.
It provides us with police and fire protection.
It ensures the safety of our food and our medications. Someone said that public health is the big success of government. Government finds the causes and sources of food-borne illnesses. It ensures that there is vaccine to protect us against flu and epidemic diseases. These are only a few of thousands of possible examples.
But I really want to look at one story, auto safety, because I was recently reminded of this by an article I read.
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader published a book called Unsafe at Any Speed. As a result of the changes in US cars to make them safer that were the ultimate result of Nader's crusading efforts and his book, US deaths from auto crashes dropped by 32%.
You just have to contrast the situation in the US with that of Brazil. In Brazil, safety standards for cars are very lax or nonexistent. The Brazilian government is just getting around to requiring air bags and anti-lock brakes in cars made and sold in Brazil. Worse, there are no government crash standards for cars in Brazil. If and when cars are crash-tested, the testing is neither carried out nor validated by the government.
Therefore, cars made in Brazil (by Volkswagen, Fiat, GM, and Ford) are often made without many of the spot welds to the body structure that the very same models would have if built in Europe. As someone put it, where the welds should be, "there's just a gap." With Brazilian car manufacture virtually unregulated, cars in that country are not safe and the rate of serious injuries and deaths in car accidents is much higher than in the US.
The US auto industry did not improve auto safety out of concern for the public's safety, and they did not improve auto safety until they were forced to—by the government and ultimately because of the activism of Ralph Nader. That has not happened yet in Brazil and will not happen until the Brazilian government enforces crash-safety rules similar to those of the US.
The case of the respective US and Brazilian auto industries speaks for itself, but I feel compelled to add: So much for government keeping hands off, just letting business alone and trusting that they will do the right thing.
Update July 8, 2013
The recent collapse of a clothing factory in Bangladesh is another example of what can happen in an environment of lax or even totally lacking government regulation and oversight. I believe about 100 workers were killed. Bangladesh has poor, if any, oversight of building construction and nothing like our OSHA which exists to ensure the safety of workers.
Update August 18, 2013
I learned something interesting not long ago. Maybe Ronald Reagan does not get all the credit (or blame, depending on your politics) for the "government is evil" idea. It seems that in the 1960s, when Governor George Wallace of Alabama was trying to preserve segregation and keep black students from entering schools in his state, he faced the prospect of federal intervention and began to rail about the goverment in Washington being too powerful and evil-ly trying to dictate to the sovereign state of Alabama and tell them what to do and make them change their long-cherished ways. That should make people look at motivations of those who complain about "interference" from the federal government.
Copyright © 2013
Monday, May 13, 2013
The Dumbing of America--One More Example
Today I went to the post office to request an estimate of the cost of shipping a parcel. I did not bring the parcel with me but I did have the dimensions and the destination city (but not ZIP code). (Before you tell me I was stupid to not take the box in with me, I'm not telling you the whole story.)
The gentleman behind the counter said he can't give me a figure. He has to put the box on his scale, which of course gives the weight, and enter the ZIP code. He said he had no way to get a ZIP code from just the name of the city (post offices used to have ZIP code directories out on the counter for all to use; but now you're expected to use the USPS web site).
I said that the system requires no brain. (He took it personally, so I apologized.)
What I meant was not that this gentleman did not have a brain, but rather that, the way his equipment works, a brain is not required. Not his nor someone else's.
It all started with cash registers (or, to be more up-to-date I guess I have to say "point-of-sale terminals") that calculate the customer's change. I can calculate my change in my head—and faster than the machine--but if the person working the register had to do it using mental arithmetic, they'd probably have a problem. And it seems as though machines more and more are making it unnecessary to do any calculating, thinking, or any mental work whatsoever.
The brain can be compared to a muscle: if it is not used, it grows weaker. So if our jobs don't require us to do a little mental exercise-—calculating change in our heads or finding out something else for the customer—if we leave that to the machines, we grow dumber.
This is just one more of countless examples of the Dumbing of America.
Copyright © 2013
The gentleman behind the counter said he can't give me a figure. He has to put the box on his scale, which of course gives the weight, and enter the ZIP code. He said he had no way to get a ZIP code from just the name of the city (post offices used to have ZIP code directories out on the counter for all to use; but now you're expected to use the USPS web site).
I said that the system requires no brain. (He took it personally, so I apologized.)
What I meant was not that this gentleman did not have a brain, but rather that, the way his equipment works, a brain is not required. Not his nor someone else's.
It all started with cash registers (or, to be more up-to-date I guess I have to say "point-of-sale terminals") that calculate the customer's change. I can calculate my change in my head—and faster than the machine--but if the person working the register had to do it using mental arithmetic, they'd probably have a problem. And it seems as though machines more and more are making it unnecessary to do any calculating, thinking, or any mental work whatsoever.
The brain can be compared to a muscle: if it is not used, it grows weaker. So if our jobs don't require us to do a little mental exercise-—calculating change in our heads or finding out something else for the customer—if we leave that to the machines, we grow dumber.
This is just one more of countless examples of the Dumbing of America.
Copyright © 2013
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Predicting the Future (or Not)
Just last December, many people expected the world to end because the Mayan calendar's "long count" ended on December 21, 2012, and the inference was made that the Maya therefore did not see any time beyond that date. The further inference was made that that implied that the world would end on that date.
There have been many other predictions of the end of the world. There was one fairly recently that got a lot of publicity (I don't remember the name of the minister who made the prediction; forgive me for not taking the trouble to find it out but it's not that relevant here).
And predictions of the end of the world have been going on for a long time. The year 1000, the end of the "millennium," was expected by many to bring the Second Coming of Christ and thus the end of the world.
Needless to say, in spite of all these predictions of doom, we are all still here.
And there have continually been economic predictions of disaster: the bond market is going to crash, the stock market is going to crash. At one point, a couple years ago, I saw a very amusing sign in downtown Chicago: "Economists have successfully predicted 13 out of the last 7 recessions."
Only a very small percentage of these economic predictions or forecasts have turned out to be true. (As implied, there've been a few—very few—notable exceptions.)
Let’s look at scientific predictions. A lot of those have been colossally wrong. I saw an interesting list of those, once. The only one I remember: the great scientist Lord Kelvin predicted, "The atom will never be split."
Natural phenomena such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tornadoes can be predicted poorly, if at all. (I think the state of the science has advanced but only to the point that earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tornadoes can only be predicted once certain precursors have been observed. Unfortunately the current state of the art is that weather professionals can give no more than 20 minutes advance notice of a tornado.)
Let's look at weather prediction--usually called "forecasting." That definitely has improved a great deal but still has its limitations. You could say it depends on extrapolation, by which I mean, you see a storm and you just calculate where it would go if it continued on the same track. That's the method also used with hurricanes and there it's somewhat less of an accurate prediction because hurricanes can change their course.
So many predictions herald some sort of doom (getting back to end-of-the-world scenarios) and I find it amazing that so many people take them seriously. Which is not to say that some disaster could not occur that would bring very widespread devastation to Earth with loss of life. The meteor that recently struck Eastern Russia had not been foreseen and that fact is alarming. It could have been bigger than it was, it could have fallen more vertically, etc. Any one of these conditions could have resulted in more destruction and even great loss of life.
Many attempts to predict the future are fantasy, wishful thinking. Who has not dreamt of making a fortune by knowing what will happen with the stock market or knowing which horse is going to win the race against long odds?
So, aside from the limited predictions which science can offer us, there is no knowing the future. When it's election time, I pay no attention to any predictions: I tell myself that we will know in the event, and I can wait until then.
Update, August 14 2013
Here is an article on wrong predictions: http://www.mandatory.com/2013/08/05/10-of-the-worst-predictions-in-history/1
Copyright © 2013.
There have been many other predictions of the end of the world. There was one fairly recently that got a lot of publicity (I don't remember the name of the minister who made the prediction; forgive me for not taking the trouble to find it out but it's not that relevant here).
And predictions of the end of the world have been going on for a long time. The year 1000, the end of the "millennium," was expected by many to bring the Second Coming of Christ and thus the end of the world.
Needless to say, in spite of all these predictions of doom, we are all still here.
And there have continually been economic predictions of disaster: the bond market is going to crash, the stock market is going to crash. At one point, a couple years ago, I saw a very amusing sign in downtown Chicago: "Economists have successfully predicted 13 out of the last 7 recessions."
Only a very small percentage of these economic predictions or forecasts have turned out to be true. (As implied, there've been a few—very few—notable exceptions.)
Let’s look at scientific predictions. A lot of those have been colossally wrong. I saw an interesting list of those, once. The only one I remember: the great scientist Lord Kelvin predicted, "The atom will never be split."
Natural phenomena such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tornadoes can be predicted poorly, if at all. (I think the state of the science has advanced but only to the point that earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tornadoes can only be predicted once certain precursors have been observed. Unfortunately the current state of the art is that weather professionals can give no more than 20 minutes advance notice of a tornado.)
Let's look at weather prediction--usually called "forecasting." That definitely has improved a great deal but still has its limitations. You could say it depends on extrapolation, by which I mean, you see a storm and you just calculate where it would go if it continued on the same track. That's the method also used with hurricanes and there it's somewhat less of an accurate prediction because hurricanes can change their course.
So many predictions herald some sort of doom (getting back to end-of-the-world scenarios) and I find it amazing that so many people take them seriously. Which is not to say that some disaster could not occur that would bring very widespread devastation to Earth with loss of life. The meteor that recently struck Eastern Russia had not been foreseen and that fact is alarming. It could have been bigger than it was, it could have fallen more vertically, etc. Any one of these conditions could have resulted in more destruction and even great loss of life.
Many attempts to predict the future are fantasy, wishful thinking. Who has not dreamt of making a fortune by knowing what will happen with the stock market or knowing which horse is going to win the race against long odds?
So, aside from the limited predictions which science can offer us, there is no knowing the future. When it's election time, I pay no attention to any predictions: I tell myself that we will know in the event, and I can wait until then.
Update, August 14 2013
Here is an article on wrong predictions: http://www.mandatory.com/2013/08/05/10-of-the-worst-predictions-in-history/1
Copyright © 2013.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Why Do People Believe What They Believe?
I often read, and write comments on, the online news site Huffington Post. I am moved to write replies to people who express ideas counter to mine—such as "homosexuality is a sin (abomination, etc.)." This may result in a back-and-forth dialog in which they in turn try to refute what I said.
Of course I have to suspect that no one convinces anyone. Neither they nor I am there to have my mind changed. Nor, generally, do we behave with open minds. So much of what we read only reinforces opinions we already hold. Liberals read liberal magazines, conservatives read conservative magazines. That's called "preaching to the choir." So we hear (or read) what we already believe because that's what we want to hear.
But as a thoughtful person—forgive a little patting-of-self-on-back—I wonder why people believe what they believe.
Often people have received their ideas, to put it simply: from parents, teachers, preachers. Of course that only begs the question, by moving it up, or back, to someone else, and then we have to ask why they believe. . . ad infinitum.
As to receiving ideas from one's teachers: it is commonly believed that education makes one more liberal. I'd agree, but would hasten to add that it depends on the kind of education. The business school student who reads Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman is going to have different ideas than the English major who reads John Steinbeck and Kurt Vonnegut.
Many people receive the ideas, attitudes, values, beliefs, etc., that are prevalent in their environment: their family, culture, church, etc. A great majority of people are not likely ever to doubt or question their beliefs. If and when people do question what they (and their family, etc.) have believed, it's often the result of something occurring. Something has occurred to shake a person's faith in God. A mother learns that her child is gay and starts to question the condemnations of homosexuality that she has heard all her life. The son of slave owners comes to feel that blacks deserve better treatment than they are receiving under the system of slave ownership.
There are characteristics of the individual at work sometimes. Those few people who question the beliefs received from their parents may possess a certain character--perhaps something like autonomy, or skepticism; at any event, what we might call an independent cast of mind. And, some people are more thoughtful, more "sensitive." This we might call personality, character, whatever. And they'd do well to have some courage, too, because they are going to be "on the outs" with their families, and that can be a difficult row to hoe.
I think people with a certain psychological makeup or personality type are more likely to be conservative, and there probably is something more or less parallel in the making of a liberal. And probably there is simply a certain mystery to it all.
Sometimes it's a whole culture that undergoes a conversion to new ideas. I was just reading some interesting ideas about why Hitler was as powerful and influential as he was. I think that's an interesting question. It's often been pointed out that here was a cultured nation, arguably the leader of the world in many fields of scholarship and the arts, that allowed itself to be led into an insane war and also to commit some of the worst atrocities in human history.
But maybe that was not so much a case of changing of minds as just stirring up and exploiting existing attitudes. The article on Hitler's influence said that the German people were already predisposed to anti-Semitism. But it did not go too much into the nationalistic ideas that had prevailed in Germany for a long time, nor Germany's wounded national pride as the result of its defeat in World War I and the humiliation (as they saw it) of the Treaty of Versailles. It's clear that all these things were going on.
Religious conversion might be an interesting case. If you look at they way in which many European cultures became converted to Christianity, often the king or other ruler was persuaded to convert—and then (certainly not miraculously!) the rest of the country converted, too.
Other times religious evangelizing has targeted individual after individual. One only has to think of missionaries, such as Mormon missionaries, who go door to door. So when this is successful, it is a case of changing people's minds. Christianity sometimes won converts because it promised an afterlife. It might be interesting to figure out what carrot (or stick) the Mormons use to gain converts; I'm neither inclined nor qualified to do this here and now.
So, back to my original question. Sometimes we can see where people's ideas have come from. Then there are the issues of whether and in what circumstances minds do or don't get changed. Sometimes we can see what has gone on. But to put it all in a larger perspective, human behavior is complex and very seldom explained simply. We've got the science of the behavior of the individual—psychology—and sciences of the behavior of people en masse—sociology, political science, economics. I submit that none of these fields is so far advanced that we thoroughly, completely understand human behavior.
Revised and expanded April 29, 2013
Appendix A, Added April 29, 2013
Okay, now I would like to propose a question for my readers (with some possible answer choices). I pose this as a question put to my readers because, while this blog has, very gratifyingly, been getting a significantly greater readership lately, my postings—which sometimes try to be controversial and provocative—have not been getting any comments.
So, here is my question which at the very least I hope may provide food for thought. Why are conservatives anti-gay? Please feel free to vote with your answer or any other comment.
A. Because, in the sense of "conservative," they want to keep things as they are, and discriminating against gays is the way it's always been.
B. Because they subscribe to a brand of religion which is basically anti-sex.
C. It's their personality type. For example, they are tight-asses or maybe just mean and nasty people.
D. All of the above.
E. Some other reason (please specify).
Copyright © 2013.
Of course I have to suspect that no one convinces anyone. Neither they nor I am there to have my mind changed. Nor, generally, do we behave with open minds. So much of what we read only reinforces opinions we already hold. Liberals read liberal magazines, conservatives read conservative magazines. That's called "preaching to the choir." So we hear (or read) what we already believe because that's what we want to hear.
But as a thoughtful person—forgive a little patting-of-self-on-back—I wonder why people believe what they believe.
Often people have received their ideas, to put it simply: from parents, teachers, preachers. Of course that only begs the question, by moving it up, or back, to someone else, and then we have to ask why they believe. . . ad infinitum.
As to receiving ideas from one's teachers: it is commonly believed that education makes one more liberal. I'd agree, but would hasten to add that it depends on the kind of education. The business school student who reads Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman is going to have different ideas than the English major who reads John Steinbeck and Kurt Vonnegut.
Many people receive the ideas, attitudes, values, beliefs, etc., that are prevalent in their environment: their family, culture, church, etc. A great majority of people are not likely ever to doubt or question their beliefs. If and when people do question what they (and their family, etc.) have believed, it's often the result of something occurring. Something has occurred to shake a person's faith in God. A mother learns that her child is gay and starts to question the condemnations of homosexuality that she has heard all her life. The son of slave owners comes to feel that blacks deserve better treatment than they are receiving under the system of slave ownership.
There are characteristics of the individual at work sometimes. Those few people who question the beliefs received from their parents may possess a certain character--perhaps something like autonomy, or skepticism; at any event, what we might call an independent cast of mind. And, some people are more thoughtful, more "sensitive." This we might call personality, character, whatever. And they'd do well to have some courage, too, because they are going to be "on the outs" with their families, and that can be a difficult row to hoe.
I think people with a certain psychological makeup or personality type are more likely to be conservative, and there probably is something more or less parallel in the making of a liberal. And probably there is simply a certain mystery to it all.
Sometimes it's a whole culture that undergoes a conversion to new ideas. I was just reading some interesting ideas about why Hitler was as powerful and influential as he was. I think that's an interesting question. It's often been pointed out that here was a cultured nation, arguably the leader of the world in many fields of scholarship and the arts, that allowed itself to be led into an insane war and also to commit some of the worst atrocities in human history.
But maybe that was not so much a case of changing of minds as just stirring up and exploiting existing attitudes. The article on Hitler's influence said that the German people were already predisposed to anti-Semitism. But it did not go too much into the nationalistic ideas that had prevailed in Germany for a long time, nor Germany's wounded national pride as the result of its defeat in World War I and the humiliation (as they saw it) of the Treaty of Versailles. It's clear that all these things were going on.
Religious conversion might be an interesting case. If you look at they way in which many European cultures became converted to Christianity, often the king or other ruler was persuaded to convert—and then (certainly not miraculously!) the rest of the country converted, too.
Other times religious evangelizing has targeted individual after individual. One only has to think of missionaries, such as Mormon missionaries, who go door to door. So when this is successful, it is a case of changing people's minds. Christianity sometimes won converts because it promised an afterlife. It might be interesting to figure out what carrot (or stick) the Mormons use to gain converts; I'm neither inclined nor qualified to do this here and now.
So, back to my original question. Sometimes we can see where people's ideas have come from. Then there are the issues of whether and in what circumstances minds do or don't get changed. Sometimes we can see what has gone on. But to put it all in a larger perspective, human behavior is complex and very seldom explained simply. We've got the science of the behavior of the individual—psychology—and sciences of the behavior of people en masse—sociology, political science, economics. I submit that none of these fields is so far advanced that we thoroughly, completely understand human behavior.
Revised and expanded April 29, 2013
Appendix A, Added April 29, 2013
Okay, now I would like to propose a question for my readers (with some possible answer choices). I pose this as a question put to my readers because, while this blog has, very gratifyingly, been getting a significantly greater readership lately, my postings—which sometimes try to be controversial and provocative—have not been getting any comments.
So, here is my question which at the very least I hope may provide food for thought. Why are conservatives anti-gay? Please feel free to vote with your answer or any other comment.
A. Because, in the sense of "conservative," they want to keep things as they are, and discriminating against gays is the way it's always been.
B. Because they subscribe to a brand of religion which is basically anti-sex.
C. It's their personality type. For example, they are tight-asses or maybe just mean and nasty people.
D. All of the above.
E. Some other reason (please specify).
Copyright © 2013.
White Man vs. Native, Pt. 2
In the original post ("White Man vs. Native, Pt. 1"), I omitted one legacy of conquest, colonialism, and white settlement. In many, perhaps most, places these have left a lasting legacy of racism, discrimination, and oppression.
In Australia, the aboriginal peoples are considered "black" and have faced discrimination much as have blacks in America.
In New Zealand, the native people (the Maori) were driven off their land, forbidden to speak their language, etc., with the effect of virtually destroying their culture. Sadly this is a very common pattern.
In Guatemala the indigenous Maya Indians have been disproportionately killed during civil war, even to the point of genocide.
In Peru and/or Equador the Indians have been held to the bottom of the social scale and have even been virtually enslaved. In the 16th century, King Phillip II of Spain ordered that the American natives not be enslaved, but that order was widely ignored, and that has left a legacy that has not been wiped out in 450 years.
In Mexico, where a majority of the population are mestizo—having mixed Indian and European blood—it's been the people of lighter complexion—that is, having pure or more pure European blood—who have been higher on the economic and social scale. I asked a professor who had lived in Mexico if there was racism or discrimination based on skin color in Mexico and he said "not since the Revolution [in 1920]," but I am very doubtful that it ended suddenly or finally as he claims. I think indigenous people in Mexico ("indios") are still very low on the social scale.
Updated June 21, 2013.
Copyright (c) 2013 by Richard Stein
In Australia, the aboriginal peoples are considered "black" and have faced discrimination much as have blacks in America.
In New Zealand, the native people (the Maori) were driven off their land, forbidden to speak their language, etc., with the effect of virtually destroying their culture. Sadly this is a very common pattern.
In Guatemala the indigenous Maya Indians have been disproportionately killed during civil war, even to the point of genocide.
In Peru and/or Equador the Indians have been held to the bottom of the social scale and have even been virtually enslaved. In the 16th century, King Phillip II of Spain ordered that the American natives not be enslaved, but that order was widely ignored, and that has left a legacy that has not been wiped out in 450 years.
In Mexico, where a majority of the population are mestizo—having mixed Indian and European blood—it's been the people of lighter complexion—that is, having pure or more pure European blood—who have been higher on the economic and social scale. I asked a professor who had lived in Mexico if there was racism or discrimination based on skin color in Mexico and he said "not since the Revolution [in 1920]," but I am very doubtful that it ended suddenly or finally as he claims. I think indigenous people in Mexico ("indios") are still very low on the social scale.
Updated June 21, 2013.
Copyright (c) 2013 by Richard Stein
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Things Don't Last Anymore
Nearly anybody who's been around this world for a while will tell you that things don't last like they used to.
As one example, I used to buy bedroom slippers made by one particular US brand. They were expensive, but they'd last forever. I don't buy their slippers any longer because they're not the same as they used to be. They're made in China now and they definitely don't last very long at all.
And I can name a prominent mail-order vendor of clothing and outdoor stuff. I have bought two pairs of slippers from them, and they didn't last, either. (This company has a satisfaction guarantee, but if you send the product back to them, the refund you get will be $7 less than what you paid for the item. I'd rather go on using the rather worn—and nearly worn out--item.)
I have those two pairs of slippers and yet a third, and they're all falling apart. The problem is mainly that stitching between sole and upper seems to be quite inferior. And—guess what? They’re all made in China.
I want to hasten to point out that I don't want to besmirch China and all its manufactures. I believe that China makes some high-quality products. I suspect this is what is going on: Besides the savings in labor costs that come from "off-shoring" manufacturing by American companies, I think they are probably knowingly and deliberately short-changing the customer on quality of material or quality of workmanship—to save still more money.
(To some extent stores like Walmart and customers who buy the very cheapest thing they can find are to blame. On the other hand, there is greed on the part of American companies and retailers. When an $80 Tommy Hilfiger or Ralph Lauren Polo shirt is made in a third-world country, it costs very little to make it. The seller makes a very good profit even when that shirt is on sale for a radically reduced price.)
This might properly be another subject since it is a different matter from clothing, but it still comes under my subject of "Things don't last." That's major appliances like refrigerators, dishwashers, and microwaves.
Take refrigerators. Refrigerators used to last 20, 30 years or more. Nearly every family had a second refrigerator, because they bought a new one but the old one still ran so they kept it to put in the cellar or garage. In my last home I had a refrigerator what was a 1977 model and it was still running fine when I left that place in 2001. So it was 24 years old.
Then I bought a refrigerator for my new home and it lasted 10 years. I was speaking to a friend who had to replace his refrigerator after only 6 years. I should not generalize from just two instances, but a repairman has told me that major appliances don't last these days, that they're not made like they used to be.
I surmise that the quality of the mechanical components has been cheapened. That plus, perhaps, the fact that refrigerators (etc.), like our cars, are starting to be more complex, with electronic components and even computers inside. Plus, people may not expect to keep refrigerators as long these days; they want modern kitchens and that means appliances with up-to-date appearance.
And you can't blame China for that one. We have some refrigerator makes and models made in other countries but the majority are US-made.
A counter trend is cars. It used to be that a car might last 6 or 7 years. They would start to rust after 3 or 4 years (at least in northern areas of the US where salt is applied to the roads in the winter). Nowadays cars will last much longer. The latest statistic I heard is that the average age of a car on US roads is now 11 years. (People are keeping cars longer both because they last longer and because they have gotten much more expensive: a car today, in the US, costs 10 to 15 times what a car cost in the late 1950s).
Update April 26, 2013. I just looked at the model/serial number plates in my GE (a "good old" American brand) microwave and GE refrigerator. The microwave was made in Korea and the fridge was made in Mexico. Shame on me for assuming that just because it's an American brand it was actually built in the US. The same, by the way, applies to cars, and I'm sure many people have bought cars with American names and believed they were getting something American-built when the car either was assembled somewhere else or it was made using major components--for example, an engine or transmission--from Canada or Mexico. Ironically, some cars with Japanese names are assembled in the US and might even have a greater precentage of "domestic content" than a car with an American name. The percentage of domestic content is listed on the window sticker which the car wears when it is in the dealer's showroom.
Update July 24, 2013. There was further confirmation that refrigerators don't last anymore from a man who works for a "major retailer," for whom he analyzes things like appliances' expected lifetimes, in order to help determine his employer's policy for the extended warranties it sells.
Copyright © 2013 by Richard Stein
As one example, I used to buy bedroom slippers made by one particular US brand. They were expensive, but they'd last forever. I don't buy their slippers any longer because they're not the same as they used to be. They're made in China now and they definitely don't last very long at all.
And I can name a prominent mail-order vendor of clothing and outdoor stuff. I have bought two pairs of slippers from them, and they didn't last, either. (This company has a satisfaction guarantee, but if you send the product back to them, the refund you get will be $7 less than what you paid for the item. I'd rather go on using the rather worn—and nearly worn out--item.)
I have those two pairs of slippers and yet a third, and they're all falling apart. The problem is mainly that stitching between sole and upper seems to be quite inferior. And—guess what? They’re all made in China.
I want to hasten to point out that I don't want to besmirch China and all its manufactures. I believe that China makes some high-quality products. I suspect this is what is going on: Besides the savings in labor costs that come from "off-shoring" manufacturing by American companies, I think they are probably knowingly and deliberately short-changing the customer on quality of material or quality of workmanship—to save still more money.
(To some extent stores like Walmart and customers who buy the very cheapest thing they can find are to blame. On the other hand, there is greed on the part of American companies and retailers. When an $80 Tommy Hilfiger or Ralph Lauren Polo shirt is made in a third-world country, it costs very little to make it. The seller makes a very good profit even when that shirt is on sale for a radically reduced price.)
This might properly be another subject since it is a different matter from clothing, but it still comes under my subject of "Things don't last." That's major appliances like refrigerators, dishwashers, and microwaves.
Take refrigerators. Refrigerators used to last 20, 30 years or more. Nearly every family had a second refrigerator, because they bought a new one but the old one still ran so they kept it to put in the cellar or garage. In my last home I had a refrigerator what was a 1977 model and it was still running fine when I left that place in 2001. So it was 24 years old.
Then I bought a refrigerator for my new home and it lasted 10 years. I was speaking to a friend who had to replace his refrigerator after only 6 years. I should not generalize from just two instances, but a repairman has told me that major appliances don't last these days, that they're not made like they used to be.
I surmise that the quality of the mechanical components has been cheapened. That plus, perhaps, the fact that refrigerators (etc.), like our cars, are starting to be more complex, with electronic components and even computers inside. Plus, people may not expect to keep refrigerators as long these days; they want modern kitchens and that means appliances with up-to-date appearance.
And you can't blame China for that one. We have some refrigerator makes and models made in other countries but the majority are US-made.
A counter trend is cars. It used to be that a car might last 6 or 7 years. They would start to rust after 3 or 4 years (at least in northern areas of the US where salt is applied to the roads in the winter). Nowadays cars will last much longer. The latest statistic I heard is that the average age of a car on US roads is now 11 years. (People are keeping cars longer both because they last longer and because they have gotten much more expensive: a car today, in the US, costs 10 to 15 times what a car cost in the late 1950s).
Update April 26, 2013. I just looked at the model/serial number plates in my GE (a "good old" American brand) microwave and GE refrigerator. The microwave was made in Korea and the fridge was made in Mexico. Shame on me for assuming that just because it's an American brand it was actually built in the US. The same, by the way, applies to cars, and I'm sure many people have bought cars with American names and believed they were getting something American-built when the car either was assembled somewhere else or it was made using major components--for example, an engine or transmission--from Canada or Mexico. Ironically, some cars with Japanese names are assembled in the US and might even have a greater precentage of "domestic content" than a car with an American name. The percentage of domestic content is listed on the window sticker which the car wears when it is in the dealer's showroom.
Update July 24, 2013. There was further confirmation that refrigerators don't last anymore from a man who works for a "major retailer," for whom he analyzes things like appliances' expected lifetimes, in order to help determine his employer's policy for the extended warranties it sells.
Copyright © 2013 by Richard Stein
Monday, April 15, 2013
More, or Fewer, Choices of Cars in the US?
When I was younger—and up until, I think, the late 1960s—there were no Japanese cars being sold in America (and no Korean cars, either; they came into the US even later).
On the other hand, there were many car makes that have since disappeared, both American and imported.
Besides recently-disappeared US car makes—nameplates from the "Big Three" such as Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Plymouth, and Mercury--there were many others. In the 1950s the Studebaker and Packard car brands sadly disappeared. At around the same time, Nash and Hudson merged to form American Motors, and their cars were around for a few years before disappearing also. Chrysler Corp. had DeSoto, and Ford Motor Company brought out the Edsel, to much fanfare. (It flopped, and has become a business-school textbook case of failed marketing.) And for a few years around 1950 there were cars made by Kaiser Motors, and also Willys (originally the maker of the Jeep).
(On a side note, at one time nearly all the taxicabs in America were purpose-built vehicles, Checker taxis made by Checker Motors. They had enormous room in the back seat. Checker has been gone for quite a while now.
Of course anybody who is a car buff knows that in what we might consider the "early days" of cars in the US, there were many makes that ceased production long ago.)
On the other hand, in the 1950s very many foreign-made cars were being brought into the US. There were the English sports cars, which were quite popular: MG, Triumph, Austin-Healy, and Jaguar. Of these, only Jaguar is still available in the US.
There were many other English makes being sold in the US at that time: Austin, Morris, Vauxhall, English Ford, Hillman, Sunbeam, Humber, Rover, and Mini (originally the Morris Mini Minor); and a few rather rare ones such as Daimler, Armstrong-Siddeley, Alvis, AC-Bristol, Jensen-Healy. Many of those were very nice cars. (Besides Jaguar, and Mini, there are three other British makes being sold in the US: Lotus, Rolls-Royce, and Bentley. Rolls, Bentley, Mini, and Jaguar are no longer British-owned but the manufacturing of their cars is still, I believe, done in England.)
And we had French cars: Renault, Peugeot, Citroën, Dyna-Panhard, Facel-Vega (a luxury car with a big Chrysler engine).
There were many German cars not seen in a long time: Goggomobil, Opel, Messerschmidt (a mini-car designed by the famous maker of World War II planes), NSU, Taunus (German Ford), Borgward, Wartburg, Goliath, Lloyd. Many of those makes ceased production. We've got five German makes still being sold here: Mercedes-Benz, BMW, VW, Porsche, and Audi (made by the company that sold cars here in the 1950s under the names Auto Union and DKW).
And Italian cars: Fiat (just recently returned to the US market; they made tiny cars, somewhat larger sedans, and a series of nice sports cars), Maserati—also recently returned to the US--Lancia, Alfa-Romeo. Ferrari and Lamborghini are still sold here. There were other, very nice and rare Italian makes such as Iso. I actually once drove a car called Moretti, which no one ever heard of.
We even had available here a Czech-made car, Skoda. Evidently with the fall of Communism the state-owned factory was privatized and sold to Volkswagen, and Skoda now is quite a popular car in Europe.
So many of these makes disappeared because they achieved a poor reputation for reliability. In some cases their tiny, high-revving engines simply wore out quickly, or they were not suited to American driving conditions (and perhaps not least, they required more routine maintenance than Americans typically give their cars).
The first Japanese cars in America were Datsun (later known here as Nissan) and Toyota. According to my recollection they came in at or near the end of the 1960s. Honda came in in the 70s, first with the Civic, which was at that time a very tiny car. In the 1970s we saw the first Honda Accord, which was a two-door car at first.
To some extent the appearance of Japanese and Korean models has offset the loss of a number of American makes; but the disappearance of so many European cars from the US market has surely resulted in a net loss of choice to American car buyers.
Bibliographical note: To refresh my memory about some of the long-gone foreign nameplates I have relied on a book called Cars of the World, in Color, by J.D. Scheel, publ. 1963.
Updated April 18 and April 19, 2013.
Copyright © 2013 by Richard Stein
On the other hand, there were many car makes that have since disappeared, both American and imported.
Besides recently-disappeared US car makes—nameplates from the "Big Three" such as Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Plymouth, and Mercury--there were many others. In the 1950s the Studebaker and Packard car brands sadly disappeared. At around the same time, Nash and Hudson merged to form American Motors, and their cars were around for a few years before disappearing also. Chrysler Corp. had DeSoto, and Ford Motor Company brought out the Edsel, to much fanfare. (It flopped, and has become a business-school textbook case of failed marketing.) And for a few years around 1950 there were cars made by Kaiser Motors, and also Willys (originally the maker of the Jeep).
(On a side note, at one time nearly all the taxicabs in America were purpose-built vehicles, Checker taxis made by Checker Motors. They had enormous room in the back seat. Checker has been gone for quite a while now.
Of course anybody who is a car buff knows that in what we might consider the "early days" of cars in the US, there were many makes that ceased production long ago.)
On the other hand, in the 1950s very many foreign-made cars were being brought into the US. There were the English sports cars, which were quite popular: MG, Triumph, Austin-Healy, and Jaguar. Of these, only Jaguar is still available in the US.
There were many other English makes being sold in the US at that time: Austin, Morris, Vauxhall, English Ford, Hillman, Sunbeam, Humber, Rover, and Mini (originally the Morris Mini Minor); and a few rather rare ones such as Daimler, Armstrong-Siddeley, Alvis, AC-Bristol, Jensen-Healy. Many of those were very nice cars. (Besides Jaguar, and Mini, there are three other British makes being sold in the US: Lotus, Rolls-Royce, and Bentley. Rolls, Bentley, Mini, and Jaguar are no longer British-owned but the manufacturing of their cars is still, I believe, done in England.)
And we had French cars: Renault, Peugeot, Citroën, Dyna-Panhard, Facel-Vega (a luxury car with a big Chrysler engine).
There were many German cars not seen in a long time: Goggomobil, Opel, Messerschmidt (a mini-car designed by the famous maker of World War II planes), NSU, Taunus (German Ford), Borgward, Wartburg, Goliath, Lloyd. Many of those makes ceased production. We've got five German makes still being sold here: Mercedes-Benz, BMW, VW, Porsche, and Audi (made by the company that sold cars here in the 1950s under the names Auto Union and DKW).
And Italian cars: Fiat (just recently returned to the US market; they made tiny cars, somewhat larger sedans, and a series of nice sports cars), Maserati—also recently returned to the US--Lancia, Alfa-Romeo. Ferrari and Lamborghini are still sold here. There were other, very nice and rare Italian makes such as Iso. I actually once drove a car called Moretti, which no one ever heard of.
We even had available here a Czech-made car, Skoda. Evidently with the fall of Communism the state-owned factory was privatized and sold to Volkswagen, and Skoda now is quite a popular car in Europe.
So many of these makes disappeared because they achieved a poor reputation for reliability. In some cases their tiny, high-revving engines simply wore out quickly, or they were not suited to American driving conditions (and perhaps not least, they required more routine maintenance than Americans typically give their cars).
The first Japanese cars in America were Datsun (later known here as Nissan) and Toyota. According to my recollection they came in at or near the end of the 1960s. Honda came in in the 70s, first with the Civic, which was at that time a very tiny car. In the 1970s we saw the first Honda Accord, which was a two-door car at first.
To some extent the appearance of Japanese and Korean models has offset the loss of a number of American makes; but the disappearance of so many European cars from the US market has surely resulted in a net loss of choice to American car buyers.
Bibliographical note: To refresh my memory about some of the long-gone foreign nameplates I have relied on a book called Cars of the World, in Color, by J.D. Scheel, publ. 1963.
Updated April 18 and April 19, 2013.
Copyright © 2013 by Richard Stein
Friday, April 5, 2013
White Man vs. Native, Pt. 1
The more modern, and politically correct, version of the title I have given this post would be, "European Meets Indigenous People."
Such encounters, whatever you call them, have usually been disastrous for the native peoples. This includes the Spanish and other Europeans in the Americas; the British in Tasmania; and various Europeans, most notably the Belgians, in Africa.
The Spanish in the New World: Starting when Columbus landed on Hispaniola in 1493, the native people on that island had nearly vanished* in the space of only 30 years—from being exposed to European diseases, being enslaved, etc.
During the conquests of Peru and Mexico by the Spanish, the Spanish conquerors displayed cunning, cruelty, and deceit. These traits, plus again the diseases that Europeans brought, again resulted in massive deaths of the native peoples.
In Bolivia the Spanish conquerors wanted to mine silver from the mountain known as Cerro de Potosi or Cerro Rico, near the town of Potosi. A huge amount of silver (along with other metals) was extracted from this mine over 500 years, at enormous human cost. For one thing, working at the the mountain's 14,000 foot altitude was at or beyond the limit of human capacities. Also,
Metals are still being extracted from this mountain and miners use coca leaves to help them endure the mining conditions.
United States: In what is now the United States the Indians were treated very, very badly. This tragic and even disgusting history is very long and can't easily be summed up here. I'll give only a few examples that stand out in my mind.
In New England the English settlers before long came to make war on the native peoples are wiped out several tribes in very short order.
In California, the Spanish friars who operated the missions enslaved the surrounding Indians, forcing them to get up very early and pray for an hour and then work in the fields for a very long day.
In the Southeastern United States, the lands of the Cherokee and several other tribes were coveted by the white Americans. President Andrew Jackson ordered the Cherokee to migrate to what is now Oklahoma. The Supreme Court ruled that Jackson could not do this but he simply defied the Court and did it anyway. The Cherokee marched on foot through winter weather and many died of starvation, exhaustion, and so forth.
But once there—Oklahoma was designated "Indian Territory" and the promise was made that this was to be the Indians' in perpetuity. However, in 1893 Oklahoma was opened up to settlement by white settlers and the Indians were dispossessed of much of their territory.
In much of the second half of the nineteenth century, once the US Army was done fighting the Civil War, it moved on to the task of "pacifying" the Indians, which generally meant slaughtering all the inhabitants of Indian villages, including women and children. The Indians already were weakened by white man's diseases, against which they had no resistance, and hunger due to the buffalo, or bison, which was a main food source for Plains Indian tribes, having been wiped out.
Indian children were often taken away from their families and sent to special Indian schools, where they were punished for speaking their own language. (Canada generally was no better than the US and similarly suppressed native languages and cultures.)
In Hawaii, as in other Pacific islands, an idyllic place, even a paradise, was unfortunately subjected to the influence of Christian missionaries who proceeded to get the women to cover their breasts and in other ways did their best to destroy the culture and the happiness of the native people.
Tasmania: In Tasmania, to subdue and control the native population, the ruling British mutilated and hung many natives and eventually wiped them out.
Africa: King Leopold of Belgium permitted or even ordered unimaginable cruelty and atrocities to be committed against the natives.
So actions which today would be called crimes against humanity occurred on several continents—everywhere that Europeans came in contact with native peoples. As I said, this list is far from complete; the true story would be much longer and even sadder.
And I do not even include all the instances where missionaries suppressed and destroyed native cultures, languages, and religions.
Africa also suffered from its people being captured and shipped to the West to be slaves. But slavery was not entirely the result of the efforts of Europeans--there were Arab slave traders, and some Africans enslaved their fellow Africans--but it always relied on Europeans as one component of the slave trade.
______________
* Recently there's been evidence that the Taino—one of the native peoples who inhabited Caribbean islands before Columbus' landing—have not disappeared. There are a goodly number of people today who claim Taino descent and/or some degree of Taino blood.
Updated April 26 and June 6, 2013.
Copyright © 2013 by Richard Stein
Such encounters, whatever you call them, have usually been disastrous for the native peoples. This includes the Spanish and other Europeans in the Americas; the British in Tasmania; and various Europeans, most notably the Belgians, in Africa.
The Spanish in the New World: Starting when Columbus landed on Hispaniola in 1493, the native people on that island had nearly vanished* in the space of only 30 years—from being exposed to European diseases, being enslaved, etc.
During the conquests of Peru and Mexico by the Spanish, the Spanish conquerors displayed cunning, cruelty, and deceit. These traits, plus again the diseases that Europeans brought, again resulted in massive deaths of the native peoples.
In Bolivia the Spanish conquerors wanted to mine silver from the mountain known as Cerro de Potosi or Cerro Rico, near the town of Potosi. A huge amount of silver (along with other metals) was extracted from this mine over 500 years, at enormous human cost. For one thing, working at the the mountain's 14,000 foot altitude was at or beyond the limit of human capacities. Also,
The Spanish called the mountain Cerro Rico, or Rich Mountain, for the silver they extracted from the mountain. Some 3 million Quechua Indians were put to work here over the years. Hundreds of thousands died, casualties of cave-ins, or killed by overwork, hunger and disease [http://www.npr.org/2012/09/25/161752820/bolivias-cerro-rico-the-mountain-that-eats-men].
Metals are still being extracted from this mountain and miners use coca leaves to help them endure the mining conditions.
United States: In what is now the United States the Indians were treated very, very badly. This tragic and even disgusting history is very long and can't easily be summed up here. I'll give only a few examples that stand out in my mind.
In New England the English settlers before long came to make war on the native peoples are wiped out several tribes in very short order.
In California, the Spanish friars who operated the missions enslaved the surrounding Indians, forcing them to get up very early and pray for an hour and then work in the fields for a very long day.
In the Southeastern United States, the lands of the Cherokee and several other tribes were coveted by the white Americans. President Andrew Jackson ordered the Cherokee to migrate to what is now Oklahoma. The Supreme Court ruled that Jackson could not do this but he simply defied the Court and did it anyway. The Cherokee marched on foot through winter weather and many died of starvation, exhaustion, and so forth.
But once there—Oklahoma was designated "Indian Territory" and the promise was made that this was to be the Indians' in perpetuity. However, in 1893 Oklahoma was opened up to settlement by white settlers and the Indians were dispossessed of much of their territory.
In much of the second half of the nineteenth century, once the US Army was done fighting the Civil War, it moved on to the task of "pacifying" the Indians, which generally meant slaughtering all the inhabitants of Indian villages, including women and children. The Indians already were weakened by white man's diseases, against which they had no resistance, and hunger due to the buffalo, or bison, which was a main food source for Plains Indian tribes, having been wiped out.
Indian children were often taken away from their families and sent to special Indian schools, where they were punished for speaking their own language. (Canada generally was no better than the US and similarly suppressed native languages and cultures.)
In Hawaii, as in other Pacific islands, an idyllic place, even a paradise, was unfortunately subjected to the influence of Christian missionaries who proceeded to get the women to cover their breasts and in other ways did their best to destroy the culture and the happiness of the native people.
Tasmania: In Tasmania, to subdue and control the native population, the ruling British mutilated and hung many natives and eventually wiped them out.
Africa: King Leopold of Belgium permitted or even ordered unimaginable cruelty and atrocities to be committed against the natives.
So actions which today would be called crimes against humanity occurred on several continents—everywhere that Europeans came in contact with native peoples. As I said, this list is far from complete; the true story would be much longer and even sadder.
And I do not even include all the instances where missionaries suppressed and destroyed native cultures, languages, and religions.
Africa also suffered from its people being captured and shipped to the West to be slaves. But slavery was not entirely the result of the efforts of Europeans--there were Arab slave traders, and some Africans enslaved their fellow Africans--but it always relied on Europeans as one component of the slave trade.
______________
* Recently there's been evidence that the Taino—one of the native peoples who inhabited Caribbean islands before Columbus' landing—have not disappeared. There are a goodly number of people today who claim Taino descent and/or some degree of Taino blood.
Updated April 26 and June 6, 2013.
Copyright © 2013 by Richard Stein
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Motorcyclists, Consider Your Hearing
There are a lot of motorcycles in the area where I live. At one time I thought it had to do with the presence of a Harley-Davidson dealer half a mile from my house; but that Harley dealer has been gone for several years but the motorcycle traffic does not seem to have diminished very much.
And Harleys are apparently the motorcycle of choice. I frankly know next to nothing about motorcycles, but I have heard that Harleys are very hard-riding, compared to many of the Japanese-built motorcycles. And Harleys are noisy, too. That is my gripe against them. It has become more and more clear to me that young people like vroom-vroom-vroom, whether from motorcycles or noisy car models; whereas old people like me would prefer to have quiet and thus dislike the noisy cars or motorcycles that drive in the vicinity.
Not only does the noise from Harleys bother people who live near the roads that they drive on. According to a March, 2009, article in Motor Cycle magazine (Hearing Protection - Listen Up), the hearing of those who ride the motorcycles is at risk, which of course makes sense since the riders are much closer to the source of the noise than I am. It's surprising to me that you don't hear more about this but my being able to easily find the referenced article shows that it's an issue that has been acknowledged.
As I said, some motorcyclists may positively like Harleys for their noise. They may also be bought out of patriotism—that is, "buy American"—and perhaps also because Harleys have a macho image. But I wish buyers of motorcyclists had the consideration to spare the neighbors the noise of their machines, and the good sense to consider their own hearing when deciding whether to buy a Harley or a quieter motorcycle. But a majority of them don't care to protect their own craniums with helmets, let alone their hearing.
Copyright © 2013 by Richard Stein
And Harleys are apparently the motorcycle of choice. I frankly know next to nothing about motorcycles, but I have heard that Harleys are very hard-riding, compared to many of the Japanese-built motorcycles. And Harleys are noisy, too. That is my gripe against them. It has become more and more clear to me that young people like vroom-vroom-vroom, whether from motorcycles or noisy car models; whereas old people like me would prefer to have quiet and thus dislike the noisy cars or motorcycles that drive in the vicinity.
Not only does the noise from Harleys bother people who live near the roads that they drive on. According to a March, 2009, article in Motor Cycle magazine (Hearing Protection - Listen Up), the hearing of those who ride the motorcycles is at risk, which of course makes sense since the riders are much closer to the source of the noise than I am. It's surprising to me that you don't hear more about this but my being able to easily find the referenced article shows that it's an issue that has been acknowledged.
As I said, some motorcyclists may positively like Harleys for their noise. They may also be bought out of patriotism—that is, "buy American"—and perhaps also because Harleys have a macho image. But I wish buyers of motorcyclists had the consideration to spare the neighbors the noise of their machines, and the good sense to consider their own hearing when deciding whether to buy a Harley or a quieter motorcycle. But a majority of them don't care to protect their own craniums with helmets, let alone their hearing.
Copyright © 2013 by Richard Stein
Monday, April 1, 2013
Who Has Been Tolerant, Islam or Christianity?
Various Muslim dynasties ruled Jerusalem up until Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade, in the 12th Century, which stirred up Christians to travel to "the Holy Land" to wrest it from control of the Muslims.
Under the Muslims, Christians and Jews in Jerusalem had been tolerated. Once Jerusalem was conquered by the Crusaders, nearly all the Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem were slaughtered.
A similar pattern occurred about three hundred years later in Spain during the so-called Reconquista, or the Christian reconquest of Spain, which was completed in 1492. In most of the Moorish (or Muslim) kingdoms of Spain—notably Andalusia, known in Moorish days as el Andalus—Jews, Christians, and the Muslim Moors lived side-by-side, and most of the time the Muslims tolerated Christians and Jews. That ended in 1492 with the completion of the Reconquista. The Jews were immediately expelled in 1492 (actually, they were given three choices: convert, get out, or die). The Moors were promised toleration but, just 10 years later, that promise was broken and the Moors were told to convert or get out.
Many Jews and Muslims in newly-Christian Spain who agreed to undergo conversion were suspected of not being sincere in their conversions and were tortured by the Inquisition with various torture instruments or burned at the stake.
So in both cases, Jerusalem and Spain, Jews, Muslims, and Christians all co-existed peacefully when the Muslims were in power, and once Christians gained control the situation abruptly changed and the Jews and Muslims were driven out or killed.
Copyright © 2013 by Richard Stein
Under the Muslims, Christians and Jews in Jerusalem had been tolerated. Once Jerusalem was conquered by the Crusaders, nearly all the Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem were slaughtered.
A similar pattern occurred about three hundred years later in Spain during the so-called Reconquista, or the Christian reconquest of Spain, which was completed in 1492. In most of the Moorish (or Muslim) kingdoms of Spain—notably Andalusia, known in Moorish days as el Andalus—Jews, Christians, and the Muslim Moors lived side-by-side, and most of the time the Muslims tolerated Christians and Jews. That ended in 1492 with the completion of the Reconquista. The Jews were immediately expelled in 1492 (actually, they were given three choices: convert, get out, or die). The Moors were promised toleration but, just 10 years later, that promise was broken and the Moors were told to convert or get out.
Many Jews and Muslims in newly-Christian Spain who agreed to undergo conversion were suspected of not being sincere in their conversions and were tortured by the Inquisition with various torture instruments or burned at the stake.
So in both cases, Jerusalem and Spain, Jews, Muslims, and Christians all co-existed peacefully when the Muslims were in power, and once Christians gained control the situation abruptly changed and the Jews and Muslims were driven out or killed.
Copyright © 2013 by Richard Stein
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Too Many Choices?
Once upon a time--yeah, the "good old days" that we old people are always remembering--a car had two names. Ford Fairlane. Buick Roadmaster. Plymouth Belvidere.
Now they have maybe four: Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo 4x4, Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Sahara.
Of course it's not only Jeep, and it's not only automobiles. Everything now comes in multiple colors, flavors, scents, etc. While it may seem like a good thing to offer more choices to the consumer, I sympathize with the retailer--for example the supermarket--who has to find the shelf space for five versions of Golgate Total toothpaste of six or seven versions of Tide laundry detergent or Cheerios cereal.
I wonder about the motives of the manufacturers. It has to cost them more to do this. Maybe they have multiple production lines running in parallel. If not, they have to stop the line and make some adjustments to start producing a different product. They must feel that if they offer more varieties of a product, that may attract more customers and give them an advantage over their competitors.
And I haven't even mentioned what all this does for people who have a problem making decisions and choices!
Copyright (c) 2013 by Richard Stein
Now they have maybe four: Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo 4x4, Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Sahara.
Of course it's not only Jeep, and it's not only automobiles. Everything now comes in multiple colors, flavors, scents, etc. While it may seem like a good thing to offer more choices to the consumer, I sympathize with the retailer--for example the supermarket--who has to find the shelf space for five versions of Golgate Total toothpaste of six or seven versions of Tide laundry detergent or Cheerios cereal.
I wonder about the motives of the manufacturers. It has to cost them more to do this. Maybe they have multiple production lines running in parallel. If not, they have to stop the line and make some adjustments to start producing a different product. They must feel that if they offer more varieties of a product, that may attract more customers and give them an advantage over their competitors.
And I haven't even mentioned what all this does for people who have a problem making decisions and choices!
Copyright (c) 2013 by Richard Stein
Friday, March 22, 2013
The Problem of Evil
The problem of the existence of evil in the world has troubled philosophers for thousands of years. And, like most philosophical questions, an answer has never been proposed that will satisfy everyone. (And you may take that to imply my general opinion of Philosophy.)
The English poet William Blake gave us a partial answer. Or, more accurately perhaps, he showed that part of the question is a non-question. In his poem "The Tyger" (as I interpret it), he tells us that if the tiger attacks and eats us, he is just doing his tiger thing. He does not have it in for us (to continue to put it in pretty contemporary language), he has nothing against us, it is not personal. Therefore, this is not evil.
It can be a theological problem. The Biblical Book of Job addresses it. In "J.B.," Archibald MacLeish's dramatic retelling of the Job story, his character who represents Job says, "If God is good, God is not God. If God is God, God is not good." In other words—here again I paraphrase according to my own understanding—God cannot be both benevolent and omnipotent. If He were both, He would not allow evil in the world.
Certainly this idea has been a problem for the Jewish people who have believed that they are God's Chosen People. They ask, "Why did God permit the Holocaust?" And this difficult question has in fact made some Jews lose their faith.
Some theological views explain it all quite simply and handily by postulating the existence of a Devil. But possibly nowadays many people no longer believe in a (or the) Devil and find that too simplistic an explanation. There is also the doctrine in Christianity of Original Sin which holds that there is an evil core in all of us because we have inherited Adam and Eve's sin.
Personally, I have doubted that some people are evil; but I think I'm changing my mind on that. People who kill one or two or three people with no apparent motive—not to mention those who have recently committed mass killings with guns, or those who have committed genocide against tens or hundreds of thousands of people—might look like they are evil. (I hope that a more sophisticated view would not simply try to say, Well he has the Devil in him. I don't think it's been a successful defense in court to say, The Devil made me do it.)
There are all degrees of wrong, ranging from inconsiderateness through injustice to torture and killing and other sorts of violence that humans have committed upon others. And there's no shortage of examples. But if there's a spectrum of kinds of wrong, from mild to very severe, where do we say is the line beyond which we've got evil?
To take a comparatively banal example: Why do people write computer viruses? These viruses can cause enormous mischief and, at the very least, force you and me to spend time, trouble, and money scanning our computers for viruses.
Those who write computer viruses, we say, are mischievous. Is that the same as being evil? Is this brand of mischief a kind of evil, or some other sort of animal? I'm not sure.
Personally, I find it very difficult to believe in a god who involves himself in human affairs. I would think it would shake people's faith when lightning strikes a church and burns it down, or when a church is destroyed by an earthquake. Surely a god who can intervene is the physical laws and processes of the world would keep his own house from being destroyed. At least, that's what I think. I'm sure that many people have managed to dismiss, if not answer, that question.
Update. I write this shortly after the terrible explosions at the Boston Marathon. Of course once a suspect is arrested we will want to know his or her (or their) motivation. It certainly seems evil to kill and maim innocent people; but, if it was an act of domestic terrorism like the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in the '90s, it was someone feeling he could "get back at" or "punish" someone for something he felt was wrong; so maybe such persons think they are doing a necessary or even good thing. Then we may say they are crazy rather than evil.
Copyright © 2013 by Richard Stein
The English poet William Blake gave us a partial answer. Or, more accurately perhaps, he showed that part of the question is a non-question. In his poem "The Tyger" (as I interpret it), he tells us that if the tiger attacks and eats us, he is just doing his tiger thing. He does not have it in for us (to continue to put it in pretty contemporary language), he has nothing against us, it is not personal. Therefore, this is not evil.
It can be a theological problem. The Biblical Book of Job addresses it. In "J.B.," Archibald MacLeish's dramatic retelling of the Job story, his character who represents Job says, "If God is good, God is not God. If God is God, God is not good." In other words—here again I paraphrase according to my own understanding—God cannot be both benevolent and omnipotent. If He were both, He would not allow evil in the world.
Certainly this idea has been a problem for the Jewish people who have believed that they are God's Chosen People. They ask, "Why did God permit the Holocaust?" And this difficult question has in fact made some Jews lose their faith.
Some theological views explain it all quite simply and handily by postulating the existence of a Devil. But possibly nowadays many people no longer believe in a (or the) Devil and find that too simplistic an explanation. There is also the doctrine in Christianity of Original Sin which holds that there is an evil core in all of us because we have inherited Adam and Eve's sin.
Personally, I have doubted that some people are evil; but I think I'm changing my mind on that. People who kill one or two or three people with no apparent motive—not to mention those who have recently committed mass killings with guns, or those who have committed genocide against tens or hundreds of thousands of people—might look like they are evil. (I hope that a more sophisticated view would not simply try to say, Well he has the Devil in him. I don't think it's been a successful defense in court to say, The Devil made me do it.)
There are all degrees of wrong, ranging from inconsiderateness through injustice to torture and killing and other sorts of violence that humans have committed upon others. And there's no shortage of examples. But if there's a spectrum of kinds of wrong, from mild to very severe, where do we say is the line beyond which we've got evil?
To take a comparatively banal example: Why do people write computer viruses? These viruses can cause enormous mischief and, at the very least, force you and me to spend time, trouble, and money scanning our computers for viruses.
Those who write computer viruses, we say, are mischievous. Is that the same as being evil? Is this brand of mischief a kind of evil, or some other sort of animal? I'm not sure.
Personally, I find it very difficult to believe in a god who involves himself in human affairs. I would think it would shake people's faith when lightning strikes a church and burns it down, or when a church is destroyed by an earthquake. Surely a god who can intervene is the physical laws and processes of the world would keep his own house from being destroyed. At least, that's what I think. I'm sure that many people have managed to dismiss, if not answer, that question.
Update. I write this shortly after the terrible explosions at the Boston Marathon. Of course once a suspect is arrested we will want to know his or her (or their) motivation. It certainly seems evil to kill and maim innocent people; but, if it was an act of domestic terrorism like the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in the '90s, it was someone feeling he could "get back at" or "punish" someone for something he felt was wrong; so maybe such persons think they are doing a necessary or even good thing. Then we may say they are crazy rather than evil.
Copyright © 2013 by Richard Stein
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