The Journey

A Letter to my Son

2011-07-19T15:54:00.000-07:00

Dear Jaxon,

You are three weeks old today, and as I stare into your open, curious eyes, I find myself thinking of all the things I want to give to you. Not a name or food or the roof over your head, although I will certainly give you those, but the lessons of life which will guide you, hopefully, to be, not a great man, but something far more important, a good one.

In a way, this is the test I have studied for my whole life. The time when I must pass on what I have learned, frame it, focus it, and perhaps most importantly, strive to live up to the ideals which I espouse, so that I can show you the way, not with words, but with actions.

But what are those ideals? What hard lessons has life has taught me that I can pass on in the hope that you might do better?

The first is that I am human, like everyone else, flawed, fallible, fragile, and incomplete.

Knowledge of your own humanity is the first step to compassion, and compassion is the gateway to lasting love.

I have learned that the feeling of wanting, of desire, is not an expression of need, but rather a symptom of the human condition, and that those who always get what they want, almost always end up wanting more.

I have learned that compassion, courage, and character are more important than awards, assets, and accolades.

I have come to believe that life is learning, and patience is the first lesson. It leads to all the others.

Fear, on the other hand, is the first enemy, and the most tenacious.

I have learned that in order to grow, you must fail, and in order to fail, you must take risks.

Doing what comes easily is a joy, but sometimes the real rewards come from doing what comes hardest.

Knowing you are right is easy. Admitting you are wrong is hard. One is a sign of arrogance, the other a sign of strength.

Remember, you cannot control the talents you are born with, you can only control what you do with them.

I have found that happiness does not come in a pill or a palace. It has no secret path or magic password (at least none that I’ve found.) It is as illusive as it is precious.

I’ve seen that good does not always triumph, and evil often prospers, but being kind is never wrong, and caring is it’s own reward.

I’ve learned that there is no true love, no destiny, and that dreams do not, after all, come true, at least, not the way you expect. I’ve learned that life is never easy, or kind, or fair.

Life hurts.

But, if you can roll with the punches, cry when you need to, and laugh when you can’t, it is, most definitely, worth it.

I have no way of knowing what life has in store for you. There will be triumphs and failures, surprises and disappointments. It will take you places you never expected and challenge you in ways you never thought possible. It will ask too much of you and sometimes feel as if it gives nothing at all.

I cannot tell you how to succeed or even what success will mean for you. All I can give you is this advice, for what it’s worth.

Read.

Listen.

Learn.

Grow.

Be Patient.

Be Kind.

And try to be brave.

These are the lessons I have learned, but seeing the path and walking the path are not always the same thing, and I have lost my way many times.

I eat too much, think too much, talk too much, and do too little. I have been afraid, discouraged, arrogant, angry, and lost. I have hurt the people that I love, and while I’ve rarely done things that I knew to be wrong, I’ve often failed to do those things I knew to be right.

I am not the man I set out to become.

So, perhaps this isn’t about what I have to teach you, but rather what you have given me: The desire to be a better man.

In the end, the only gift I can give you is a promise. I promise to do my best to listen when you want to tell me something, and to learn who you truly are and not who I want you to be. I promise to be patient even when you are not and kind even when I do not understand. Above all, I will try to be brave enough to face the things I find hardest and walk this path with you until it’s time for you to forge a path of your own.

Thank you for this and for all the lessons we will learn together.

Love,

Dad

July 13th, 2011

Apologies Accepted (and Required)

2011-06-02T12:58:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, Harold Camping, an engineer turned Evangelical preacher, predicted that the Rapture would occur on May 21, 2011, between 3:00 and 6:00 p.m. Hundreds of thousands of people believed him. Since you’re reading this now, it is safe to say that Camping was wrong.

The question is, why hasn’t he admitted it?

Why hasn’t he apologized?

And it's not just Harold Camping I’m worried about. We have a tremendous dearth of apologies in this country and we rarely learn from our mistakes.

They say those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. However, our problem is not that we have forgotten the lessons of the Roman Empire and the blunders which heralded its decline (although we probably should take a look at that stuff). Our problem is that we have forgotten the blunders of last year, last week, or even yesterday.

If we had any memory at all we would demand apologies from those who have led us into one blunder after another, but for some reason we don’t do that.

Remember all those financial analysts who said the economy was stronger than ever in 2007?

They must’ve all been fired, right?

Wrong.

They’re on CNBC pulling down big salaries and making new predictions every single day.

Remember those politicians and pundits who predicted the Iraq war would be done in a few months and cost minimal lives? They apologized right? They went to the house of every soldier who lost a leg or an arm and promised to do better in the future.

Didn’t they?

Or perhaps the more important question is, “Did you?”

When you fucked up, when you argued for the wrong side, when you passionately espoused a belief which in hindsight turned out to be flawed or false, did you admit it and maybe even apologize to those who had it right?

Anyone who’s read this blog knows I’m not a religious person so if the rapture had happened it’s a pretty good bet I would’ve been left behind to suffer through the earthquakes, hurricanes and tortures of the antichrist. If that had happened, you can bet your ass I would’ve apologized. In fact, I probably would’ve gotten down on my knees and begged for forgiveness.

While I’m at it, I might as well mention a few things I have gotten wrong. I thought the cold war would go on forever. I thought Israel would be unable to resist getting involved in the first Gulf war. I was certain John Kerry would win the 2004 election and that Adam Lambert would be the American Idol (I’m still pissed off by at least one of those). I thought Obama would honor his promise to close the prison at Guantanamo. I’m even currently rethinking my stance on nuclear power, but that’s a topic for another blog.

That’s just a sample of the mistakes I’ve made (my wife could probably tell you a lot more).

I apologize and promise to do better in the future but I don’t want you to let me off the hook. I want you to remember my mistakes and put them up there on the scales when you weigh my ideas.

Unfortunately, that’s not how Americans work. We don’t listen to the advice of the guy with the best track record. We listen to the guy with the loudest voice and often the scariest predictions. It’s charisma that wins the day and those charismatic folks depend on you forgetting the bullshit they said yesterday, particularly if it was in direct contradiction to the bullshit they are saying today.

Need an example?

When protestors took to the streets during the Bush administration, the right said it was un-American to protest a sitting president during a time of war. The left defended the protestors as the best evidence of democracy. Now that a Democrat is in office, it’s the left that is complaining about the Tea Party movement and the right that is talking about free speech.

These folks need to pick a lane and if they don’t, we need to hold them up to the inconstancies of their statements.

Wouldn’t it be great if every time a pundit or politician made a statement on TV the network was legally required to display his “batting average” right below his face?

While we’re at it, let’s throw a consistency graphic up on the screen which will flash every time they switch positions for political expediency. You see, I don’t want a candidate who is pro-choice in the primary and pro-life in the general. I want to know what my candidate actually believes.

If Keith Olberman or Bill O’Reilly attacks a politician for something, then they should go after all politicians guilty of that crime, not simply those who oppose their particular ideology.

And while we’re cluttering up our new HD TV with graphics for “batting average” and “consistency”, why don’t we add one for bias? Let’s find out who is paying the bills for these guys. We know when we see a movie star plugging his movie on Letterman that he’s trying to sell tickets, but what about the climate “scientist” who is employed by the coal industry or the guy from the milk industry talking about what we should eat?

We should know who is paying the bills and who stands to make millions from what they tell us.

Harold Camping’s organization, Family Radio, raised millions of dollars from his end of the world predictions. Those are incredible profits for something that turned out to be bullshit but they pale in comparison to the profits the energy companies are making while they deny the validity of climate change.

Will they apologize if the predictions of cataclysmic (some might even say apocalyptic) climate change actually occur?

Of course, we’re never going to get those apologies and it’s not in the network’s best interests to undermine their pundits' credibility.

We’re the ones who have to keep them honest. We’re the ones who have to stop flocking to the story of the day and remember the bold statements of yesterday. We’re the ones who have to keep track of the predictions, the inconsistencies and the biases.

And when those folks fuck up, when they send us to war, blindly increase the debt, send the economy into the toilet, ignore the warning signs in the environment or simply lie to us in order to get elected one more time, we are the ones who have to hold them accountable.

And, while we’re at it, maybe we should take a minute and check out our own batting average, consistency and bias. When we screw up, do we admit it and apologize or deny it and move on? Do we form our opinions based on our affiliations or based on our carefully considered values? Are we supporting those tax cuts, incentives, or minimum wage increases because we genuinely believe they are good for the community, the nation and the world or simply because they are good for us?

If we don’t.... it’s not the politicians, pundits, and Harold Campings of the world who need to apologize.

It’s us.

(By the way, if you noticed that this Blog is better spelled and punctuated than the others, all the credit goes to Wendy Cooper. thanks Wendy!!)

Reprogramming the Corporation

2011-04-28T18:28:00.000-07:00

In a 1942 short story, Isaac Asimov, wrote what have come to be known as the “The Three Laws of Robotics”. These laws have fascinated generations of fans but they have also found their way into real science, particularly now as we make the first tentative steps towards artificial intelligence.

They are as follows:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

The more I think about these laws the more brilliant they become. They represent an almost, complete, cognitive trap and one can see that if a robot existed and if they were programmed with the three laws, it would be very difficult for them to become anything other than a force for good.

In a way, the three laws are Asimov’s answer to the classic Frankenstein story. There are literally thousands of those. Humans, through hubris, avarice or even the desire to save the planet, create something that they cannot control and the result is tragedy.

Asimov solved the Frankenstein dilemma with three simple laws. He solved it with programming.

You might think that Frankenstein’s monster, the powerful automaton that walks the earth leaving devastation and destruction in it’s wake, is a myth but I don’t. I believe we have created monsters far more powerful than anything Mary Shelly could have imagined.

They have knocked down mountains, burned forests, forced whole populations to work in slave-like conditions and even started wars. They are more powerful than many governments and they exist, for no other reason than to serve their own ends.

Our Frankenstein’s monster is the corporation and if we are ever to solve our planet’s problems we must look long and hard at the way they are programmed.

In almost every set of corporate bylaws you will find some version of the following sentence.

“The _____ corporation has a fiduciary responsibility to it’s shareholders.”

In Asimov’s terms, this “fiduciary responsibility” is the first law.

In corporate-speak the first law is translated as “The Bottom Line”.

With that programming in place why are we surprised that corporations will do just about anything to increase their profits including mass layoffs, unsafe products, pollution and the manipulation of both the media and government in the pursuit of their very simple goals?

Of course, it wasn’t always this way. When Corporations were first established, in the late 17th century, they were chartered by the government for the sole purpose of providing a public service, such as building a canal or a hospital. Most of them were in operation for only a limited time and when the job they were chartered for was completed they simply disbanded.

However, the corporation dedicated to the public good bares little resemblance to the multi-national giants which run our economy today.

The government granted charters disappeared in the early 1800’s, essentially changing the first law from “public good” to “Bottom line.”

From that point on corporations in the United States have pressured congress and the courts to increase their power starting with the1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, which used the fourteenth amendment (originally designed to grant rights to newly freed slaves) to give human rights to corporations and culminating with last years decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In it, The Supreme Court essentially ruled that corporations have same the constitutional rights and privileges as a person including, the first amendment rights of free speech. Sine, in the modern era, money is considered to equal speech, “Citizens United” gives corporations the right to use their massive coffers to influence elections and government.

The reasoning behind these decisions is that corporations are, essentially, groups of people, and as such should have all the rights and privileges that individuals have.

However, while individuals use their rights for a myriad of motivations, corporations use those rights for only one. The bottom line.

One could argue that corporations are no different form us in this. Since all of us (not just corporations) are motivated by self interest.

However, humans are an exceedingly complex species with a multiplicity of complex and often contradictory motivations. We care about our self interest, yes but we also care about a myriad of things which are sometimes at direct odds to our personal needs and desires. We care about children, community, country, religion, art, TV shows and football teams. We donate to charities, help out our friends and volunteer at our kids schools. In fact, if you could probably spend the rest of your life trying to to list all the things humans care about.

Try telling, a mom sacrificing for her child or a soldier throwing himself on a grenade that humans are motivated by simple self interest.

Is there a bottom line for a humans? A first law? I don’t know but I trust that most people will seek a balance between what is in their interest and what is right. Without that trust, democracy simply cannot survive.

As long as the first law of corporations is the bottom line there will be no moral balance. They will pursue their own interests with all the power at their disposal even if it means loosing hell on the Earth.

We need new programming and we need it now.

Here are my three laws. They’re not perfect but they are a start.

1. A corporation must not knowingly do lasting damage to the planet or the people who live on it.
2. A corporation has a responsibility to the health and well being of the people it employs.
3. A corporation has a fiduciary responsibility to it’s shareholders as long as that responsibility does not interfere with the First or Second Law.

Some people will be shocked when they look at these laws. They will think, “How can we make big corporations promise to care for the planet or their employees.” Believe it or not, I had the same reaction when I came up with these laws.

And, in a way, that is the most shocking thing of all. It is a sign of how warped our sensibilities have become when asking for moral responsibility from the most powerful entities on the planet seems crazy.

The truth is we have loosed soulless automatons upon the Earth far more powerful than anything Asimov could have imagined and if we don’t find a way to reprogram them with responsibility and compassion, they will destroy us.

Reversing The Moral Compass (or Trickle Up)

2011-03-01T13:01:00.000-08:00

Who do you worry about more, the rich or the poor? The powerful or the disenfranchised? The man in the Rolls Royce or the man working three jobs to send his kids to college?

The answer should be obvious but, for some reason, it isn’t.

Somehow we have been convinced that the wealthiest Americans are under siege by the poorest and that the future of our nation is directly dependent on the greediest and most selfish of its citizens.

It shouldn’t really be surprising. Whether it is Feudal lords viscously taxing their farmers, Imperial Russia and their serfs or America being built on the backs of its slaves, the rich and powerful have always stood with their feet firmly planted on the necks of the poor and they justify their actions with racism, classism, social Darwinism and every other rationalization.

While every major religion lists charity, compassion and sacrifice among its virtues, there has been, of late, a conscious distortion of morality. Today, more than half of our deadliest sins, Pride, Gluttony, Envy, and, of course, Greed, are seen as admirable. In fact, our so called, “consumer” economy, is predicated on the idea that Greed consumption and selfishness are not only good for us but good for everyone.

This is a lie.

Unfortunately, it is also a very successful lie.

One of the cornerstones of that lie is “trickle down” economics. The idea, pushed by the Reagan administration in the early 1980’s that tax breaks for corporations and the very wealthy would stimulate the economy and eventually those benefits would “trickle down” to all Americans, even the very poor. This economic philosophy has been called many things over the years including Reagannomics and Supply side, but I still think the best name came from George H.W. Bush when he called it “Voodoo economics”.

I wont argue about whether or not lower taxes on the richest Americans encourage investment in the economy. Give a rich guy more money and he will invest more money. The question is, does it benefit anyone else? Even a cursory glance at the last 30 years of American history should tell you that the answer is, unequivocally “no”

The rich have certainly gotten richer in the last 30 years but the poor and middle class have only gotten poorer. In 1981 (at the beginning of “Trickle Down”) the average CEO in this country made 43 times more than his average worker. Today they make somewhere between 185 and 263 times more (depending on where you get your statistics) Doe that sound like wealth is trickling down?

In the last decade income for the bottom 90% of Americans has increased 3.9% (well behind cost of living) while income for the wealthiest .1% has almost doubled. The rich are getting much richer and everyone else is getting killed.

But what about all that money we gave to the wealthy so they could invest in our economy? What happened to all the jobs they were supposed create? Where did they go?

Again, the answer should be obvious. They were outsourced.

You see, the problem here isn’t just economic. It is cultural. Once you say that greed and selfishness are good, then anything you can do to make more money is absolutely justified. If unionized American workers are too expensive... Fine. We can find cheaper workers where they don’t have unions or safety regulations or child labor laws. That call center in Tennessee is costing you an arm and a leg... Fine. You can build a new call center for half the price elsewhere.

Cheaper workers mean more money, but not for everyone.

Still, we all know that increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans will hurt the economy, right?

Wrong.

In the late 1940’s and 50’s tax rates on the wealthiest Americans were above 60% (approximately twice what they are at today). Did the economy collapse? No. It boomed. It was, in fact, one of the greatest periods of growth in American history. The difference is, in the fifties, that growth was across all economic classes, with the middle class benefiting the most. We were also able to use that revenue to build the interstate highway system (which further helped the economy), vastly increase the national parks and launch a space program.

Am I saying we need to go back to 60%? Absolutely not. However, the people that are telling you that asking multi-millionaires to kick in a little more will wreck the economy are lying to you.

Lies, in fact, are one of the major investments they’ve made with their tax breaks. Billions have been spent through news media, through advertising and through high paid lobbyists to spread the gospel that greed is good and that our wealthiest citizens are also our best citizens.

First they took aim at the poorest among us, the ones least likely to fight back, the welfare mother, the juvenile delinquent, and the illegal alien. (all of which are disparaging titles given to those people by the wealthy elite)

The poor are characterized as lazy and dishonest, unworthy not only of assistance but even of compassion. They are, in fact, what is dragging America down. The suber-rich on the other hand, the ones who bankrupted our nation with their greed, the ones who we have spent trillions to bail out, they are characterized as our nation’s saviors.

That is the message that dominates our country today and it is that message that we must defeat at all costs.

Because now, it’s not enough to demonize the very poor and disenfranchised. Now, they are moving up to the middle class (or, more accurately, what used to be the middle class) Apparently it is the civil servants who are the real problem. The policemen, firemen and teachers.

FUCKING TEACHERS!!

The Wealthiest 1% of Americans receive 700 Billion dollars in tax cuts last year but the people who dedicate their lives to helping children, people who have already endured multiple salary and benefit cuts, people who have seen their responsibilities and class sizes grow while their text books age and their supports dissolves are being greedy when they ask for a living wage and a few benefits.

It makes you wonder who they will come after next.

Our Veterans?

No, the soldiers who served our country “with the last full measure of devotion” have already seen their health benefits cut, their pensions destroyed and the GI Bill stripped down to nothing.

In the end, that wealthiest 1% will come after all of us because once you declare that Greed is good everything that serves greed is, by definition, justified.

If you hate the idea of people living and benefiting off the public dole... Fine. But ask yourself this, who is more worthy of your condemnation, the Mother who has to stretch her welfare check to feed her children, or the profitable corporation which receives billions of dollars in federal subsidies.

Last year the oil industry received sixty billion dollars in federal money while earning record profits.

This moral shift has manifested itself in another way as well.

Things which can make money for someone are valuable. Things which pay non-economic dividends are not. Government services which can be monetized such as prisons, social security, the military and health care should be privatized. Services which cannot be monetized such as the FDA, EPA, education, national parks and, of course, public broadcasting should simply be cut.

The wealthiest Americans have used their power and influence to turn our moral compass upside down. They have succeeded in casting themselves in the role of victim while transforming the poor, the hungry, the sick, the veteran, the civil servant and the teacher into the villain.

I am not saying the rich are all evil or that Americans shouldn’t strive to improve their economic position. I am merely saying that we can choose where to invest, not only our dollars, but our care, our compassion and our empathy.

We have spent the last thirty years believing that wealth could trickle down only to watch that wealth pool in the hands of the few while the many only grow poorer. It is time, I believe, to reverse that trend and see if wealth can trickle up.

The Profit Motive

2011-02-22T10:34:00.000-08:00

About fifteen years ago I got into an argument with an old friend about the battle between VHS and Beta. My point was that while VHS eventually won the day, Beta was, in fact, the superior product. It was more dependable, cheaper to manufacture and had better video quality. He argued that because VHS won the format war, it was, by definition, superior. This argument seemed so innately circular that it took me a while to even understand what he was saying.

My argument was technological, his was Darwinian. For him, a businessman, the definition of superiority was, whatever survives, which is another way of saying, whatever makes the most money.

I have been reminded of this argument many times over the years and the older I got the more I came to see that our system, the American, capitalist system, almost always equates profitability with quality.

This argument is used constantly in the national debate on the role of government & the private sector. Whether we are talking about Social Security, healthcare, prisons or the military, the argument remains the same. Public run institutions are, by their nature, corrupt, bloated and wasteful, while private, for profit, institutions are efficient, innovative and, of course, profitable. If they are making money they must, by definition be doing a good job.

Profit=Good

(Personally, I’ve always had problems with this argument as there are many well run government organizations and many terribly run private ones.)

Today, that same argument is being used against public broadcasting in the battle to eliminate federal support for NPR & PBS. The argument is simple, if people really wanted Sesame Street or Nova or This American Life, they would pay for it. Or, another way of putting it, the value of the product is determined only by the profit it can generate.

Non Profit=Bad

By that definition, NPR, PBS and a thousand other government programs and charitable organizations, from Soup Kitchens to after school programs, have no value or, at least, the services they provide could be improved by adding a profit motive.

This philosophy is not only patently false but also deeply destructive.

Most corporations will tell you that they are in the business of making money and the products and services they provide are merely the means to achieving those profitable ends. Ford builds cars in order to make money. Fed Ex delivers packages in order to make money.

Fair enough.

However, how would you feel if the doctor, who is treating your mom’s cancer told you he was prescribing a particular form of Chemo in order to make a buck? Would you trust that he is absolutely dedicated to your mother’s care or would you run screaming from the room?

How would you feel if the people who’s job it is to make sure your food is safe are the same people who profit from their sales?

Now think about our increasingly privatized military and the military industrial complex which supports it. Do we really want profit to be the deciding factor in whether or not we go to war? If this idea makes you uncomfortable, you need to take a long hard look at how America works.

It’s not that I have a problem with doctors (or any body else) making a buck. However, a doctor, food regulator or military organization who is primarily motived by profit is a danger to my mom, the food supply and the rest of the world.

Perhaps more importantly, there are some jobs which simply wont be done by people looking to make a buck. No one dedicates their lives to helping inner city kids, protecting our forests, or even charting the origins of the universe for the money. Those jobs and hundreds of others like them are made no less important by the fact that they are unprofitable. Actually they are only unprofitable in a financial sense. They are hugely profitable in other ways.

Which brings me back to NPR & PBS. I have no problem whatsoever with for profit entertainment. If you write a song, produce a show or act in a movie which captures the public’s imagination, you should, make a lot of money. However, one journey through the channels on your television or glance at the movies in your local multiplex should give you an idea of just how low the entertainment industry is willing to stoop to get your dollar.

It’s a lot like fast food. Pump the product full of empty calories, throw it in a colorful package, market the hell out of it and start counting the money. It might make people sick in the long run but short term profit is all they care about.

And, make no mistake, this is making us sick. One look at 24 hour cable news can show you just how infectious and destructive the profit motive can be to our national psyche. If it bleeds it’ leads and in the end, the ones left bleeding are us.

Perhaps even more destructive is the world of children’s programming. Remember that doctor who told you he was treating your mom’s cancer for the money? Well the digital baby sitter you trust your seven year old with has the exact same motivation.

Again, I have no problem with the profit motive. I don’t care if game shows are designed to sell cars or if football exists to sell beer. I’m even happy to have kids get toys of their favorite cartoon characters. (I certainly was happy to play with those toys when I was a kid)

What I have a problem with is that the choice of what to show us is not motivated by truth or fairness or a sense of what is important for us to know, see or feel, but by profit alone.

This is why the quality of the material on public broadcasting is fundamentally different form what we see and hear everywhere else and why it is desperately important that we, as a nation, continue to fund a tiny sliver of programming whose value comes not from a monetary dividend but rather from a societal one.

The cost of public programming works out to approximately $1.25 per person. In other words for about the cost of a single song on itunes and far less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks we get radio and television who’s only motivation is to produce programming which is good for us. Personally, I think this is a $1.25 that we can’t afford not to spend.

Why we should Kill the Networks

2011-01-19T17:04:00.000-08:00

(and maybe take a big chunk out of the cable companies while we are at it.)

Here’s what I want to do. I want to turn on the TV and watch whatever the hell I want to watch whenever the hell I want to watch it and I’m willing to pay for the privilege (but not too much)

Most of you probably feel the same way.

A few years ago, this would have been completely impossible but today the technological roadblocks have been solved. Unfortunately, the powerful corporations which run our media system are too myopic, inflexible and, often times, too greedy to change.

Well run companies use advances in technology to make their products better, cheaper and more efficient. Poorly run companies cling to outdated ideas while calmly denying all the evidence of their own imminent demise.

The American auto industry is an excellent example of this. For decades they used their considerable political and economic power to make big inefficient cars. While this policy led to huge profits in the short term, their failure to adapt to changes in technology and the market led them to near collapse in 2008.

The same can be said of the music industry who saw digital distribution, not as an opportunity to deliver their product more efficiently, but as a threat to their status quo. The result has been more than a decade of instability.

Hollywood today faces many of the same issues and yet they seem to be even more deeply entrenched within a labyrinthian system that is inefficient, often counter productive and completely outmoded.

One of the objections to a purely online TV system is that consumers don’t want to pay for their content. What we fail to bring in to this equation is that we are already paying for content. In fact, we are paying quite a bit.

The American consumer, pays an average of $58 per month for cable or satellite TV (not including fees for Broadband internet access) And, frighteningly enough, that average consumer watches approximately 26 hours of TV per week. If we round off the numbers that works out to around fifty cents per hour.

Of course, that’s not really all we’re paying because the vast majority of television we watch is, so-called, “free TV”. Free TV means that the costs of the shows themselves are paid for by advertisers. During the Golden Age of TV that worked out to about 5 minutes of commercials per hour. Today, we see somewhere between 16 and 22 minutes of commercials per hour.

In other words, we are spending fifty cents to buy around forty minutes of programming and twenty minutes of commercials.

The question is, “Is it possible to spend the same money (or even less) to get better content delivered in a more efficient manner?”

Most media experts today would tell you that the answer is “no”. However, they are basing that conclusion on the way that Hollywood is run today, rather than on how it could be run tomorrow.

What if it were possible to streamline (even a little bit) the morass of bureaucracies, lawyers and red tape of the studios, networks, agents, managers, sponsors, cable & Satellite companies, local affiliates and production companies that make up the television system.

To do so we must first distill this complex system down to the essential service it is supposed to provide. That service, as I see it, is this:

(and yes, I know this model is over simplified)

There is a product, “The Show”. A method of distribution, “The Pipe” and a consumer, “The Viewer”. As in any industry, the variables of success are the quality of the product and the cost at which it can be produced and delivered to the consumer. The only thing left after that is for the consumer to decide if the product is desirable.

Here is what actually happens (and this too is vastly over-simplified) A filmmaker wants to make a show. He takes it to his agent who tells him how to mold the show to what a studio might want. After reworking the show he takes it to the studio (who will produce the show) and enters the development process. In development the studio tries to shape the show into one they can sell to a particular network.

Frequently, shaping the show to sell, also means making it better. There are some absolutely fantastic development executives in the industry who are committed to producing great television. They are, however, in the minority and all development executives know that a great show that doesn’t sell is worthless.

“Sell” is the key word here but we are not talking about selling a product to a consumer. We are a long way from that. Junior executives must sell to senior executives. Producers must sell to the studios. Studios to the Networks and the Networks to advertisers and local affiliates. Only after passing through this incredibly complex and expensive crucible does the show have a chance to sell to us, the consumers.

By this point, the number of people commenting on a project, from marketing consultants, to product placement experts and even toy manufacturers is absolutely mind boggling and naturally all those cooks have offices, lawyers, assistants and benefits packages. In other words, they cost money.

Dozens of scripts are bought but most are never made into pilots. Of the pilots that are made only a handful are ever actually aired. Of the shows that get picked up, half of them will not make it to a second season and many don’t make it to the second episode.

Maybe the project wasn’t marketed well, or maybe it was placed in a terrible time slot. Maybe the show needed more time to hit it’s stride or maybe it just plain sucked. The problem is, that in a system as complex as the one used to create TV shows it’s almost impossible to go back and trace what exactly went wrong, which means there is no guarantee that the network wont make the same mistake next season or even over and over again.

What we do know is that this system is extremely inefficient and expensive making it even more difficult to succeed in a market which is already incredibly speculative.

It is this wasteful and inefficient system which costs you, the consumer, 50 cents and 20 minutes of commercials an hour.

If you could eliminate, or at least reduce, a few of the middlemen you could also reduce the cost of the show and, in my opinion, improve the quality.

Let’s start with the network.

These are the guys who really run the television industry. They take the biggest slice of the money and exercise the largest share of control over what you see.

There is a reason for this. Back when everyone got their content over the air you needed a network because the only way to distribute a program nationally was through a network of local affiliates who had access to the big broadcast towers in every major market. In fact, that’s where the term “Network” comes from.

Today, however, only 13% of American’s get their content over the air from local affiliates. The rest of us pay cable and Satellite providers. In other words 87% of Americans do not need a network of local affiliates to get their content. So, why are we giving the lions share of both creative control and profits to the big networks?

The other middlemen are the cable and satellite companies. As I said earlier, the average American watches about 26 hours of television a month but they are actually paying for thousands more. Today, our cable and satellite systems are clogged with 100s of channels we never actually watch. Why? I don’t want to pay for the golf channel or the home shopping network. Maybe you don’t want to pay for comedy central or Sci Fi. Is this an efficient system?

Efficient or not, it is a system which you have little choice in as most US markets are serviced by only one or two providers.

Compare this Network/Cable model to a simple broadband system.

More than 58% of Americans have a broadband connection capable of streaming HIDef video directly to their TV. This number is growing every year. Why then are we still paying a cable company and a network of local affiliates to deliver content to us?

Why don’t we just pay the people who make the content and have them deliver that content over our broadband connection? Why can’t those people make deals directly with advertisers if they want to distribute that product for free or at a reduced cost?

Remember that fifty cents an hour? Remember those twenty minutes of commercials? Both of those represent big money and without the networks and cable companies taking a huge slice out of that pie, I believe that all the TV in the world you want could be delivered for that much money or even less.

A fringe benefit of the online model is that it eliminates the power of the time slot. Today, if a show gets put up against a juggernaut like American Idol or Dancing with the Stars, it is almost certainly doomed no matter how good it might be. Why are we still doing this?

I also believe that by eliminating at least a few of the cooks involved in deciding what gets made and what gets broadcast we can improve both the quality and the variety of content.

The networks will claim that the American people aren’t ready for a truly digital distribution system but I believe that is changing before our eyes. Netflix and HuluPlus both deliver unlimited content for $7.99 a month. Netflix Instant is particularly successful. In fact, they are so successful that Comcast is about to sue them.

The AppleTV and Roku box are other examples of how eager we are to change the television viewing experience. Both of them have sold over a million units this holiday season.

The point is, it can be done. In fact, it’s being done right now. The main obstacles are the powers that be, particularly the Studios, networks, and cable companies who are so desperate not to change a system that is failing that they are willing to bring the whole industry down around their ears. It is also why they are currently pressuring congress to break Net Neutrality.

We often speak of “Show Business” as a world where art and commerce are perpetually at odds. However, this is an instance where I believe the goals of art and commerce are perfectly aligned. By making the system more efficient we both create greater creative opportunities for artists and more cost effective and profitable products for everyone.

The Worst Kind of Criminal

2011-01-01T13:20:00.000-08:00

There is a certain class of criminals we hate above all others, a certain kind of deviant that we, as society, have always united to destroy.

It isn’t enough to decry them in public or mock them in private. It isn’t enough to imprison. It isn’t enough to torture or even kill them. They must be stamped out, eliminated, lest their ideas fester and spread.

No other group, not drug traffickers, sweat shop owners or even war criminals have been so consistently and tenaciously persecuted.

And yet no matter how many of them we threaten or imprison, no matter how many of their lives we destroy, no matter how many of them we kill, whether by assassin’s bullet or state sponsored execution, their ideas, like some malicious form of cancer, keep coming back to haunt us.

Who are these villains that seem to frighten us so much?

They are the lovers of peace, tolerance, forgiveness and compassion. They are the heroes of our highest ideals and they are the ones we, as a society, have united, over and over again, to destroy.

You don’t believe me? Compare the death of Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King to those of Stalin, Mau or even Hitler.

Read the transcripts of the Nuremberg trial and see how carefully the charge of “War Criminal” is prosecuted and how relatively merciful the sentences. Then compare those trials and sentences to those of Nelson Mandela, Steven Biko, Lech Walesa or thousands of other peacemakers throughout history.

You might say that miscarriages of justice like that only occur under evil regimes like Soviet Dominated Poland or South Africa under apartheid but, to do so you would have to ignore HUAC under McCarthy, Nixon’s “enemies list”, the treatment of civil rights activists in the South and literally dozens of other miscarriages of American justice.

Most people when asked about things like peace, compassion, freedom and justice would say that they are for them. Just as most people decry war, poverty, and injustice on principle.

However, in reality, it often works out to be just the opposite.

It is those who march for peace who must face the fire-hoses. It is those who refuse, on principal, to kill that are labeled traitors and imprisoned. While those who fight for the poor are called communists or worse, “Community organizer”.

What does it say about a nation when rallies are held to save the taxes of a billionaire while millions fall below the poverty line?

What does it say about a nation that defends their right to wage pre-emptive war, while ignoring the battle scarred veterans who fought that war?

What does it say about a planet where men of peace like Martin Luther King, Jesus, and Gandhi and hundreds of other peace makers die violently or in prison, while dictators like the Shah of Iran, Fernando Marcos and Pol Pot die of natural causes?

How is it possible that a church, founded on the life of a peaceful man who was tortured to death could, in turn, torture non-believers and go to war in his name?

How is it possible for Gandhi to unite a nation through non-violence then watch that same nation fall apart in racial slaughter before being assassinated himself?

What does it say when the values that most of the world’s population hold dear, compassion, peace and forgiveness are constantly under siege while greed, aggression and vengeance are defended as if they were virtues?

It says that there is a great chasm in the human heart between what we claim to believe and the real motivations which drive us.

We might decry aggression, violence and revenge but we are still inexplicably drawn to them.

Turn on the TV, watch a movie or play a video game and the odds are you will see some form of violence. We romanticize violent struggle over just about everything else and our great heroes whether real or fictional are often people of violence.

Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Genghis Khan.

There is no question that these were great men. Great in the sense that they literally changed the face of history.

But they were also conquerors, killers, men who repeatedly chose war over peace.

They were great, but that did not make them good.

The good people, the ones who stood up against the conquerors, the ones who fought for peace were probably called traitors and their names have been lost in the mists of history while the characters of those who conquered have been whitewashed by time and elevated to the status of heroes.

Like millions of others, I have spent much of my life fascinated by the martial arts and there are tens of thousands of martial arts schools around the world to teach me martial ways.

Where are the schools for the peaceful arts?

Most of us understand that a world in which all the resources are controlled by a tiny minority, while the vast majority descends further and further into poverty is not only an unjust world but an unstable one and yet that is the world that we live in.

To make matters worse, those champions of greed are canonized in our libraries and magazines. We admire their private jets and opulent mansions. Where are the stories about those who work hard and live simply? If we idolized frugality and charity instead of extravagance and selfishness, our world would be a much better place.

Most of us believe that racism, and intolerance are wrong but we cannot help dividing ourselves into groups, teams, nations and religions and for some reason, all of us feel that the team we are on is the “good guys”.

If our world is to survive, all of this must change. We have become far too powerful to endure much longer the discrepancy between what we claim to believe and how we actually live our lives.

It is, in fact, time to side with the great criminals of history, with Gandhi, and Jesus and Martin Luther King.

It is time to put down the sword and become a criminal, a deviant...

A peacemaker.

Eulogy For My Father

2010-08-27T20:24:00.000-07:00

My father, Mark Morris passed away just over a week ago after a long battle with ALS (Lou Gherig's Disease) My Sister, Kathy, My mother, my wife, Karen, My Uncle Russell, My parents good friend Michael Siblerstien and I all spoke at his funeral.

The following is what I said in honor of my father. I spoke without notes, however, Temple Emanu-El recorded the service so this is a fairly accurate version of what I really said (with a few corrections for the sake of the English language)

Fathers are tough.

Especially for sons.

They are the standards by which we measure our lives and the authority we rebell against.

There are times when we are desperate to get out from under their shadows and times when it seems like we’d do almost anything for a single word of praise.

They are our ogres and our heroes.

We spend most of our lives trying to prove that we are absolutely nothing like them but deep down we know that, that is impossible because they are a part of us.

But lately I’ve learned that there are two fathers. There’s one that you invent in your imagination, bigger than life and imposssibly intimidating. And then there’s the other one who’s just a guy just flesh and blood and hopes and dreams and fears, just like you. He’s just your Dad.

And that’s the guy I’ve spent the last few years trying to understand.

When I think about my Dad, there’s one word that keeps running around in my head, and that’s strength. He was so strong. I mean I guess, for every kid, your Dad’s always strong. He’s like a super-hero. You weight 25 pounds and he’s a grown man and he can pick you up and toss you around and hold you down and wrestle with you and he can beat you at pretty much everything you ever do.

And my Dad certainly did that.

Most of you know we played a lot of games in my house. You’ve already heard a little bit about them. Well, my sister and I, we never won. I mean nothing. It didn’t matter if it was candy land or monopoly. It was throwdown time and my dad played to win.

And I was desperate, and I know Kathy was too. I was desperate to win and we kept playing these games and he kept schooling us. And then, of course, he told us exactly what we had done wrong and we tried to learn the lessons but we never did because we just couldn’t beat him.

Then years later, I’d be out with friends and a game would come out and I’d think, “Okay, hear we go” And they would say:

“Oh, let’s not keep score. Let’s just play for fun.”

And I went, “For fun? What do you mean? How do you know who wins?”

And I wanted to learn this new trick of playing “for fun”. I really wanted to, but I still wanted to win.

And I tried to win at everything with my Dad and I couldn’t, and I couldn’t. Then one day we were arm wrestling maybe I was fourteen or something and I realized my Dad was kind of working. He wasn’t having such an easy time. I mean, he still beat me but there was something going on there. And the next time it was a little harder and the next time it was a little harder and I kept arm wrestling more because I thought I was on to something and around 16 I think, suddenly, we had this epic battle. I mean it was serious and neither of us are going to quit. We’re both sweating and grunting and people are walking by and laughing at us and finally I win. First time in my life I ever beat my Dad at anything. I was so proud and I was going to rub his nose in it a little bit.

Then I looked up and there was this strange look in his eye. He was proud. He was proud of me but there was something else there. He was also...There was something sad there and I realized as I looked at him that something had fundamentally changed for him. It was the first step of me not being his little boy anymore. I never forgot that look.

Of course, he could still beat me at everything else. Dominoes and Trivial Pursuit he could still kill me but something had changed.

And it wasn’t just me, by the way, he beat everyone.

But even though he could do that, there was something else about my Dad that I started to learn. I learned it when I began to look at him, not as that intimidating hero but as just as person. Maybe you don’t know this but my Dad was a little insecure. So even while he was destroying us at Trivial Pursuit, he thought he was the least smart person in our family. That’s amazing to me. How could this person, who was so good at everything he did, be insecure?

Then I started to learn that things hadn’t always been so easy for him. He had to work really hard. He had a hard time in school. He finished Cal in three years because he took such a course load and put so much on himself. It wasn’t easy for him to become an optometrist. It was hard.

It was then I realized that all those games he beat us at. He wasn’t just trying to win. He was trying to teach us a lesson. Because for my Dad you played games the way you lived your life and to give anything less than 100% would be a lie. And he was never going to teach us to lie. He wanted to teach us that in life... things are hard. The game is never easy and if you put everything that you have into it, then nothing else matters.

Of course, it was hard for me to learn these lessons because I was getting bigger and stronger and I got bigger and stronger than him and I was pretty proud of that.

Some of you might have heard about “the Morris Calves”? If you ever saw my dad in shorts (and the odds are if you saw him he was probably in shorts) Then you would have seen that he had these ridiculous calves and I inherited them. And I was kind of proud of them. I’d go to the gym and I’m with guys who worked out every day, like serious weight lifters.

They couldn’t touch the calves. Seriously. They couldn’t keep up with them at all and I was really proud of that. I was really proud of that until one day I realized -- I didn’t do anything to earn these calves. That’s just genetics. That’s nothing. That’s just muscle it’s not strength.

The truth is, I didn’t really know what real strength was until my Dad started teaching me his last lesson two years ago.

We don’t want to remember him the way he was in the last two years. We want to remember him climbing mountains and playing horse-shoes. We want to remember him as pretty much unstoppable. We don’t want to remember him struggling to get a hot dog into his mouth or falling down on the stairs or having to be helped to sit up or finally retreating so much that he couldn’t move at all.

But he believed that the way you live your life is the way you play games. And he put everything he had into this last game.

And it was a losing game.

We all knew it. Even he knew it.

My Dad would say in life you play the hand you’re dealt... and that was the hand he was dealt.

And I think of what I would have done if I had been in that situation. I think, I would’ve yelled and screamed and I would’ve pounded my fists until my fists didn’t work anymore, and I would’ve screamed until my voice didn’t work anymore, I would’ve pounded my head against the wall until I couldn’t move my head anymore and I would’ve yelled at every single person around me that could move, that could do all the things I couldn’t.

But he didn’t do that. He never got angry. I mean imagine... losing every single piece of your life, everything you could do, all your independence and not getting angry. He was always patient, always calm. He was even sensitive to us and what we were going through.

I mean, that’s crazy.

But he believed that you live your life the way you play a game. With everything, with honesty, with character, with dignity. And with all the indignities that happened to him I learned that no one can take away your dignity, unless you give it away.

And he didn’t.

And so in the last two years that big, imaginary, intimidating father, has grown smaller and smaller, retreating, finally, into the shadows of the real man. And I realize that I’m not trying to escape anymore. If I could be like him, I would do anything for that.

And I really hope, that whatever hands the future gives me, that I will be able to play them the way he did, with honor and character and everything I’ve got.

Temple Emanu-El San Francisco, California August 22nd, 2010

You're Number One!!

2010-07-07T10:34:00.000-07:00

You're Number One!

In 1998 I watched a title fight between the world welterweight champion, Oscar De La Hoya and the European champion, Patrick Charpentier.

Charpentier's story was absolutely incredible. He was the hero of a small town in france where he excelled at everything, from athletics to academics, to the arts. He enjoyed a spectacular boxing career which included 25 wins, 23 of which came from knock out. In short, he was the best at just about everything he ever tried to do. It sounded to me like this was going to be quite a fight. Then, the sportscasters started discussing Charpentier's chances.

They all agreed, Patrick Charpentier, the undefeated European champion, would be lucky to make it five rounds against De La Hoya.

He wasn't lucky. He got knocked out in three.

Imagine what it must have been like to be Charpentier, to have gone your whole life without ever encountering anyone who can remotely compete with you and then, to come across someone who is so far beyond you that nobody even gives you a chance.

One moment you are number one, the next moment, you are over.

We're all raised with it to one degree or another. Get the top grade on the quiz, land the best job, score the touchdown, win the election. In other words be the best.

The truth is, it’s an incredible motivator.

Nobody fantasizes about coming in second at the race, or living in the third biggest house on the block. We don't tell stories about losers, flock to movies about the galaxy’s most mediocre warrior or read comic books about sort-of-super-heroes.

Like moths to a flame we are drawn to the best and brightest all the time desperately hoping that someday we will be the flame and the world will be drawn to us.

It's never really been easy to be number one, but in the twenty-first century it has become much, much harder.

There was a time when 80% of the worlds population lived in small towns, without mass media. That meant that we interacted with a relatively small selection of people.

So, if you were the best fiddle player in town, the odds were, you were the best fiddle player anyone you knew had ever seen. Sure, one of your neighbors might have gone to the big city and heard a real professional, but that didn't change the fact that you were the star of every square dance and wedding. You were number one.

The same was true if you were the best fighter, baker, or public speaker. So, in a town of 50 or 100 there were enough slots for almost every body to be the best at something (or at least pretty close)

Today, however, as you practice your scales you are just an ipod away from the talents of Itzhak Perlman or Yo Yo Ma. You've seen Ali Fight and Batalli cook. You've heard speeches from Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy.

Suddenly, you're not just competing with the best the world has to offer today, but the best in history.

In other words, the odds of being number one have become almost impossibly remote.

But, "So what?", you say. "A slim chance is better than none and somebody's got to be at the top, right?"

Well, sort of...

Take a look at the big movie stars, top athletes, businessmen and politicians. Even if you name the biggest of all time, their moment in the spotlight is short and often fraught with controversy.

Orson Welles, who made what many consider to be the greatest movie of all time, Citizen Kane, was essentially banished from Hollywood and spent the rest of his life in a desperate attempt to get his movies financed.

Mohamed Ali, arguably the greatest heavyweight champion of all time, stayed far too long in the ring, and succumbed to beating after embarrassing beating before retiring at the age of 39. A decade after destroying Charpentier, Oscar De La Hoya was living out the same story.

Or look at the number one of number ones, the most powerful figure in the modern world, the President of the United States. Surely the few dozen men who have achieved this almost impossible goal must feel justifiably satisfied with their success. Unfortunately, the real trouble for a president doesn't end with taking the oath. It begins. He will be ridiculed in every paper and late night talk show. Every decision he makes, every word he says, every bite he eats and every first pitch he throws will be analyzed relentlessly and criticized mercilessly. And no matter how, effective his performance, no matter how dedicated he is to his patriotic duty, a large portion of the population will despise him and dedicate all of their efforts to removing him from office.

Do you still want to be number one?

When I was a kid I was fascinated by the "great" men of the past. Caesar and Alexander. Napoleon and Genghis Kahn. These men were brilliant, disciplined and charismatic. They inspired undying loyalty and conquered the known world with their genius. At the height of their powers, and with the technology of their time, a journey from one end of their domain to the other would take months or even years.

Think about that. Genghis Kahn conquered an area so vast that it was physically impossible for him to even see it all in his lifetime.

So, what the hell did he do it for?

All the destruction, all the death, all the terror...

What benefit is it to them? How many jewels can they hold? How many women can they sleep with? How many great meals can they eat?

Why would anyone want to conquer the world? What’s the point?

The point is to be number one.

The moment Alexander conquered one land he moved on to conquer the next. Nothing satisfied because the desire to be the greatest of all time was the motivating force. It drove him on a journey of death and destruction, thousands of miles away from his home, where he died at the age of 32.

And what of the conquerors of today? The people who quest not with swords and shields, but with stock options and leveraged buyouts. The ones who put our planet under the lash, destroying it’s forest and its oceans with little care for the consequences.

There are those in this world who have amassed more wealth than they or their children or their children’s children could ever spend in a hundred lifetimes and yet they still want more.

Why?

Because the only way to play the game is to win and the only thing they want to be when the game is over, is number one.

But the reality is, the only thing you are when the game is over, is dead.

Don’t get me wrong, the pursuit of excellence, the determination to improve yourself and your situation is good. It gives you a sense of purpose. It drives you to excel in ways you might never have thought possible and it yields benefits not just to you, your family and your community but often to the entire planet.

However, the blind, obsessive race to occupy some impossible, pinnacle of achievement has loosed tremendous destruction on the world and those few souls who manage to make it to “number one” find little solace in an accomplishment which is at once lonely and disappointing.

The Gossip Boycott

2010-06-10T11:32:00.000-07:00

Last week, Twilight star Kirsten Stewart, made the mistake of comparing the treatment of celebrities to rape. It was a comment which spread like wildfire over the Internet and sent her publicity people into instant damage control. Within a few hours she was widely condemned, by women's groups, law enforcement and the media in general. Even the rape prevention organization that Kirsten Stewart does PSAs for came out against the actress.

Within 24 hours, Miss Stewart issued a statement of apology. She had spoken foolishly and deeply regrets her words which were both disrespectful and insensitive.

It is one more case of a celebrity getting out of hand and society, justifiably, slapping them down.

Right?

The other big celebrity story last week was that actor, Gary Coleman died. Coleman was probably the least troubled child actor of the very troubled cast of Different Strokes. The lives of these young stars read like something out of noir thriller, albeit a very dark one, with drug addiction, prostitution, armed robbery, murder and suicide all happening under the watchful eye of an insatiable media.

And, of course, the cast from Different Strokes is far from alone. The child stars who manage to escape the trauma of their celebrity and live relatively healthy lives are definitely in the minority.

Usually, our response to these stories, when we think about them at all, is that those child actors sure are crazy. However, when you hear the same story over and over again, particularly, when we are talking about children, the only rational conclusion is that the system itself is not only crazy, but incredibly cruel.

We take these kids into hearts, Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap, Cory Haim in The Lost Boys, Danny Bonaducci in The Partidge Family, and then, when things start falling apart, we just keep on watching as if it is still part of the show.

Watching Arnold on Different Strokes was fun but it's even more fun to watch him sue his parents, lose his fortune become addicted to drugs and end up working in mall. It's just another piece of entertainment for our consumption.

Personally, I think any parent who is even considering getting their kid into the entertainment industry, should be forced to sit down and watch a marathon of Behind the Music and E True Hollywood Stories. Picture your kid in 20 years because if they are lucky enough to find real "success" the odds are, this is what they are in for.

Of course, shows like that are not just the documentation of the disease. They are also a symptom. After all, not nearly as many people tune in to see the biography of Ron Howard, one of the few child stars who seems to have escaped his celebrity adolescence unscathed, as watch the inside scoop on Michael Jackson.

The truth is, it's the dirt we can't get enough of. The more they fail, the better we like it.

During one celebrity feeding frenzy (I can't remember which one) George Clooney was asked why we love celebrities so much and his response (I'm paraphrasing here) was that this is not how you treat someone you love. This is how you treat someone you hate.

After all, nobody did a piece on CNN about how Kirsten Stewart was doing PSA's for a rape prevention organization. That wasn't news. She only became news when she said something stupid.

And it was stupid. There is no doubt about that, but we all say and do stupid things all the time. The only difference is that we don't have 50 members of the press following us around 24/7 waiting for us to slip up.

And, it's not just limited to child stars. We love all the dirt.

Movie star picked up a prostitute? Tell me more.

Rock star got arrested? Let me see the mug shot.

Professional athlete slept around? Let’s hope there’re pictures. Or eve better. Video!

President got a blow job in the oval office? Well, I can spend at least a year on that.

Of course, most people would say that they asked for this. They wanted to be celebrities and now that they have fame, fortune and success, now that they are living the glamours lifestyle we all wish we had, all they can do is whine about it.

But Britney Spears didn't lay in bed dreaming of being chased by photographers for the rest of her life. She wanted to be a singer. Tiger Woods, didn't practice putting for hours every day in order to have his personal life exposed to the world. Ben Aflek and Jennifer Lopez didn't start dating so that they could become the center of the gossip universe.

But let's say, they did ask for it. They wanted to be big stars, drive fancy cars, and hobnob with the elite, and this is just the price of fame.

Fine.

Because the truth is, I'm not just worried about them. I'm worried about us.
There are serious things going on in the world, real problems, that require our attention but like rubberneckers on the freeway, we just can't stop ourselves from looking at the wreck on the side of the road, and the news media (for lack of a better term) is in the business of giving us what we want.

So, when they are trying to decide whether or not to spend an hour on an in depth analyses of the situation in Gaza which will bring in a few thousand viewers or an expose of the latest celebrity debacle which will bring in millions, they will chose the debacle every time.

We are the ones who have to stop it.

It's time to boycott the gossip.

So, next time you hear, "Teen star caught drinking at..."

Change the channel.

A link pops up on your twitter feed about the latest sex scandal?

Don't click on it.

Your favorite talk show can't stop gossiping about some celebrity's bad hair day?

Stop listening to them.

We've become a nation of addicts and it's time for us to go cold turkey.

Don't get me wrong. I'm an addict too. I read those stories, click on those links and even get sucked into the despicable TMZ, but I'm tired of supporting an industry which destroys people's lives and distracts all of us from the really important stuff. I'm admitting I have a problem.

It's time to stop.

It's time for us to demand that the media show us the news that matters and if they don't, we're simply going to change the channel.

The only exception to the gossip boycott is when the scandal represents a particularly vile form hypocrisy. If the story is about a politician who is caught with a gay prostitute after campaigning against gay rights, or a pundit who wants the border closed but doesn't want to lose his housekeeper who is in the country illegally. Those scandals represent substantive, issues that need to be discussed and their hypocrisy should be exposed.

So I say let them have it.

As for the rest; the child stars going nuts, the rock idol struggling with drug addiction, the athlete who's marriage is falling apart, let's give them a break. Please.

Afraid, you're going to miss out on all the juicy bits? Well, here's a cheat sheet for you.

1.People from all walks of lives, not just celebrities, use drugs and alcohol. Some of those people will become addicts. The process of addiction is never a pretty one and it's not made any easier by having a camera in your face.

2. People with the talent and dedication to do something really, really well, are probably a little bit crazy and that crazy will often manifest itself in destructive ways.

3.Power and fame corrupt. Telling someone they are great, isolating them from criticism and reinforcing these believes for years will warp even the most stable of personalities.

4.The corrupting influences of power and fame are magnified a thousand fold when applied to the fragile psyche of a child or an adolescent.

In other words musicians, actors, athletes, politicians and, most tragically, child stars, are going to sleep around, do drugs, go into rehab, get arrested, get divorced and generally fuck up their lives.

It's going to happen.

Now stop watching!

Eulogy for Barbara Smith

2010-02-21T22:41:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday I had the honor of giving the Eulogy for my grandmother, Barbara Smith, who died on Friday, February 12th less than 2 weeks before her 91st birthday. Barbara was an important force in my life and I spent a very long time walking the streets around my parents house, trying to figure out what I wanted to say. Although I spoke without notes, the following is the closest approximation I can make to what I said in my grandmother’s honor.

I suppose it’s not surprising to any of you that I’ve thought a lot about this moment in the last couple of years. There were so many late night phone calls, so many mad dashes to the hospital, so many doctors who measured the time in days or weeks but never months. They told us to prepare ourselves and we did.

And then Barbara would bounce.

And then she would bounce

And then she would bounce.

Until, the reality of her resilience became more dependable than any prognosis, no matter how dire.

Which is why I find it so suddenly shocking to be standing here today. She was an incredibly powerful force in the life of my family. She drew us all into her orbit through the strength of her character and now that she’s gone, I feel my family spinning aimlessly in the dark and I am left standing here, trying to make sense of the light that has gone.

Her name was Barbara. Let’s get that straight right off the bat. Barbara.

Most of you know the story, that when my sister Kathy was born my grandmother decided that she was far “too young” to be called Grandma or, God forbid, Granny and she continued to be “too young” until the day she died just before her 91st birthday. Sometimes I thought she was younger than me.

She went by some other names too. A few people called her Barb. I used to call her Babs (but never to her face). If you were a waiter in San Francisco you knew you had to step up your game if you saw Mrs. Smith had a reservation that night. But my favorite name, and one that I only heard about a few years ago, was Buzz.

Buzz.

You could see her every once in a while, even in the last months when Barbara was very ill. When Barbara was in the right kind of mood getting just the right kind of attention, (usually from a man) her hips would start to sway and she would smile and make a CLICK CICK sound. And there she was... Buzz

Buzz was the the girl who stole her Dad’s car, snuck into speakeasies and hitched a ride on a barnstorming biplane. I picture her young and fierce and beautiful and maybe just a little bit dangerous-daring the boys to keep up with her and not being too disappointed when they couldn’t but knowing she had found a friend for life when they could.

You can only imagine how proud my grandfather Bob Smith was when she chose him. I wish I could’ve known him better.

My grandmother always seemed to know the right way to do things, whether it was how to bid a hand of bridge or where to get the best deals on linens in Cairo or dishware in Copenhagen. She knew the right way to handle money and how a family was supposed to behave around each other. Maybe that’s why she enjoyed doing needlepoint so much. That’s something I never got. It seemed mind numbingly boring to me. How she could spend hour after hour following those patterns, making sure all those bright colored threads were placed absolutely perfectly?

Barbara knew exactly how things were supposed to be and when the world broke the rules, when a waiter didn’t treat her just right, or a politician misbehaved or her grandson didn’t call her on her birthday, Barbara was hurt, and she was angry and she was somehow betrayed.

I never knew how the world was supposed to be. I’ve always seen the world as grey and complicated, filled with subtle hues, shifting constantly with every change of perspective. But no matter how hard I tried to explain that to her, no matter how hard I tried to show her the world as I saw it, she never could. She chose instead to believe in the world as it was “supposed” to be and that made this strong woman very, very fragile.

My grandmother talked with her eyes closed. You all noticed that, right? Whenever my friends would meet her they would pull me aside after and say, “Hey man. Did you know your grandmother talks with her eyes closed?” And I’d say, “Oh, gee, I never noticed that.”

I mean it’s weird, right?

And I started to wonder. “Where does that come from?” I mean has anybody ever asked her about it. I asked my mom but she didn’t know. No one did.

I mean it really started to bug me. I wanted to grab her and say, “Look at me!!” “See me!!”

Because, you see, although I’ve always known that Barbara loved me there were many times when I thought she didn’t really know me.

But then, how hard have I tried to know her.

All I had focused on was the world she was missing. I never stopped to think about what she was seeing. What movie was playing behind the lids of her closed eyes? What world was she seeing?

Well, first of all, we can be sure that everyone there is impeccably dressed. Every waiter recognizes her and her grandson never forgets to call. Maybe it’s a world where smart girls in the thirties were allowed to follow their fathers into business and accomplish great things. I’m sure it’s a world where she didn’t have to see her husband taken away so early or watch so many of those dear to her die before their time. It must be a place far from the ravages of age and cancer, where the threads of her life are woven exactly as they are supposed to be and the bright vibrant colors of the world never fade.

And there, at the center of it all, buzzing with light, is a beautiful woman. Smart, fierce, joyful... and young.

And that’s how I’ll try to remember her.

The Maximum Wage

2010-02-05T11:15:00.001-08:00

The Maximum Wage

There was a time when the American dream meant a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. Remember, we are a nation of immigrants, many of whom came to this country with little more than the clothes on their back. For them, it was enough to build a safe life where their children would never face the hardships that brought them to our shores. That was the American dream.

Today, however, the American Dream is one of mansions and private planes. It is a dream of wealth, fame and power so limitless that it can never, actually be achieved. This dream has created a new generation of Robber Barons who are willing to do almost anything, destroy the environment, enslave workers in the most oppressive conditions, and even start wars in order to add one more million to their already bloated bank accounts. And we have allowed them to do it.

It’s time for that to end.

For years, we have had a minimum wage in this country. I think we need a maximum wage as well.

I propose that we limit income (salary and bonuses) to one million dollars a year. That’s it. That’s all you can make. I don’t care if you’re a big movie star, a baseball player or the president of Pepsi. One million. No more.

Does this sound un-American to you? Does it stink of socialism or communism? Well, how American is it to have people going to bed hungry? To have parents working two and three jobs to pay for their children’s medical expenses? How American is it to support dictators and fight wars over oil?

Does this mean I’m against people getting rich? Absolutely not. I believe that success, hard work and innovation should be rewarded. If you bring a company from bankruptcy to solvency, write the great American novel or design a better mousetrap you should definitely make good money.

The question is, “how much money, is good money?” Right now, according to our society, the answer to that question is, “as much as you can possibly get.”

The truth is one million dollars a year is a shitload of money. It’s enough for mansions and Rolls Royces and first class trips around the world. In other words, you’re going to be just fine.

But there are a lot of people making one hell of a lot more than that. For instance, over the last three years, the top 5 executives at 20 financial institutions (all of whom received bailout money) had combined compensations of over 3.2 Billion dollars. Do the math. That’s 100 guys averaging over ten million a year whose companies were inches away from bankruptcy.

All I’m suggesting is that they get a pay cut from dirty, stinking, ridiculously rich down to just very, very rich.

We stand at the brink of both economic and environmental collapse. We are all going to have to make sacrifices and if that means that some CEO is going to have to settle for last year’s Lear Jet then so be it.

So what am I suggesting here? Am I talking about massive taxes or automatic garnishing of the wages of millionaires? No. All I’m suggesting is a simple salary cap. How the company chooses to spend the millions they will be saving is up to them.

But, here are a few suggestions.

Lower your prices.

Sick of all those fees your bank is charging you? What about your cellphone bill or cable company? How about the interest rate on your credit card that just skyrocketed? You can’t afford to pay for health care but the CEO of your insurance provider can afford to buy his own private island.

Pay your employees more.

In 1981 the average CEO made 42 times more than his average employee. Today that average is 431 to 1. WalMart CEO H. Lee Scott received $29.7 million in 2007, which is 1,314 times the salary of the average Walmart employee. And, of course, those are American wages. If you compared CEO salaries to offshore employees where wages are often set at pennies an hour, those ratios would be in the tens of thousands.

Treat your employees better

And it’s not just salaries. We’ve heard the excuse over and over, “We can’t afford to give our employees health care/Better working conditions/child care, etc. Well, we’ve just put a few extra million dollars in your coffers to do just that. And again, the offshore situation is far worse. Although I wont go so far as to say that we use slave labor to build our products, it’s not that far from the truth. Policies which we would find abhorrent in the US, child labor, unsafe conditions, massive hours etc. are common practices at American run companies all over the world.

Treat the environment better

Again, we’ve heard the excuse, “We can’t afford to clean up our factories.” Well, I for one believe that if you’re taking home 20 million dollars and you’re still poisoning our planet, you’re not trying hard enough.

Be a better citizen

If corporations are to be given all the rights of a citizen (as the supreme court just mistakenly ruled) then it’s time for them to take on the responsibilities of a citizen. None of us live in isolation. We all have a shared duty to take care of our communities, our children, our planet and our people.

You might say that the maximum wage would only provide a small fraction of the funds we need to solve the massive problems of our time and you’d probably be right. However, this isn’t just about the money. It’s about the motivation. With salaries capped, our business leaders can no longer benefit from some of the destructive and dangerously short sighted policies they have used in the past.

These are people in positions of tremendous power and power, as we all know, corrupts. We cannot eliminate the consequences of that corruption but we can, at least, rein in the rewards.

The truth is I believe in capitalism. I believe that hard work, innovation, and even good luck should be rewarded but I also believe that the unrestrained quest for wealth is dangerous and if we’re not careful it might just transform the American Dream into the American Nightmare.

The Danger of Safety

2009-12-31T13:31:00.001-08:00

The critical moment has come, the hour is late, and it is time for us to face the terrifying truth.

We are not safe. We will never be safe, and the desire to insulate ourselves from the dangers of the world is often far more destructive than the threats we are attempting to avoid.

On December 26th, 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, tried to ignite a bomb on a Northwest airline flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. This incident has the Obama administration scrambling to reassess our security procedures and convince the American public that it is doing everything possible to assure their safety.

Here are some of the proposals.

Full body scans required on all passengers at all airports.
Passengers must have their hands in plain sight one our after takeoff and before landing
Barring lavatory use for one hour after takeoff and before landing
Canceling all direct flights from "suspect" countries.
More Background checks
More random searches
More restrictive baggage rules
And our old friend racial profiling.

All of this at a cost of Billions of dollars, millions of man hours and perhaps the loss of a bit more of our humanity.

But, if it means saving even one human life, it’s worth it, isn’t it?

No. It’s not.

It’s time for us to get out of the risk elimination business and get into the business of risk management.

The truth is people are going to die. They will die in their bathtubs and in their cars. They will die in shootings, by lightning, from disease, and from old age. They will die by accident, and they will die by intent. In war and in peace.

The world is a dangerous, unpredictable place and anyone who says you can be 100% safe is a liar.

So does that mean we should eliminate all safety measures, tear down the security checkpoints, and rip all the seat-belts out of cars?

Of course not.

However, with limited resources, (and our resources have become very limited indeed) it is important to face our fears and make rational decisions about where we can save the most lives.

We are terrified of another attack. However, in the 8 years since 9/11 there has not been one successful airline, terrorist attack in the United States. Even including September 11th, deaths from terrorism represent only a tiny fraction of our annual, preventable deaths.

If the Northwest bomber had succeeded he would’ve added 290 deaths to that number. Would such an event have been a tragedy? Yes.

But compare that to the tens of thousands of deaths from auto accidents each year or the hundreds of thousands of deaths from preventable diseases like obesity and lung cancer.

Want to save real lives? Take all fast food and sugared soda off the market tomorrow or reduce the maximum speed on all American roadways to 35 miles per hour.

That’s it. We’ve just saved thousands of lives. But we don’t want to do that because we judge (and I think rightly) that the cost to our lifestyle, our economy and even our personal freedoms is simply too high.

However, we will sacrifice almost anything in order to protect ourselves from terrorism

We have given up our freedoms, sabotaged our economy, and fought two poorly conceived and irresponsibly, executed wars. We have cost the lives of thousands of American soldiers and not tens, but hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani people, the vast majority of whom have never attacked the United States. The result has been a wrecked economy, a devastated military and a world which, for the most part, sees America as a decadent, aggressive and wholly self interested giant.

All of this, in a vein attempt to make us safe.

I don’t want to give up on security. In fact, when it comes to the really big stuff, chemical, nuclear and biological weapons, I think we haven’t done nearly enough. We still haven’t secured our ports, or our nuclear facilities and we are still unable to control the world’s fissionable material.

However, I, for one, have no desire to see my nation, predicated on the concept of liberty, transformed into some kind of gated community, complete with background checks, strip searches and endless suspicion.

I choose instead to be less safe, to accept that tragedies will happen but that sometimes the price of freedom is not eternal vigilance, but rather the courage to face our fears and dare to hope.

On Brevity

2009-06-27T14:57:00.000-07:00

Okay. I’ll try to keep this short (but I probably will fail)

Brevity is king. Between, sound bites on CNN, the death of newspapers and the rise of such sites as Twitter , YouTube and Facebook , the era of patience is over.

And if I haven’t grabbed you by now, you’ve probably already clicked somewhere else.

We used to have a lot of time. Before the age of mass media, whole communities would gather to hear speeches lasting many hours, and read books which were both long and complex. However, with the introduction of television, came competition for our attention.

If you don’t like what is on, you simply switch to another channel. Holding your attention was easy when there were only three networks but soon there were fifty, then five hundred and now, with the rise of the internet, the number of “channels” is essentially infinite.

This is not a revolution. Revolutions are fought by visionaries with particular ideologies. The internet age has had it’s visionaries, to be sure: Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google , Craig Newmark of CraigsList or Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia to name just a few. However, the genius of their vision was to stand aside and allow their customers to create what they wanted. The same is true of Facebook , flickr , Twitter and YouTube . In other words, they might’ve started the ball rolling but the resulting new economy of information, just happened through natural selection.

In other words, this is not a revolution. This is evolution.

In some ways I think this is a good thing. Competition breeds quality and infinite choices means no one, no matter how powerful or well established, can afford to take their audience or users for granted.

We’ve already seen how much faster Twitter is than traditional news sources and how much more variety there is onYouTube than on the networks. However, we are also losing something and I believe that loss might be very dangerous.

First of all, there are no moderate sound-bites.

If you want to get noticed you have to be extreme. Whether it’s the daily news round up on MSNBC or your latest post on Twitter , no one is interested in the middle ground. That means there is a natural tendency towards polarization in new media. No one will re-tweet that I have mild misgivings with a particular policy, or event. If I want an audience, I have to say that it is the “worst fucking thing I’ve ever heard of in my entire life.” or, better yet, “people who support (blank) are baby raping devil worshipers.” That’s the way to get noticed and that is frequently what is broadcast, followed and repeated.

The result is that the perception of polarization is much greater, and, in this interactive age, perception and reality are symbiotically connected.

Another consequence, and I believe a far more dangerous one, is that while certain ideas are easy to express in a few words, some ideas, frequently the best ones, take time.

Even our briefest speeches, such as The Gettysburg address (278 words) or Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a Dream” speech (1675 words), are too long and complex for todays appetites. Is it possible to compress Lincoln’s Second Inaugural or Eisenhower’s Farewell Address into a sound-byte or tweet? No.

And those speeches are still relatively short. How will Dostoyevsky’s ruminations on God and Morality play in the modern era? Where is the time for Plato’s dialogues or even Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance ? Could you tell the stories of Hamlet or Lawrence of Arabia in a few seconds? Yes. Would the stories be better? No.

The way we get information today is unbelievably broad and incredibly varied but it is often dangerously shallow. You simply can’t run a government, discuss the intricacies of human society or dig deep into personal emotion in a few seconds.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m fan of Web 2.0. I believe the socialization of media has democratized information and given new power and influence to the general public. It has fostered new ideas and new collaborations. However, this transformation does not come without a price and I am concerned that deep, difficult and complex ideas will be lost in the tidal wave of brevity.

After all, revolutions can be fought but evolution is inevitable.

Fuck The Auto Industry!

2009-06-22T11:04:00.000-07:00

I have never been prouder of a vote than the one I cast last year for Barack Obama. However, as much as I admire him personally, and as much as I applaud much of what he’s done in the first few months of his administration, I am deeply concerned by his attempts to bolster America’s economy.

I was outraged by the Bush administration’s close ties to Wall Street and big industry. I felt that our democracy had become an oligarchy, where the richest few could control the future of our nation and the world. Under the Obama administration that relationship has been flipped upside down with the government now stepping in to save, and even take control of, those industries who are most responsible for our failing economy.

I make no comment on the far larger banking bailout. Believe me, I have my misgivings, but I am too overwhelmed by the complexity of the banking industry to make an informed comment (In the interest of full disclosure I should also note that I own some CitiGroup stock)

However, I believe that the Auto Industry Bailout is dangerous, wasteful, anti-democratic and I say,

“FUCK ‘EM!”

Remember that these are the same guys who’ve been fighting tooth nail against mileage and pollution standards for the last four decades. They claimed that higher standards would cost American jobs, then they turned around and shipped those jobs overseas. You have to wonder what would have happened, had the big three listened to men like Jimmy Carter and Ralph Nader who called for a reduction in our dependence on foreign oil during the first oil crisis back in the Seventies.

These are the guys who have used political pull and economic pressure to stifle competition and new ideas. Remember Tucker? There used to be dozens of American car companies. Now there are only three. A little competition might have given us better cars and more profitable companies. Instead, we have aging giants who use their lumbering power, not to make better cars but to stave off their own inevitable extinction.

Capitalism is the evolution of economics. That which works, survives and thrives. That which fails will whither and die. Evolution is not nice or compassionate. It is neither nostalgic nor sentimental. If you can’t survive you wont. That’s it. No second chances. It is that hard reality that has given us the best products at the cheapest prices and it is that system which is threatened when the ties between government and industry become to close.

For years, the right has used this philosophy to condemn the poor and destitute. For years, they have said that handouts only reward bad behavior. I’ve never agreed with that philosophy when applied to a starving child or cancer patient, desperate for healthcare, but when it comes to a big business that has drastically and repeatedly damaged us, I say,

“FUCK EM!”

Now, I know the argument. I know that the death of GM and Chrysler will put millions out of work. I know that people will lose their pensions and I know that cities like Detroit, which are already in deep trouble, will be mortally wounded.

I’m not insensitive to those issues. In fact, it is those issues that I really care about. However, is handing a few billion dollars to failing companies the way to save Detroit? What evidence do we have that these companies will be able to overcome decades of corporate culture and reform? How do we know that they wont be asking us for another hundred billion dollars next year?

Even with the money they’ve already received, these companies have closed dozens of factories and hundreds of dealerships. In other words, they are already putting people out of work despite the billions we’ve given them.

So I say,

“FUCK THE AUTO INDUSTRY”

The truth is, I agree with President Obama that our nation is in serious trouble and that drastic actions are required. I agree with him that we must keep America working. However, if my tax dollars are going to pay the salaries of millions, then we should hire them to build the future, not the past.

I mean, these are cars we’re talking about. They are a big part of the problem. The internal combustion engine might have fueled the twentieth century but it’s killing the twenty-first. They are bad for our health, our environment and our economy and they have drastically shifted the world’s power structure in ways which are extremely dangerous.

Instead of putting these people to work building cars, which only exacerbate our problems, let’s put them to work building a modern, oil independent nation. Let’s build a modern power grid. Let’s build wind, solar, and nuclear plants. Let’s repair our roads, update our failing infrastructure and build the foundation for a twenty-first century economy.

You say we need cars? Fine. But let’s invest, in new technologies from hungry young companies, like Tesla, or the incredibly ambitious, Better Place Electric car company.

If every problem is an opportunity in disguise, then we must see this downturn, not as a time to shore up lost causes, but rather as an opportunity to build a new, cleaner, safer and more efficient nation.

So, I say, it’s time to let the dinosaurs die, they are bound to anyway, and let’s put America to work on something that makes sense, The Future.

Knowing Anything

2009-02-23T08:58:00.000-08:00

In all of the discussions I have had as a result of this blog and all of the other philosophical discussions I have had over the last few years there is one phrase which never fails to bug the hell out of me.

“Well, you can’t really know anything.”

People always feel very clever when they roll this one out. It is, they feel a knockout blow to any declarative statement, logical progression or even simple list of facts. “You can’t really know anything.” That’s it. They win.

This phrase, and other’s like it (“Everything is subjective.” “You can’t disprove the existence of God.” etc.) are not conversation starters but rather conversation enders.

Of course, on some level, they’re right.

Are we incredibly limited creatures who’s only ability to understand the world around us is through the conduit of our own narrow senses? Yes. Is it possible that those senses are lying to us? Yes. Are we subjective creatures who perceive reality through the filter of our background, desires and prejudices? Yes. Is it possible that our perception of reality is entirely manufactured? Yes.

We could be locked in a chemical coma with our brains hot-wired, as in The Matrix, or lying in a padded cell in a mental institution. It is even possible that we don’t exist at all.

In fact, once you start going down this road absolutely anything is possible.

And that’s the problem.

If you can’t really know anything, then the sun could rise in the north tomorrow. Pigs could fly and fire could freeze. How could we survive in a world where we can’t know anything?

I’m not saying that ideas like this should never be discussed. Any idea which forces us to rethink our perceptions and preconceptions is a useful tool. Asking the question “Can we really know anything?” is the beginning of a wonderful conversation. Although in my opinion a much more interesting conversation can be had by asking, as my friend, Mike Hoover, does, “How do we know what we know?” There is a lot of mileage and introspection to be got out of that one.

However stating that nothing can be known is in my opinion both irresponsible and even dangerous.

Here’s why:

1. It’s not scientific. Disprovability, is in many ways a more, important, scientific criteria than provability. People often say, “You can’t disprove the existence of God.” Which is true, but so what? As Bertrand Russell used to say. “You also can’t disprove the existence of a flying, invisible, spaghetti monster.” In fact, there are an infinite number of things which I cannot disprove. Science is interested in those things which could be disproved. I could disprove evolution right now. All I have to do is find a porcupine that gives birth to a cactus. However, there is no experiment on earth, or mathematical equation I can produce, or even logical argument I can create to disprove the existence of God or the spaghetti monsters or anything else. If the same statement can be used to argue for or against anything, it has no scientific value.

2. It’s Lazy. Anyone can say it, at any time. It requires no work, no education. There is no research involved or years of labor. It requires no intelligence or discipline. It is, in my opinion, the last argument of a lazy mind and represents, the desire to close, not only the eyes of the speaker, but the eyes of the world.

3. It isn’t useful. And this is really the big one. “You can’t really know anything.” Puts us back in the caves without even a fire to keep us warm.

Imagine two primitive men back in the ice age. One says, “I don’t know why those wooly mammoths come back to the same watering hole every year but I know that they do, so let’s set a trap.” The other says,”Well you can’t really know anything.” Which one of them is more likely to feed his family? Which one of them is more likely to learn why the mammoths return each year? Which one of them will pass that knowledge onto his children and, more importantly, the knowledge that you can, in fact, know some things? In short, which one of them will survive and grow and which one of them will remain stagnant and probably die?

Try saying “You can’t really know anything.” the next time you fly in airplane, drive across a bridge or go to the pharmacy to pick up your antibiotics. Those things, and many others were created by people who believed that knowledge was something that could be gained and used for the betterment of themselves and the rest of the human race.

“You can’t really know anything.” Has the wonderful advantage of sounding, smart, cynical, and superior all at once but it is, in my opinion, a very clever dead end. We can’t know everything. That’s true. The pursuit of knowledge, however, begins with the idea that we can know some things and that knowledge, itself, is worth pursuing.

The Prisoner and The Pawn

2009-02-07T17:15:00.000-08:00

Two men.

Both wealthy and respected. Both learned and disciplined. Both the heads of large and influential families. Both doomed to suffering, not by their vices, but rather, by their virtues.

One was a man of faith, the other, a man of science.

The man of faith was the foremost citizen in the foremost city of the known world but despite his power and wealth, he was humble and pious. He knew that the most important values in the world were not those that could be tallied or traded but only felt. He was, in short a devout follower of unseen, unfathomable God and he knew, without a shadow of doubt, not only that his God was real, but that God loved him.

The man of science was born in a city devoted to God where all the teachers were God’s servants and all truth was defined by his holy church. But when he looked around, the truth he witnessed wasn’t what he had been taught and that left him in a terrible dilemma. “Does it take more courage to open one’s eyes or to close them?”

There were those who were unimpressed by the man of faith’s devotion. “It’s easy”, they would say, “to have faith when you are a rich.” It does not take great character to have faith in luxury but faith in suffering is hard and sometimes the greatest lessons come with the greatest price.

The man of science knew that closing his eyes to the truth would be easier, but the call of knowledge was too beautiful to ignore and so he opened his eyes ever wider and began to study. He measured the movements of the planets and the stars. He touched earth and stone. He sought truth in fire and water and the more he learned, the more he came to understand that the word of God, so long spoken with certainty, was at best in error and at worst an outright lie.

How do you keep your faith in the face of tragedy? How can you love a God who takes away everything you hold dear? The man of faith watched his wife and children die of disease. He lost his fortune, his status in the community, and his home. Even his health deserted him and this once proud pillar of society became homeless, destitute and diseased. He valued faith above all other things and now faith was all he had left.

If you are going to argue with God, you better have your facts straight. Years went by. Decades. The man of science spent long nights charting the stars and long days working out the mysteries of their movements. Even when he was certain he had unlocked their secrets he returned to his studies and sought out his own mistakes. Doubting what the rest of the world takes for granted might be the pathway to new knowledge, but turning the light of doubt on your own preconceptions and fallibility is the first step towards wisdom. When he was finally certain, the man of science told his story to the world and it almost cost him his life.

Everyone told the man of faith to abandon God. “How can you love a God who clearly doesn’t love you?” “How can a just God allow such suffering to be visited on a just and faithful man?” The logic, they said, was self evident. “Either God does not exist, or, if he does, he does not love you.” The man of faith listened patiently but in his heart he knew the truth.

In 1633 Galileo Galilei was called before the inquisition in Rome under the charge of heresy. His believe in a heliocentric universe was in direct contradiction to the geocentric universe described in scripture. Galileo was imprisoned and forced to recant his views. However, there is a legend (probably apocryphal) that after admitting, under threat of torture and death, that the earth was the stationary center of the universe, he whispered under his breath, “And yet, it moves.”

Job never gave up his faith and, in the end, God returned his health, wealth and status. That God was also responsible for his suffering is the wellspring of a great debate. How can we love a God who could so callously torture one of his most devoted followers simply to prove a point to Satan? Is Job a saint to be admired and emulated, or a fool?

The journeys of faith and science are both long and difficult. They both require dedication and discipline. They both often mean pitting yourself against the prevailing culture and enduring the derision of the world. However, in the end, these two journey’s are walked in opposite directions. The discipline of science is one of doubt, of seeking facts not feelings, of believing not what we wish is true but only what can be proven. The discipline of faith is internal. It is about letting go of doubt. It’s power is derived not from the head but from heart. It is a way of finding hope, when logic would say all hope is gone.

Science and faith can both save lives, change civilizations and, perhaps, even move mountains but they have walked so long in opposite directions that they have lost site of each other and that might be a tragedy for both.

On the Power of Faith

2008-10-09T13:04:00.000-07:00

Those of you who know me, or have read my blog, know that I am not a religious person. Logic, consistency, objectivity and provability are the standards by which I try (albeit at times unsuccessfully) to live my life. Those standards, are frequently at odds with those of religion, which value faith above all other things.

This predilection for the scientific perspective has naturally led me into one heated discussion after another with my more religious friends. These discussions invariably end badly, with me disappointed in my friend/opponent’s inability to see the inconsistencies in their faith while they are equally frustrated and sometimes angry with, what they see as, my patronizing attitude towards their most, cherished beliefs.

So, rather than once again reviewing my litany of Biblical inconsistencies, mocking the biography of Joseph Smith, or trying to explain the criteria for scientific proof, I have decided to examine the question of faith from a decidedly different angle.

Let us first stipulate that although it is possible (albeit, in my opinion very unlikely) for one, particular religion to be literally true, it is impossible for all religions to be literally true.

If the tenants of Hinduism are correct about reincarnation then Judaism must be false in it’s belief in only one life on earth . If, as the Jews believe, the Messiah has not yet appeared, then Christianity must be false as it is based on the divinity of Jesus. If Jesus was, as the Christians believe, the last great prophet, then the followers of Mohammed must be following a fraud.

If one is true, the others must be false. Consequently, since none of the religions of the world represent a majority of the religious population, it follows that the vast majority of religious people on the planet believe in a doctrine which is not true.

However, the fact that most religious people on the planet must be wrong does not effect the intensity of their faith.

The question is, “Is it possible that something which is not literally true can have real and transformative value?”

Here’s a story.

A Jew, a Muslim, a Christian and a Buddhist walk into an AA meeting. All four men have struggled with alcoholism for many years. All four men have tried, over and over again, to fight their addiction with will power and all have failed. All four men begin the twelve step program by admitting they are powerless over their alcoholism. All four men turn their problem over to a higher power. All four men define that higher power differently. Yet, all four manage to do something they have never been able to do on their own.

They stop drinking.

And who gets the credit for this transformation? God? Buddha? Allah? Jesus? If Jesus helped the Christian quit drinking who helped the Buddhist? Who helped the Jew? They cannot all exist and yet all four men found help.

So, what gave these men the power to do what they couldn’t do on their own?

Faith did. Not truth. Not God. Faith.

The Placebo Effect

The placebo effect is really a study in the power of the human mind, or, depending on how you look at it, the power of bullshit. Tell a patient that the sugar pill they are ingesting is a cure and you vastly increase the chances that they will recover. This isn’t psudo-science or new age mysticism. This is carefully documented scientific fact. Our health is intimately linked to our state of mind.

The placebo effect can work in the opposite way as well. In a recent study, the arms of a group of students were rubbed by a plant which they were told was poison ivy. 80% of those students developed rashes consistent with that plant’s effect, despite the fact that the plant they touched wasn’t poison Ivy at all.

Since scientists are seeking real drugs and techniques which can consistently combat disease, they spend most of their time trying to eliminate the placebo effect from their research. Consequently, we think of placebo’s as a statistical anomaly or an experimental nuisance. However, I think that is a mistake.

These results are not inconsequential. They are substantiated and significant. I do not believe that our perceptions and beliefs can magically change the world around us (as we have been told by self help books like The Secret) However, there is no doubt that our beliefs can have powerful, transformative effects on ourselves and by transforming ourselves we do change both our perceptions of the world and how we act in it.

If faith in a tiny pill can cure disease, how much more powerful is faith in an omnipotent and loving God?

So, let us return to our AA members and examine, once again, how they managed their recovery. They knew that they could not beat their drinking on their own. They put their faith in a cure and the cure worked despite the fact that, for at least three out of four of them, the cure must not exist.

Is it possible that something which is not literally true can have real substantial value?

The answer is yes.

Here is a description of a religion.

You go with your family and community into a beautiful space. You perform rituals which are probably not all that different from what your great grand parents performed. You sing, read, and pray in unison. You listen to the wise words of elders. You meditate and contemplate your own life. You ask forgiveness for your inequities. You fast. You dance. You celebrate together and you mourn together. You lend your strength to the rest of the community when you can and take strength from the community when you need to. You have faith in a meaning and a power beyond this world.

The question is, which religion did I just describe? The answer: Pretty much all of them.

So, what do we conclude from this? That the major religions are nothing but plagiarists, callously stealing ideas from each other, or is it possible that the stuff religions do, fasting, singing, praying, is simply good stuff, regardless of whether the doctrine it is designed to support is true?

Almost every religion has the story of the wise man, Christian monk, Hindu ascetic, aboriginal Holy Man or Zen master, who turns his back on society and goes into the wilderness where, through a process of fasting, self denial, meditation, or even drug induced hallucination, has a transformative experience.

Again, what do we conclude from this. Do we see the transformative experience as evidence that the particular mythology the holy man subscribed to is true despite the fact, that that mythology is in direct contradiction to the holy men of other sects who had similar experiences or do we instead conclude that putting the mind and body through a profound change, fasting, deprivation, silence, torture, etc...can be transformative with or without any mythology at all?

The truth is that if you put the human body and mind in an extreme situation, whether it is fasting on your Yoga retreat or going through basic training in the marine corps something will happen, something profound.

Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela had their transformative experiences in prison.

So what do we tell our four AA members who’s faith saved their lives? What do we tell the billions of people across the globe who gain solace, hope and a sense of belonging from their religious traditions. What do we tell the men and women who have had a religious experience so profound that it has not only transformed their lives but, from their perspective, the entire world?

Do we tell them that these experiences are nothing more than dramatic examples of the placebo effect? Do we explain that songs, architecture and ritual do not prove the existence of God? Do we belittle the most important experience of their lives by explaining it?

Can you imagine how insulting that would sound?

Faith is real. Faith is powerful. Faith helped Gandhi and Martin Luther King stand up against impossible odds. Faith helped Jesus forgive his murderers. Faith might even have helped your team win the super bowl.

The truth is that all of the elements of religion; community, tradition, music, mediation, art, prayer, the personal spiritual journey, and yes even faith, can be positive and valuable additions to a person’s or community's life. The problem arises when that genuine value is seen as absolute proof that the particular doctrine they believe in must be true.

And that is very, very dangerous.

Faith exists beyond rational thought and is therefor easily manipulated and very difficult to argue with.

Our four AA men’s lives were literally saved by their faith, so how can they argue when their faith calls upon them to persecute homosexuals, burn down abortion clinics, or raise the shout of global Jihad against all the infidels who oppose the god that saved their life.

Faith has spilt it’s share of blood and the only hope we have is that we find a way to mediate the power of our faith with the power of reason.

In my opinion, the myths of Samson and Jonah are just as likely as the myths of Hercules and Loki or, for that matter, Superman and Spiderman.

However, I will acknowledge that your belief in those stories and your participation in the rituals that go along with them can have lasting and positive effects on your life and that of your community.

All I ask in return is that you acknowledge that believing in a thing beyond reason, beyond logic, can be as dangerous and destructive as it is beneficial.

I support your right to choose faith but I hope that it will be faith tempered by reason and compassion, a faith which is at once humble and forgiving, self-critical and patient.

In short, if your faith helps you strive to be a better person, then we have nothing to argue about.

The Myth of the Spotted Owl or Let's Make Some Money

2007-12-01T17:49:00.000-08:00

In 1986 a group of environmental activists commissioned the US Fish and Wildlife commission to save the spotted owl, a dark brown owl with white spots that had made it’s home in the lush old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately, saving the owl could mean putting thousands of people out of work, who’s livelihoods depended on the logging industry. The two sides were diametrically opposed and, to make matters worse, each measured success by an entirely different rubric, with species and ecosystems on the one hand, and jobs and profits on the other. Compromise was impossible because one side couldn’t stand the thought of a beautiful species lost forever and the other couldn’t stand to see men loose their livelihoods over something as insignificant as a few birds.

In many ways, the opposite sides in our current environmental debate continue to see the conflict in these stark black and white terms. Depending on where you get your news the two sides might be described as:

A group of bleeding heart liberals, most of whom have never worked a day in their lives and have no idea whatsoever of the value of a dollar or the kind of labor necessary to put the clothes on their backs and gas to go in their VW Buses.

and

The soulless elite, too obsessed with lining their already bloated bank accounts to see the ravages they are inflicting upon the earth.

There are people like this in the world, to be sure, but most of us live somewhere in the middle. Most environmentalists, believe it or not, have jobs, families and credit card bills. Most of them like making money and wouldn’t argue with making a little bit more. Few businessmen enjoy looking out at a smoggy horizon, and few are looking forward to a planet ravaged by climate change. Most of us care about our environment and our bank account and most of us believethat we have to choose between them.

That is a lie.

Are there areas where environmental concerns come into direct conflict with economic ones? Absolutely. But there are also many ways that the proper environemental choice is the best economic choice.

Here’s an example. For the last 32 years the American big three auto makers have fought tooth and nail against the CAFE standards which would force them to produce more fuel efficient automobiles. They argued that these cars would be too expensive to produce, cut into corporate profits (which would effect millions of stock holders) and result in the loss of tens of thousands of American jobs. The car lobby has been extremely successful in reducing (or getting around CAFE standards). At the same time, European and Asian car companies were focusing on making more fuel efficient cars. The result? The big three are in big trouble. General motors, one of the worlds largest companies, has been loosing billions and thousands of American auto workers have lost their jobs. Imagine what would have happened if The Big Three had gotten behind higher fuel standards 30 years ago, rather than fighting them.

And what about the cars we bought? One of the way the auto manufacturers got around the CAFE standards was to classify SUV’s (the biggest auto boom of the 90’s) as trucks which didn’t have to meet the same stringent fuel efficiency requirement. Millions of SUV’s were sold. I bought one myself. We all know that gas guzzling SUV’s are bad for the environment but how are they on the pocketbook? That answer has become far more obvious as gas prices have risen towards four dollars a gallon.

Hurting the environment has made us poorer.

We are, today, absolutely dependent up on fossil fuels the, price of which, as limited resources, will continue to grow. As the cost of oil, coal and natural gas increases we will grow poorer unless we can find a way to change. Sustainable energy sources, solar wind, biomass etc. are currently more expensive than fossil fuels. However, as technology advances, those power sources will only grow cheaper and those who invest in them will grow richer.

It is true that a coal power plant is far cheaper to build than a solar or wind plant of similar size. However, once the plants are built the coal plant must buy coal to produce electricity while the fuel for the sustainable plants is free. It is the difference between renting an apartment and buying a house. In the long run, one produces wealth while the other only costs money. Sustainable power is money in your pocket.

Will a move to sustainable energy cost some jobs in the fossil fuel industry? It will. However, far more jobs will be created elsewhere. The sustainable energy industry have exploded in the last few years creating thousands of jobs. Imagine how many people we could put to work in this country by requiring that all future expansion in energy usage come from sustainable energy?

We all know how destructive a culture of consumption is to our environment. From Landfills filled with discarded electronics and plastic bottles to factory’s spewing smoke into our atmosphere, from strip mining to the destruction of our rainforests, our planet, no matter how vast, has a limited number of resources and can only absorb so much abuse. However, consumption is the engine that drives our economy. If we stop buying, we are told, our economy will collapse.

However, the reality is, that, for most of us, our culture of consumption does not create wealth. It destroys it. The axiom, “The more you buy the less you have,” is more true today than ever, particularly when much of what we purchase is almost instantly obsolete. This is the difference between consumption and investment. Consumption gives momentary pleasure. A meal that you consume is gone in a few minutes. A stylish outfit ceases to have value as soon as it is out of fashion. A cutting edge cellphone or camera will be obsolete in a few years..

The more you buy the less you have.

I’m not saying that all consumption is bad. On a basic level we must consume to survive but a culture of consumption is a road to poverty not wealth. The path to wealth is to make sure that what we invest our money in has real real value, not just in the pleasure of the moment, but for the future. And remember, many of the great joys in life, conversation, sports, nature, family, friends, can be had with a minimal cost to the environment or your pocket book.

Even the big corporations, the traditional enemies of the environmentalists, are beginning to make environmentally friendly decisions. Wall-mart, the symbol of American consumerism, has announced an initiative to reduce energy usage in its existing stores by 20% and in new stores by 35%. Google, who’s server farms consume as much electricity as a small city, is developing a system which they hope will produce 100% of their energy sustainably in the next five years. And even the venerable General Motors, who’s gas guzzling Humvee is the bane of most environmentalists, is pouring tremendous resources into their new plug in hybrid, The Chevy Volt, which they hope will stanch the corporate bleeding and bring them back into the black.

Are they doing this out of a sense of planetary consciousness or merely as a public relations move to placate the growing concern over the environment? For now, I don’t think the motives matter and if big corporations learn they can make more money being environmentally friendly, so much the better.

The truth is that the pursuit of sustainability doesn’t mean that all the corporations and people of the world will make less money it merely means less money for the same people. The building companies who fear innovation will no longer be able to compete in a world where energy, livability and sustainability are as important as an attractive facade. Manufacturers who continue to follow the paradigm of unlimited resources will find themselves out thought and out competed by new companies with new ideas. And the oil companies, who have made record profits as the price of oil has skyrocketed, will see their profits and political influence decline when they can no longer hold an oil-dependent world ransom.

The fight to save the spotted owl might have been a worthy cause but it left behind it an America, and perhaps a world, which perceived a stark division between the environmentalist and economist, the nature lover and the money lover. What we have failed to see, perhaps, is that the most powerful transformative force on earth, the human race, is not removed from the natural world but is rather a part of it and that a healthy economy is directly dependent upon a healthy ecology.

The forces of the economy, like those of nature, are not interested in our good intentions. They are only interested in what works. Destroying the only planet we have, like counting money in a burning house, is a fool’s business plan.

My hope, is that perhaps someday in the future, it will not be a coincidence that the color of money, in this country is green.

Killing The Chicken

2007-11-17T13:00:00.000-08:00

“Have you ever killed a chicken?” This is one of the questions that my good friend, Mike Hoover, likes to ask when someone is saying something particularly naive or insensitive. “Have you ever killed a chicken?”

On some level, Hoover divides the world up into, “Chicken killers.” and “non-Chicken Killers”, those who are connected to the world in all it’s brutal reality and those who are not.

Most people, in this country aren’t chicken killers. In fact, for most of us, the closest we get to killing is picking out our cuts at the local super-market. We don’t see the blood, or the suffering, all we see is a product, impersonally prepared and wrapped in cellophane.

I’ve never killed a chicken. My friend Jeff has and he said it was one of the hardest things he’s ever had to do.

So, why does Mike Hoover, a very, smart compassionate man, want all of us to start murdering birds? What’s the big deal?

There was a time when we weren’t removed from death. If we wanted meat we had to kill. So, does that mean we were more callous about killing then, more cruel?

No. The opposite was true.

If you look at hunter gatherer societies, the animals they hunted were not hated or vilified, they were given positions of great respect in the community. The plains Indians did not hate the buffalo, they honored it, not only because it provided much of the raw materials necessary for their way of life, but also because, through the difficult process of hunting, they had come to know the animal. The buffalo wasn’t simply a walking dinner, it was a living breathing creature with a soul and a value. To hunt it honorably, and kill it humanely was the nature of their relationship.

However, to kill the animal and not use every bit of him was considered the cruelest kind of waste. Imagine, the horror the native Americans felt when this animal they respected, who played a key roll in their spiritual life, was hunted, almost to extinction, by ruthless men who were only interested in their hides and left the rest of the animal to rot in the sun.

However, somewhere Back East there was a buyer for that buffalo fur who never had to look into the eyes of the animal that died for him and thus had no pang of conscious for paying for the slaughter. It was a business transaction, nothing more.

I’m reminded of a question in Jedediah Purdy's book, Being America He asks, “Which American slaveholder treated his slaves with greater cruelty, the rich plantation owner with a thousand slaves, or the small farmer with only one?” My first instinct was to say the rich plantation owner. After all, he can afford to be generous, while the poor farmer can barely survive himself. Of course, the opposite is true. The rich plantation owner never really sees his slaves. He lives in a big house with every luxury and has no understanding of how his workers live. The poor farmer, on the other hand, lives much closer to his slave. He works side by side with him in the field. He eats the same food and wears the same kind of clothes. This proximity makes cruelty, if not impossible, far less likely.

Today, we are much further from the animals we eat than in anytime in history and, like the big plantation owner, our distance, our ignorance of where our food comes from, has made us cruel. It is a cruelty which manifests itself not in how our animals die but rather in how they live. Cows, living their whole lives, packed into industrial feed lots knee deep in their own filth. Chickens squeezed into cages so small they cannot turn around. We have become masters of efficiency, experts in turning grain into meat and meat into dinner.

We have separated ourselves from the killing fields because we abhor cruelty but the greater the distance, has made us far crueler than the hunter who kills the buffalo with his bow, or the rancher who slits the neck of the chicken he has cared for all his life.

However, it is not only the animals we eat who have been damaged by this separation. We have been damaged. In my last blog, I outlined how our industrial food system, has left us obese, malnourished, and vulnerable to new strains of disease, but this separation from the natural world, has consequences far beyond diet.

One Hundred years ago, 85% of the worlds population lived on farms or in small villages. Today, 85% of our, much greater, population lives in cities and that number is growing at a breakneck pace. Cities are ecosystems all their own, however, the needs of the urban ecosystem are in almost direct opposition to the needs of the natural one. Success in the city means following the urban paradigm, which is that consumption is success and greed is good. This philosophy has a direct, devastating effect on the natural world but the city dweller does not see the consequences of their actions and so they do not care. That this disconnected relationship damages the natural world is without question, but I believe it is equally damaging to modern man. Are we healthier in our regulated, manufactured, commercialized, and heavily branded urban existence? Are we happier? Are we kinder? Or have we, in fact, become more isolated, overworked, stressed, depressed and unhealthy?

Disconnection is the danger and a disconnection from death is a disconnection from life.

The modern world fears death in all it’s forms. We refuse to see it and this denial of one of the most fundamental realities of life is intensely destructive. There was a time when we died in our own homes, surrounded by our families. Today, death occurs in the sterile, industrial hallways of the hospital with the only human contact permitted during proper visiting hours. There was a time when the greatest concern at the approach of death was our spiritual well being. Today, the focus is on a thousand incomprehensible, medical tests. There was a time, when the bodies of our dead were cleaned and dressed by their families. Today, our dead are locked away in cold storage before they can be attended to by a professional. Which system gives better care in our last moments? Which system better prepares us to say goodbye? We have endeavored to protect ourselves from the pain of death but our lives are no less painful.

Does choosing not to see death make us less cruel or more?

Is a nation that sees an endless stream of mutilated bodies more likely to an end a war than a nation that chooses not to see?

The first thing we must accept is that death in and of itself is not cruel. Death is inexorably connected to life. It is all around us. Every living thing on earth survives on death. It is not cruel when the lion kills it’s prey. It is merely the natural order of things. Cruelty is a uniquely human invention. A sociopath is cruel because he enjoys watching the suffering of others with open eyes but the majority of cruelties, the vast atrocities of our times, are committed with eyes closed. The more we disconnect, the crueler we become.

By separating ourselves from death we have separated ourselves from life. We have created a system in which we are at odds with the natural world and so, at odds with ourselves. Perhaps the only way to save the planet is to touch the planet and perhaps touching the planet is the only way to save ourselves.

Does that mean we should all run out and start killing our own chickens? Not necessarily. It simply means we should begin the long and, sometimes painful, process of opening our eyes.

It Hurts When I Do This

2007-11-06T14:32:00.000-08:00

Here’s an old Joke.

Guy walks into a doctor’s office and says, “Dr. Dr. It hurts when I do this,.” The Doctor says, “Well, Don’t do that.”

Not a very good joke maybe, but for the last few weeks it’s been running around my head in an endless, irritating loop.

“It hurts when I do this.”

“Well, don’t do that.”

Can you imagine how angry it would make you to walk into doctor’s office with a serious medical condition and the only solace he offers is, “Well, don’t do that”? We want solutions when we go to the doctor. We want cures for our problems not limitations on our behavior.

But maybe that’s not the joke. I’m only assuming this guy has a serious medical concern. Maybe he’s a hypochondriac. Maybe the thing that hurts is his little toe when he bashes it repeatedly, with a mallet. Maybe “Don’t do that” is just what this guy needs to hear.

Every history class I ever took from grammar school to graduate school was a testament to progress; from tyranny to democracy, from the dark ages to the age of reason. And all of these transformations, according to my teachers, were evolutionary steps on the way to an ever improving world. Those old textbooks never mentioned that the 20th century is the bloodiest in history or that many of our, so called, steps forward have brought with them dangerous and sometimes, destructive steps back.

Still, whatever problems progress creates, our culture carries with it an underlying assumption that the solution is more progress.

But is forward really the only direction we can look for answers?

Like a lot of Americans, I struggle with my weight. In fact, we, as a nation, are among the fattest people in the world. Heart disease, high blood pressure, and adult on-set diabetes have reached epidemic proportions. There is no real mystery behind our rampant obesity. We simply eat too much and most of it isn’t very good for us. Portion size has grown almost %50 in the last 15 years. All of those 32 ounce sodas, super sized value meals and big plate restaurants didn’t exist a few decades ago. Our eating habits have grown so poor that in the inner cities there are children suffering from both obesity and malnutrition. Obesity from their extreme caloric intake and malnutrition from diets made up almost entirely of highly processed food. In Oakland California last year there were several documented cases of scurvy in the public school system. Fat kids with scurvy. It’s almost inconceivable, but its true.

The solution is obvious. “Well, don’t do that.” Simply reverse the behavior that got us here in the first place.

Eat less. Eat healthier. Exercise more.

But do we do this? No. Instead we turn to fad diets, pills and cutting edge surgeries. We go from Sugar free to low fat, to no carbs in a continuing desperate attempt to keep the pounds off and many of us, who struggle with our weight, dream of the day when a magic pill is invented which would allow us to eat whatever the hell we want in whatever quantities, and never gain an ounce. In short, we are willing to go to extreme lengths rather than deal with a problem which we ourselves created.

Dr. it hurts when I do this.

The main reason we eat so differently today is that agricultural production has gone through a radical transformation in the last 100 years. We have gone from a nation of small farmers, each producing a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, grain and meats, to a nation dominated by giant agro-business who have learned to turn fossil fuels into corn, and corn into profit. Obesity, disease, and widespread environmental destruction are merely a bi-product of our modern food system.

Here is a very simplified breakdown of the way things used to be. Small farmers grew a variety of crops rather than just one. Farmers kept animals on the farm, not only for milk, eggs and meat but because manure from the livestock acted as fertilizer for their crops. There was no rapid transportation, so meat and produce were sold locally and no refrigeration or chemical preservation, so only seasonal products were available. That means no tomatoes in the winter and no asparagus in the fall.

In many ways, our system today is far more productive. We no longer have to worry about seasonality and we can purchase a wide variety of frozen, processed, and prepared foods at a consistent quality and price. However, this transformation has not come without a cost.

Most family farms have been replaced by industrial agriculture which, rather than produce a wide variety of products concentrate on massive production on a few products such as corn and soy beans both of which are subsidized by the government. They no longer rotate crops. Instead, fields are super-fertilized using fossil fuel based chemical fertilizers. The result is not only huge yields but also huge environmental impact, the destruction of the family farm and a radical transformation of the American diet. A walk down any aisle in you local grocery store is enough to tell you how much the corn-based agricultural industry has effected what we eat. The vast majority of processed food, which makes up most of the modern American diet, contains corn (frequently as it’s main ingredient) in one form or another, corn syrup, corn starch and a hundred other unrecognizable chemical ingredients found their origins in the corn fields. Cheap corn, subsidized by the government and mass produced using highly polluting industrial practices, is one of the major reasons for our obesity epidemic but that doesn’t stop us from buying it.

It hurts when I do this.

And, if you think our corn problem ends with processed food then guess again. Almost every element of our industrial food chain is effected by corn.

That burger from Mcdonalds doesn’t just have corn in the bread, pickles, and special sauce but is also the main ingredient of that tasty meat. Corn fed beef has become synonymous with quality in this country, but the truth is cows aren’t supposed to eat corn. Feeding corn to cattle is like raising humans on a diet of snickers bars. It makes them fat, not healthy. Corn also has the advantage of being easier to transport and, as we’ve already seen, it’s heavily subsidized by the government.

Unfortunately, corn fed beef might taste good but it isn’t very good for us. With it’s high levels of saturated fat and low levels of omega three fatty acids corn fed beef is far worse for humans than grass fed beef. There is also a clear connection between cheap, subsidized corn, through cheap meat to those super-sized portions that are making America fat.

Well, don’t do that.

The disadvantages of our industrial agricultural system, however, go well beyond diet. There is a dead zone in the gulf Mexico which is now larger than Kansas, Iowa, Ohio and Illinois combined. It’s origins are in the chemical fertilizers which feed our nations farmland. Those chemicals leach off the land in the form of run off, and make their way down the Mississippi and into the gulf where they have strangled sea life and perhaps irrevocably transformed the ecosystem.

Another consequence is that corn fed cows are sick cows. They develop diseases ranging from infections to liver failure. Some of these diseases, such as E coli, are transmittable to humans. To keep their animals healthy, ranchers routinely pump their herds full of highly concentrated antibiotics. In fact, the vast majority of all antibiotics used in this country are used on cattle. In addition to going into the meat we eat, these antibiotics are found in the millions of tons of animal waste produced by the cattle industry each year.

In the past, that waste would have been used to fertilize our nation’s farms. However, since livestock has been moved away from farm country, natural waste is no longer cost effective as manure. Instead, the waste is left to rot in fetid pools, breeding grounds for new diseases which, because of the high concentrations of antibiotics, are resistant to our most powerful drugs. Similar problems result from raising chickens, and pigs under the industrial model. In order to combat these dangerous outbreaks of disease, the cattle industry has proposed another technological solution, radiation. Simply treat all food intended for human consumption with radiation, killing any bacteria which has grown there. This would, probably protect us from food borne disease but at what cost?

We trade cheap, consistent production for long term environmental and health consequences, rather than addressing the practices and technology that have created these problems.

Dr. it hurts when I do this.

This practice of holding on to self-destructive behaviors isn’t limited to the food industry. Think of global warming, air and water pollution, deforestation and the mass extinction of species.

It was a joke about a patient and a doctor that began this. Try to imagine that patient’s experience in today’s health care system.

A guy walks into a Doctor’s office and says, “Dr. it hurts when I do this.” The Dr. immediately fills out a prescription. The prescription works beautifully and the pain goes away. unfortunately, the drugs also makes the patient constipated so the doctor prescribes a laxative. The laxative is effective but now the guy can’t sleep. The doctor adds a sleeping pill to the man’s daily drugs but now the man feels groggy and unfocused so a stimulant is prescribed. Unfortunately, perhaps through s a side effect of one of the pills or the combination, the patient begins to grow depressed and is immediately put on anti-depressants.

This is not a joke. This is our medical profession.

The story of Frankenstein has been reproduced a hundred different ways in a hundred stories. The well intentioned scientist who’s work ends up threatening the world is so familiar, in fact, that it has become a cliche and yet in the real world we seem to blindly welcome all forms of technological progress regardless of the consequences. To make matters worse, by the time we realize the consequences of our behavior, as in global warming, the obesity epidemic or toxic chemicals in our food supply, we are too stuck on the behavior to change.

We don’t ask, “How can I stop eating Big Macs?” We ask, “How can I eat all the Big Macs I want and not get fat?”

Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of science and technology and I believe that technology does have the power to change our world for the better. But progress is not a panacea and ignoring the past in favor of an undiscovered future is almost surely a recipe for destruction. To survive, we need to learn to look not only forward but backward, to find answers not only in technology but in tradition and in nature.

And when the pain becomes to difficult to bear we must first consider that the best prescription just might be...

Well, don’t do that.

(Most of the information, which appears in this blog, on our industrial food system comes from Michael Pollan'samazing book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma I highly recommend it if you are interested in finding out more.)

The Blind Man

2007-10-23T16:04:00.001-07:00

The Blind Man

The baby was born into a world of wonder, a world sparkling and new, tantalizing all the senses with a myriad of delights. Every color was a miracle. Every sound a symphony. Every experience a revelation. He wanted more than just to touch the world he wanted to smell it, to taste it. The baby drank in the universe and knew, without words to express it, that he could never drink his fill.

A few years later, the boy, now almost a man, sat across the family table and ate the food of his parent’s labors while he dreamt rapturously of the future he would have. Beside him, his father droned on about his tedious day, his tired feet and his hopeless, monotonous job, but all the boy could hear was the sound of his future glories. Wealth, power, fame and sex. These technicolor triumphs were so real to him that he failed to taste the food his mother cooked or notice how his little sister had grown or look into the eyes of his father who would not be with him for very much longer.

The night was young and bright and full of possibilities as the young man sat at the crowded bar drinking with his friends. “It could happen tonight, “ he thought, although he did not take the time to wonder what exactly “it” was. Something would happen. That much he knew. Something. He was owed some bit of magic, some alchemy to transform his unexceptional life into the extraordinary existence which must be waiting for him.

And as he sat, his body, through a magical alchemy all its own, transformed the poisons he was drinking into simpler compounds he could use. Breath, released with his laughter, floated out into the world, to be changed by plants and inhaled again, a thousand times, a million, in a never ending cycle of transformation. With each breath, the young man touched every living thing on earth, but his mind was too clouded by drink and dreams to see. It was long past last call, the lights were coming on and as he settled the bar tab on a credit card, whose bill he could not pay, he knew that it would not be tonight. Tonight he was just another drunk at a bar.

It had been a hard day at work and the man came home to his empty apartment with no expectations greater than a cold beer and TV. He sat eating plastic food from a plastic container and watched a plastic person rattling off the news with a plastic smile. “This was his life”, he thought, with growing disbelief, as gray as his father’s and just as hopeless. He did not pause to wonder where his meal had come from. He did not taste the land where it was grown or the animals that had died so that he might eat. He did not even sense the human hand that had chosen the ingredients or designed its packaging. And although the man knew, deep down, that he hated his drab, lifeless apartment and the vapid, repetitive squawking of the TV, he did not turn it off and go outside into the clean, unpredictable night. This was where he lived after all. This was his life.

The old man lay in his bed and looked back at his life. Not the life he had, but the life he had missed. He saw every road not taken, every experience denied. He saw the loves he never found and the person he never really was. He looked up at the cracked ceiling and knew, with a certainty born of a long, lonely life, that he was nothing. That his life had meant nothing and his death, now far closer than he could face, would also mean... nothing. He did not marvel at the medicines that were keeping him alive and the minds that had created them. He didn’t even see the the nurse who worked tirelessly at his side or the other patients sharing their deaths. While inside the man, on every inch of skin, coursing through every vein and inhabiting every organ, billions of tiny life forms lived in harmony with his dying body. Without them, he would die in seconds. Without him, they could not exist. But the wonder of that, and the million other wonders, that filled every moment of his life were lost on the old man, whose eyes were only open to a past that never was, and a world rendered into a lifeless monotone by the palate of his perception.

“Ashes to Ashes. Dust to Dust.” The words of the priest fall into the empty air like autumn leaves in a lonely forest. The old man, whose body he was putting in the ground, had not been religious but the priest felt that something should be said before they cover the coffin with earth. He had not believed in God or heaven. Only hell was real to the old man because it was of his own creation. For the old man, death was an end, nothing more. But the miracle of life, that neither ends nor begins, does not require his belief or even his permission and as his body is lowered into the living, breathing earth, he returns to what he never truly left and joins that from which he was never truly separated. The wonder, the beauty, the mystery of his life goes on long past his ability to see it.

On the Nature of Fear. Part Two: Fear and the Demon

2007-07-30T13:02:00.000-07:00

By March of 1933 the United States was in the throws of the greatest economic disaster in its history. Half the banks had closed. Unemployment had passed 25%. Personal income had dropped in half and bread lines had formed across the country. Many people felt that they were witnessing the end of civilization, the final descent from American prosperity into a new Dark Age. It was in this atmosphere that Franklin Delano Roosevelt stood on the capitol steps and spoke, what would come to be, the most famous words of his presidency.

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

It is one of the most often repeated phrases in the history of political speech but what exactly does it mean? “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” There are certainly many things worth fearing. Death, disaster, starvation, war. When Roosevelt said those words people were literally starving in the streets. Isn’t that a cause for fear?

But why were people starving? All records show that, despite the disastrous blows to agriculture, there was still plenty of food in the US to feed all its citizens. Thousands of banks failed and much of the population lost their life savings, but, according to their balance sheets most of the banks that failed were solvent when the crowds started lining up outside their doors. Why did the stock market crash? Why did factories close and businesses lay off long time employees? The United States, had as much food, resources, workers and talent in 1935 as it had in 1925 and yet the twenties were a time of great economic prosperity and the thirties an era of economic desperation. Why? What had changed?

The answer is that people became afraid. Of course, there were other causes, poor business planning, insufficient, banking and securities regulations, and a corrupt agricultural system. But those factors only made the system more vulnerable to the panic. If the panic had been avoided, if no one had sold their stock or lined up to withdraw their money from the bank, there would have been no depression.

“The Only thing we have to fear, is fear itself”

A few years ago I worked on a documentary on great white sharks. Sharks are among the most studied ocean creatures and great whites are probably the most studied sharks. Is this because the mating habits or migratory patterns of great white sharks are somehow more interesting than other animals? No. What makes white sharks interesting is fear. They quite simply scare the hell out of us. After all, there is no dolphin week on the Discovery channel.

However, as I worked on the documentary it became very clear that fear was not something inherent in the white shark; it was something inherent in us. The reality is, sharks represent a nearly, insignificant threat to human beings. Of the millions of humans who die each year fewer than 20 are killed by sharks. Compare this to the thousands that die from bee stings or tens of thousands that are killed in car accidents. The truth is you are far more likely to die slipping in your bathtub or falling down your own stairs than you are to be killed by a shark but none of us live in mortal terror of our bathtubs. (At least not as far as I know)

Mark Marks, the shark expert we worked with on the documentary once said, “When you demonize an animal, you elevate its status with fear.” In other words, by demonizing the shark we give it far more significance in our mind than it has in reality. This new status does not change the shark. It changes us. Demonizing the shark or the bee, or the terrorist gives us the right to become the demon ourselves and begin the slaughter because morality, justice, and mercy don’t count for much when your life is on the line.

We are currently hunting sharks to extinction, killing over 100 million animals a year, not for food, but for their highly prized fins and tails. After the appendages are cut off, the sharks are thrown, still living back into the sea. This despicable practice would not be tolerated on an animal that wasn’t so universally feared.

Of course, as in the parable of the bee, sharks do not exist in a vacuum but rather as part of a complex ecosystem. As we destroy them, we are irrevocably damaging the delicate balance that we depend upon.

We are afraid of sharks so we destroy them and through that destruction we destroy ourselves.

Fear isn’t listed among the seven deadly sins, but I think maybe it should be. Like the other sins at it’s heart is something which, far from being evil, is actually part of a healthy life. Lust comes from the desire to propagate the species. At the heart of gluttony is the basic need for sustenance. Work hard and try to improve the trappings of your life and you’re admired, become obsessed with possessions and it’s greed. The same can be said for fear, which is a valuable instinct for survival but, taken to extremes, fear itself becomes the real enemy.

Today, the fear is all around us. We are in a war on terror. Each night on the news we seem to be bombarded by a new danger, or disease. Crime rates have actually gone down in the last fifty years but we feel less safe. In our minds, our children have become more fragile, susceptible to every disease, prone to every accident and surrounded by the worst kind of predators. In short, we have become fear junkies, unable to turn away from the things, which terrify us yet willing to sacrifice almost everything, our civil liberties, sense of social justice, and even our future for the illusion of safety.

I recently saw an ad for a home security company. They were selling a high tech system complete with motion detectors, security cameras and panic buttons. The tag line was, “Making your family feel safe for over thirty years.” Notice it didn’t say, “Making your family safe…” It said, “Making your family feel safe.” They weren’t selling security at all. What they were selling was the illusion of security. Not freedom from danger but freedom from fear. This has become a common practice in everything from politics to medicine, to technology. First terrify us with the most disturbing aspects of life, then, sell us something, an idea, a pill or a law, to make that fear go away.

Once again, fear has played a decisive roll in presidential rhetoric. Only this time, rather than helping us to face our fears, our government, and our media has fed them. We have been told that the world is filled with “Evil doers” who, “hate us for our freedom” and that someday soon, “the smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud”. Terrifying words. And once people believe that their life and the lives of tehir loved ones are being threatened they will protect them by any means necessary. Who would’ve imagined, just a few years ago, that the United States, one of the staunchest supporters of the Geneva Convention, would be openly and brazenly advocating the use of torture? Just as demonizing sharks transforms us into far more dangerous predators. Demonizing the Muslim has transformed the United States.

Like the stock market crash of October 1929, September 11th, 2001 was a transitional moment in history. Before 9/11 the economy was booming, we had the first budget surplus in 2 decades and, although not everyone agreed with our policies, the United States was a respected member of the world community. Since then, the economy has crashed on the hardest working Americans, we have wracked up the largest budget deficits in history, and seen the US transformed in the eyes of the world from a bastion of democracy to an imperialist power who’s only interest is self-interest.

The tragedy of all of this is that, far from hurting our enemies, our actions are playing right into their hands. Like the man in the parable of the bee, we cannot lash out at the world without, in the long run, destroying ourselves. The more innocents we round up and torture, the more dictators we support, the more unwinnable wars we force our troops to fight, the weaker we become and the more enemies we have to fear. September 11th was a devastating attack but the disasters since then have been almost entirely self-created.

Sun Tzu, the great military philosopher, once said that, “A general with 100 men can defeat an army of 10,000, if they can manipulate the larger force into defending 1000 positions.” In other words, a weaker army can destroy a stronger one if the stronger army is afraid. How many positions are we trying to defend? Why is America, unquestionably the most powerful nation on earth, also the most fearful?

President Bush says we are in a war on Terror but what we seem to be fighting is of war of terror. The world has been warned that either they are with us or against us. These are words whose purpose is to control with fear just as the terrorists have controlled us. The real power of terrorism isn’t dirty bombs or biological weapons. The real power is that terrorism transforms the victim into the victimizer.

A frightened animal is a dangerous animal not only to others but to itself. If humans are the most powerful animals on the planet, how dangerous, then, is a frightened human? How dangerous is a frightened America?

We are in a War on Terror, or at least we should be, because the greatest enemy we face is far more powerful than the suicide bomber or Islamic Extremist.

The greatest enemy we face, is fear itself.

On the Nature of Fear. Part One: The Parable of the Bee

2007-07-25T13:09:00.000-07:00

Here’s a story.

A man was working in his vegetable garden when he accidentally put his hand down on a bee and got stung. The man had never been stung bee before and he was shocked by how painful it was. His hand throbbed and throbbed all night.

The next day, the man was supposed to be pulling weeds but he was nervous. “What if a bee stings me?” He thought. “How am I supposed to protect myself?”

The man decided not to work in his garden that day; instead, he began doing research on anti-bee measures. He ordered bee poison from an insecticide company and protective clothing from a beekeeper society.

The next day, armed with his insecticide and covered head to foot in his, protective gear, the man returned to his garden. However, he hadn’t pulled two weeds before he noticed a small yellow jacket buzzing around the cucumber patch. Then he saw more bees eyeing his tomatoes, and what looked like an entire swarm hovering over his flower-bed.

Terrified he began spraying insecticide right and left. He emptied a can on the eggplants, covered his cantaloupe and dowsed his daisies. When he was satisfied that his garden was finally free of bees, he put down his spray can and walked back to his house. That’s when he heard it, a single plaintive buzz rattling brokenly from the screen door. A tiny wasp had somehow managed to make it inside his own kitchen.

The man was justifiably shaken. After all, it’s one thing to face bees in his garden but to find them inside his own house? What if they should sting him when he sleeps or eats his breakfast? Even worse, the man had a wife and family, what if they should be stung. What if they were allergic? This was literally a matter of life and death.

The man ordered protective clothing for his whole family which he insisted they wear day and night. You can’t be too careful when lives are on the line.

The man didn’t return to his garden. Instead, he watched from his window as weeds shot up between the rows and the vegetables began to wither from lack of water. And, no matter how much he sprayed, a few bees still managed to find their way inside his house. The man realized that it was only a matter of time before he or his family was stung again.

As far as he could see, there was only one reasonable decision left to him. If he couldn’t keep the bees away from his house, he’d have to stop the problem at the source. Dressed, in his most protective gear and armed with the latest insecticides, he tracked every bee in the area to its hive. It wasn’t easy, and he was stung more times than he cared to remember (proving, once and for all, just how much the bees had it in for him) but by the time he was done there was not a single bee left living in the county. The man walked back home sore and swollen but confident that no bees would bother his family again.

Unfortunately, for the man and his family, the vegetable garden, which they depended on for food, didn’t have much of a crop that year. The bees, which used to pollinate the plants, were gone and the family had to dip into their savings to survive. In fact, the whole county was in trouble. The economy, which was based on agriculture, had begun to collapse. People were out of work, children were starving but the man could now settle down to his dinner of canned beans secure in the knowledge that he and his family were finally safe from stings.

The End

Gandhi and Bin Laden

2007-07-13T14:13:00.000-07:00

In my last blog, I wrote about the tragic consequences of failing to recognize paradigm shifts in military conflicts, and I discussed how such a shift has occurred in our so-called war on terror. It is our inability to understand the true nature of this conflict that has resulted in both the tragic loss of life on both sides and our failure to achieve anything remotely resembling victory.

But what is the nature of this paradigm shift? How does terrorism differ from conventional war and what counter measures are the most effective in combating its spread? These are not easy questions and as I sought answers something very offensive popped into my mind. “Mahatma Ghandi and Osama Bin Laden have a lot in common.”

The moment I had the thought I felt bad about it. Gandhi is one of the most revered pacifists in history and Bin Landen one of the most reviled villains. One man, was willing to sacrifice his life rather than lift a finger to hurt another soul. The other is willing to kill thousands to achieve his ends. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that once you let go of the moral considerations, there are, in fact, many similarities. Not in goals or philosophies but in how their tactics manipulate the world.

Gandhi, a native of India, began his exploration of non-violent resistance, in South Africa and rose to world prominence when he brought his movement into direct conflict with the British Raj in India. The expression, “The sun never sets on the British Empire.” Was not an exaggeration. They had prosperous colonies all over the world and their power, both militarily and economically, was unrivaled.

Bin Laden, a native of Saudi Arabia, began fighting in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union and rose to world prominence when he turned his attack on the United States whose Military and Economic eclipses that of the former British Empire.

During Gandhi’s time, the powerful British Navy, disciplined army, comparatively fair justice system and efficient bureaucracy made them uniquely suited to control a world empire. The fact that the empire was built on the backs of a hundred conquered nations did not concern them. In the minds of the British, what we would call imperialism was merely their way of brining civilization to the savages. After centuries of colonization the British had become experts at controlling native populations, whether through direct use of force or by bribing or coercing local leaders to do their bidding.

Today, the United States military is the most powerful the world has ever seen and the US/Western Capitalist Economy has become an almost unstoppable force, spreading across the world along with American Culture, and Values. What some would call American Imperialism we think of as spreading democracy and freedom.

Gandhi believed that only through the removal of British rule and the establishment of a free and independent India, was it possible for the Indian people to live the lives that they deserved. Bin Laden’s, beliefs, although perhaps less appealing to the western mind, are similar. He wants an Islamic world free of American interference, which will govern itself based on Islamic principals.

To achieve their goals both men had to overcome a seemingly unbeatable foe. One who’s power both militarily and economically is way out of their league.

Most people would conclude that this is where the similarities between the two men end. However, in my opinion, although their methods are diametrically opposed, the ingredients necessary to produce them and their effect have much in common. To explore this idea I have come up with, what I consider to be, five crucial ingredients in the non-violent revolution which we can compare to Islamic Terrorism.

1. Desperation. The risks of any revolution, non-violent or otherwise, are tremendously high. Lives will be changed, if not lost. Wealth will be shifted and society will be irrevocably transformed. Nobody would take those kinds of risks unless they saw no other choice.

2. Lack of Representation. A well-run government does not guarantee that its citizens won’t be put in desperate situations from time to time. What a well-run government should guarantee is that when the desperate situation arises there will be some mechanism to air grievances and attempt to gain justice. This is not to say that all people are taken care of at all times, merely that opportunities for social change are possible within the system. When Justice is absent, when desperate people have no established voice in the halls of commerce or government their only choice is to move outside of the rules and fight back (peacefully or otherwise) against the system that has betrayed them.

3. Courage. What does it take to face down a squad of policeman armed with shotguns and fire hoses? What does it take to march unarmed through 1000 miles of enemy territory knowing that an attack could come at any moment? What does it take to stand alone in front of a Chinese tank? Non-violent resistance takes courage and more. It takes a belief in something greater than yourself because in this kind of struggle there is the very real possibility that you could die. Nobody, who is only interested in their own worldly advancement would become a non-violent resistor. This is why so many of the great pacifist movements were inexorably linked to religion. Faith is part of what gave the followers of Gandhi and Martin Luther King the courage they needed for their struggle.

4. The Media. I wont go so far as to say that non-violent resistance cannot succeed without media attention but it is incredibly difficult. A Buddhist monk burning himself alive to protest the South Vietnamese government would only have effected those who actually saw the event, were it not for the photographs which were seen all over the world. We all remember the images of Tiananmen Square, and the protestors being attacked at Kent State. Without media attention, non-violent resistance is like a gun without bullets because the true weapon of non-violent resistance is not the boycotts or sit-ins it is the reaction those incidents have on the rest of the world. Which brings us to the fifth and most important factor in a non-violent revolution.

5. The Enemy. In the end, it is the opponent whose actions have the real power. Remember, the resistors cannot change the situation on their own. They need the help of those in power. That help can come in both positive and negative ways. Positive, in the form of help and negative in the form of force. Force used against non-violent resistors can help the movement because it casts the protestors as the heroes of the story and the Government as the villain. The greater the force the more polarizing the effect. It is possible, to scare a non-violent movement out of existence but if the movement remains true to it’s principals and united against the common enemy, perceptions about the situation will begin to shift. Once that perceptional shift solidifies, the powers that be are in an untenable situation. The more openly they pressure the resistors the worse they look.

In this sense, Non-violent resistance is a kind of psychological war. It does not attack the resources or men of the enemy directly. Instead, it attacks their will to continue an oppressive system while at the same time inspiring those sympathetic to join the cause. In other words, non-violent resistance changes the worldview of both oppressor and oppressed by showing them both the courage and morality of the people in the weakest position and the cowardice and immorality of those in power.

This is how men like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. achieved their goals. These were great men, brave men, men who were willing to, and eventually did give their lives for a cause greater than themselves. To make any comparison between them and the terrorists of 9/11, or the men who planned those attacks, is an insult to their memory. However, it is my contention that much can be learned from just such a comparison. Let’s look once again at my five ingredients for a non-violent revolution, except now, let’s do it in a context of Islamic Fundamentalism and the war on terror.

1. Desperation. Islamic Fundamentalism rises out of extremely stratified, repressive societies, where there is minimal access to education, or representation. The followers of Fundamentalist principals, feel, they have been betrayed, economically, socially, religiously or politically by the modern world.

2. Lack of Representation: We claim to be fighting for democracy but the truth is all of our Islamic allies are dictatorships. If a viewpoint is antithetical to the wishes of the government it simply will not be aired.

3. Courage: Bill Maher was fired from ABC for saying it but let’s not bullshit here. Terrorists might be evil, crazy religious fanatics but they are not cowards. Sacrificing your life for any cause, regardless of it’s relative justice, takes tremendous courage. And, like the non-violent resistors, it is no coincidence that often this kind of willingness to self-sacrifice is built upon belief in a spiritual world beyond our own.

4. The Media: Terror feeds on press. Terrorism has killed fewer than 4000 people in the entire history of the United States. More people are killed each year by Bee Stings but we treat Terrorism as the number one threat to our livelihood. Why? Because the bees aren’t in the news. How may times have you seen the towers fall? How many red, yellow and orange alerts have you heard? How many times have you tuned in to the evening news only to discover that you still are not safe. The Media is the terrorist’s number one weapon.

5. The Enemy: Since 9/11 the ball has been almost entirely in our court. We have entered two wars, gone deeply into debt, suspended, the rights of our own people and openly advocated mass arrests and torture as reasonable methods for the achievement of our ends. We have in short become very much like the unilateral Imperialist nation that Osama Bin Laden claimed that we were. Did the terrorists do this to us?

6. Remember how angry you felt when you watched the World Trade Center collapse 6 years ago? How hopeless? Now try to imagine how an Iraqi feels when he sees the pictures from Abu Ghraib. 2743 people died on 9/11 and in our nation of 300 million, we all felt some connection to the victims of that tragic day. Iraq has less than 10% of our population but some estimates put the death toll there at over 500,000. Imagine how they feel.

9/11 resulted in a few thousand deaths and approximately 30 billion dollars in damage. Our war on terror has resulted in a few hundred thousand deaths and cost over a trillion dollars. After 9/11 America experienced a worldwide outpouring of compassion and support unlike anything in history. Today, the rest of the world has begun to view America as a dangerous power, wholly consumed with the pursuit of it’s own interests. Did the terrorists do this to us or did we do it to ourselves?

Like the opponents of a non-violent revolution, our actions since 9/11 have had a polarizing effect on the world. We, not the terrorists, have sent many of our people to their deaths in impossible wars. We have driven away some of our staunchest allies and we have used the politics of fear to divide our nation. Where once we were seen as the heroes of the story, much of the world now sees us as the villain. This is what we have done, not the terrorists.

Is it my intention to imply, through this comparison, that Gandhi and Bin Laden are the same? No. Gandhi is one of my great heroes and Bin Laden, certainly, is not. What this comparison does hopefully point out is that, in the end, the true weapons of the terrorists are not IED’s and Dirty bombs. The true weapons are the effect those things have on the minds of their targets and the actions that state of mind produces.

Next Week: The Parable of the Bee

Paradigm Shifts in Military Strategy: Part One

2007-06-27T15:26:00.000-07:00

The war in Iraq has now been going on for four years and three months, making it one of the longest wars in US History. Only the Revolutionary and Vietnam Wars were longer. If you include the war in Afghanistan as part of the greater War on Terror we have been in a continuous state of war for five and a half years.

At first this, so called, War on Terror went well. The armies of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein were no match for the worlds surviving super-power and they fell quickly. However, since then, things have grown progressively worse. The death count, both in American military personnel and the civilian population has continued to rise and the stabilizing effects of democracy and economic progress have failed to materialize. Instead, both nations have been thrown into chaos, with rising sectarian violence, diminishing security and economic collapse. Life in both of these nations was difficult before the war under the rule of a tyrannical dictator in Iraq and a fundamentalist regime in Afghanistan, but most would acknowledge that the tyranny of the past is in many ways preferable to the chaos of the present. To make matters worse, the people of the world, who were, for the most part, sympathetic with the US after 9/11 have grown increasingly distrustful of our policies and Anti-American sentiments have begun to spread like wildfire.

Despite our tremendous military and economic advantages we find ourselves locked in an un-winnable war in an increasingly hostile world.

What has brought us to this state? Are the terrorists so strong that they can actually defeat the most powerful military force the world has ever seen?

When I was in college I decided to take a course through the ROTC program titled “American Military Strategy from the Revolutionary war to the Present”. On the first day of class, the professor wrote this sentence on the board. “Military Philosophy is always tragically slow to adapt to advancements in technology and tactics.” We didn’t understand what this meant at the time but as the weeks unfolded we saw the echoes of this statement across the battlefields of Bunker Hill and Gettysburg, Dunkirk and Saigon.

“Military Philosophy is always tragically slow to adapt to advancements in technology and tactics”.

To understand what this means you need look no further than 1776 and our war of Independence. After all, our nation was born out of the inability of one great military power to adapt to a paradigm shift in military tactics.

We all know the story. The red coated armies of the British Empire marched in perfect unison, confident that they would easily defeat the poorly trained rabble that opposed them. What they did not know was that the world had changed. New, more accurate weapons allowed for new tactics and despite their tremendous military advantages the British were unable or unwilling to adapt their strategy to changed circumstances. The best trained, best supplied, best led army in the world was losing.

They could’ve shifted strategies, abandoned their rigid tactical systems for more flexible ones but they didn’t. It’s one thing to be surprised by unusual tactics for a few battles but the British doggedly held to their traditions right up until the disastrous end. After eight years of fighting, the most powerful Army of the time was forced to withdraw from an inferior force using tactics and technology that they couldn’t adapt to. Sound familiar?

More tragic examples of this inability to adapt to new paradigms can be found in the American Civil war. At that time, Napoleonic tactics were considered unbeatable and one of the hallmarks of those tactics was the bayonet charge. Soldiers would fix bayonets (long knives) to the end of their muskets and sprint full speed to the enemy’s line where they would engage in hand to hand combat. This was effective in Napoleon’s era (and earlier) because the smooth bore muskets of the time could fire accurately only up to about 100 yards. Then after each shot the weapons had to be cleaned and reloaded which made for a slow firing rate of only 2 or 3 rounds per minute. The average soldier, armed with his bayonet, could run through the 100 yard kill zone in under 20 seconds which meant he would only be exposed to only 1 or 2 rounds of fire before he was close enough for hand to hand combat.

However, When Union generals ordered their men to fix bayonets and attack the Confederate position at the first battle of Bull Run, they were unaware that the nature of war had changed. Soldiers on both sides were armed with rifled weapons, which could fire 3-4 rounds a minute and were accurate at up to 300 yards. Now, instead of a 100-yard sprint, the civil war soldier had to run 300 yards against a much higher rate of fire. The result was nothing less than slaughter. 1500 Union soldiers fell in that first battle, one quarter of the total Union force, clear evidence that the bayonet charge was obsolete, but the lesson was not learned.

Battle after battle, year after year, despite the unbelievable death toll, generals on both sides continued to fall back on outdated tactics. Soon, the 1500 casualties of the first battle of Bull Run seemed like a skirmish. Shiloh: 23,000. The Wilderness: 25,000. Chancellorsville: 30,000. There were more Americans killed in the three-day Battle of Gettysburg than were killed in the entire history of the Vietnam war. The most disastrous action of that battle was when the greatest general of the era, Robert E. Lee ordered 10,000 men to fix bayonets and march across a mile of open field to attack a fortified Union position. He gave this order despite the fact that he had watched the slaughter of countless Union soldiers as they had attacked his fortified positions over the previous three years. This tragic maneuver, which came to be known as Picket’s charge, would haunt him for the rest of his life and was one of the deciding moments of the war.

War had changed, but despite Hundreds of thousands of wasted lives, the generals did not adapt their philosophy to the changing nature of combat.

Fifty years later in the trenches of World War I, the most terrifying order to go down the line was still “Fix Bayonets!”

“Military Philosophy is always tragically slow to adapt to advancement in technology and tactics”.

Today it seems as if we are in the midst of a new paradigm shift. The rules of war have changed, but, like the British in our revolutionary war, we are unable or unwilling to adapt. The truth is our strategies and tactics are the result of fifty years of military planning that simply no longer apply.

The current American military was born out of the cold war, a time when two superpowers were building fleets of aircraft carriers, Submarines, long range bombers, and weapons so powerful they could destroy every living creature on earth. We trained missile experts and built fallout shelters. We built an army that could take on any traditionally organized force in the world. Luckily we never had to face such a war. Instead we are now in the midst of a very different kind of struggle. One without organized armies or massed troop movements. There are no front lines in the war on terror, no clear objectives to be captured and controlled. Like the British before us, our well organized, well trained, well supplied troops are languishing in a chaotic terrain where every friend could be an enemy and the difference between an atrocity and self defense is merely a matter of perspective.

The result is nothing less than tragic. 3600 American Soldiers killed. Over 30000 Americans wounded. And those numbers don’t compare to the number of Iraqi and Afghani dead, which estimates place at between 150 and 600 thousand. To make matters worse, our Global war on Terror, like our war on drugs, shows no signs of ending. If America is to have any hope of surviving this war, much less winning, it is imperative that we understand how terrorism works on a basic, fundamental level.

So, what is terrorism? It is an important question and one that is rarely asked. The first misconception we must address is that the word terrorist describes the members of a unified group. It does not. We tend to describe all “terrorists” in Iraq and Afghanistan as members of Al Qaeda. They are not. Al Qaeda is a loosely structured organization of Sunni extremists. There are also Shia terrorists, Palestinian terrorists, secular Bathists and literally dozens of other small groups using violence to further their agenda.

Frequently what we mean when we say “Terrorist” is Arab or Muslim, as if only those groups produce terrorists. Nothing can be further from the truth. Almost every culture, religion or philosophy has produced extremists willing to do anything to achieve their ends. From Timothy McVeigh to Zionists fighting the British occupation of Palestine, there have always been people who see violence as the only way.

Some people believe that terrorism refers to the killing of innocents, like the victims of 9/11. We find the idea of killing civilians repugnant, and yet, the reality is, our army has killed far more civilians, men, women and children, then were killed by the terrorists on September Eleventh.

When we think of terrorism we think of sleeper cells and secrecy. We see men among us armed with everything from chemical weapons and dirty nukes to box cutters and shoes bombs. But those are not the true weapons of the terrorists.

Terrorism is not a nationality or a philosophy. It is neither religious nor secular. It is not left or right, liberal or conservative. Terrorism does not involve the use of any particular weapon or even any particular of target.

Terrorism is a tactic.

It is a tactic used by groups who cannot possibly fight their enemies in any conventional way. Terrorism is the tactic of the helpless, the hopeless. After all, only someone without hope would strap dynamite to their chest or fly a plane into a building. It is the weapon of someone with nothing left to lose.

But the power of terrorism, does not lie in bombs or guns or weapons of any kind and the damage of terrorism cannot be measured by broken buildings and murdered people. Because the truth is nothing terrorists can do can destroy the United States of America. Even the most destructive of terrorist attacks, the dirty bomb or biological weapon, would not be enough to destroy us.

The truth of terrorism is that when you fight the most powerful enemy in the world there is only one thing that can defeat them.

Themselves.

After all, there has not been a terrorist attack on US soil in almost six years, but those six years have been far more damaging to the United States than anything that happened on September Eleventh 2001.

Continued Next Week with Part II: Gandhi, Osama and the true Nature of terrorism.

Specialization, Heterogeneity and Acceptance

2006-12-04T17:50:00.000-08:00

Everything I know about economics I learned from a filmstrip in junior high. This was one of those educational films they made back in the fifties with cheesy voice over and animated characters. It was the story of a tribe of hunter-gatherers with names like Sam, Bob and Charlie who advanced all the way from their simple, barter based, economy through, banking, industrialization and into the modern world.

The first step on their journey to economic sophistication came because Charlie, the best hunter in the tribe, was frustrated. You see, Charlie wasn’t much of a toolmaker and he spent far more of his time repairing broken arrows than he did out in the woods stalking prey. Sam, who was an excellent toolmaker, offered to make all of his arrows in exchange for a share of Charlie’s kills. Soon, Charlie was a hunting specialist, Sam a tool specialist, and Bob, who loved working in his fields, was a farming specialist. Suddenly the tribe was far more productive as specialists than they ever had been as generalists.

Sam, Charlie and Bob went on to invent currency, banking, and a stock market but specialization was the key first step.

Not only does specialization increase productivity by allowing people to spend more time doing what they’re good at, but it also creates greater competition between specialists. Let’s say, instead of just one toolmaker in our tribe, there are two, Sam and Lisa. Now, Charlie and Bob have a choice, encouraging Lisa and Sam to improve their products.

There is also competition between the specialties. It is in Bob’s interest for most of the tribe’s sustenance to come from the land, while it’s in Charlie’s interests for the tribe to prefer meat for dinner. If one of them is able to improve their production, they will increase their market share.

In a community of generalists where each individual provides all of their needs, advancement is much slower because no one has time to devote all of their energy to a single endeavor.

Specialization is nothing new. Life on earth is a testament to specialization and one of the pillars of Darwin’s theory of evolution. In his great work, The Origin of Species, Darwin shows how natural selection has resulted in life which is uniquely suited for it’s environment. For instance, on the Galapagos islands there are birds who have developed unusually long thin beaks in order to suck fresh water our of deep crevasses in the rocks.

However, this kind of specialization is markedly different from the one used by Sam, Bob and Charlie. For the most part, Darwin describes specialization between species not within species.

Specialization within most animal species is, relative to human specialization, minor. This is not to say that there aren’t distinct rolls for the male and female in most species, as well as roles for dominant and submissive members. However, there is nothing like the complex and infinitely varied specialization, which makes up human society.

The silverback might be the dominant gorilla in nature but in many ways his life isn’t all that different from a submissive gorilla within the same species. Their diet, habitat, and daily activity are relatively similar. Try comparing a truck driver and a poet, or a farm worker and an airline pilot. They live differently, work differently and even speak differently. They depend upon different skills, both mental and physical and seek decidedly different results. A jeweler needs excellent eyesight and small motor skills for his livelihood, while a football player needs raw speed and power for his. We have become so specialized, in fact, that if we were pulled out of our society and forced to live as “generalists” providing all our own needs, most of us simply wouldn’t survive.

Human, specialization, in its most productive form, occurs at the nexus of aptitude, circumstances and personal preference. Charlie wouldn’t be a great hunter if he were born without keen eyesight, excellent endurance and tremendous patience. He would also not be the kind of hunter he is if he was raised in an urban environment instead of a natural one. And, even if he were born into the right environment with all the physical and mental skills necessary for hunting, he would not be a great hunter if he didn’t enjoy the work. Aptitude, circumstances and personal preference. Two out of three might create a skilled craftsman, but when all three combine in just the right way, our specialist, becomes an expert, an artist or genius.

So, where does all this specialization come from? The circumstances are relatively self-explanatory. Children born into an illiterate society are far less likely to become scholars, just as a child born in Hawaii is far less likely to become a professional hockey player.

Aptitude and personal preference, however, have as much to do with our genetic make up as they do with our upbringing. We have known for a long time that physical characteristics like height, hair and eye color were part of our genetic make-up, but with the mapping of the human genome we have learned a great deal more about what makes individual humans individuals. Not only, does our genetic code predict, to some degree, our skill set within a certain area, such as strength speed, rhythm or logic, but it also predicts what kinds of activities give us the most joy.

Our bodies have a reward system for keeping us on the correct path. When we do something “good”, eating, exercising, having sex, our body releases various chemicals (particularly dopamine) into our system that makes us feel good. We like the feeling, so we are drawn to repeat those behaviors which produce it.

However, not all people are wired the same. People get different dopamine rewards from different activities. Some people go nuts over music, others over food. Some people like nothing more that to be in the outdoors, others wouldn’t go camping if you paid them. We’ve all been in situations where we couldn’t understand how the person on the other side didn’t marvel along with us at the amazing symphony, the delicious meal or the beautiful tree. Just as we’ve all pretended to be interested as someone we care about shows us something that is intensely meaningful to them but means almost nothing to us. Normally, we chalk up these differences to upbringing, or training but they are more than that. Our personal preferences are deeply rooted in the microscopic, chemical bonds of our genetic code.

By mapping the human genome scientists have discovered the specific code which connects us to music, food, and nature. They have even mapped the coding for religious feeling. People with this specific DNA sequence turned “on” are far more likely to understand the world around them in religious terms. They are, quite literally, built to feel the presence of God. Whether, that particular coding is leading them to a greater understanding of how the universe works or fooling them into belief in a non-existent deity is not for me to say.

The more interesting question to me is, “why does this encoding exist in the first place?” Why are humans so different, not just from the other species of the world, but from each other?

To answer this question we must return to Darwin and evolution. According to Darwin every trait within a species is there because, at some point in time, it provided a greater probability of survival. Giraffes developed long necks because it increased their ability to find food. The Siberian husky developed a thick undercoat to help them survive sub-freezing temperatures. So, what about a love of music, or a sense of the spiritual in the universe? If they are genetically determined traits, which it seems that they are, how do they contribute to our species survival? And if they do, why don’t all of us have them?

Humans are the single most powerful species on the planet. In the last million years (a blink of an eye in our global history) they have risen from relative obscurity to a dominance of the planet so complete that they now hold in their hands the power to destroy the environment which produced them. What traits have we evolved that have made us so successful? We’re not the strongest creatures on earth or the fastest. We’re certainly not the most durable or the longest lived. Even the human brain (the feature most often sited for our success) isn’t the largest on the planet. Scientists have speculated for years about which human traits have given us such a tremendous evolutionary advantage. Intelligence, complex language, and tool manipulation, have all been cited as key advantages which humans posses over other animal species. However, is it possible that our most potent advantage isn’t one thing but many things? Is it possible that it is our very differences both in aptitude and desire which make humans uniquely adaptive and productive? Is it possible that we are biologically programmed to specialize?

Human beings aren’t one thing. They are many things. They move in many directions, enjoy different past times and adhere to different philosophies. No one pursuit, ambition or idea has brought us to where we are today but rather the combination of a nearly infinite number of differences.

Specialization, as humans practice it, is not the byproduct of homogeneity but of heterogeneity. A species without the incredible diversity of the human race would have neither the desire nor the ability to specialize the way that we have. So, perhaps in the final analysis, it is our differences not our similarities which give us our strength.

Consider the United States. The most powerful nation the world has ever seen is also the most diverse. Is this a coincidence?

Our differences lead to specialization not just in economics but also in the world of art, culture and ideas. What if Sam and Lisa were not two competing toolmakers, but two competing musicians, scientists, or philosophers? The end result is the same. Competition, within specialties, drives them to improve their work.

Competition between the specialties also exists outside the world of pure economics. Darwin spent 20 years refining his theory of evolution before publishing The Origin of Species, because he knew how strong his religious opposition would be. In many ways, it was those 20 years of hard work, research and refinement which gave his theory it’s potency. Those 20 years would probably not have happened without the knowledge of a religious adversary. Traditional religious thought might be the enemy of modern evolutionary theory but it has also forced every scientist since Darwin to defend, refine and back up their ideas. Opposition, no matter how misguided, can force us to work harder and improve.

In my own work, sometimes, the stupidest comment will force me to clarify my ideas in ways I never would have considered while working in isolation or within an entirely like-minded environment.

However, if heterogeneity gives us our strength it also brings with it an inherent danger. Different philosophies, lifestyles and perspectives often lead to misunderstanding, conflict and, tragically, violence.

Many scholars believe that America today is more polarized than it has been in any era since the civil war. Left and Right, Religious and Secular, Liberal and conservative, have grown so entrenched in their positions that they seem to have lost the ability to communicate at all. As both sides battle for supremacy, each longs for a world filled only with like minded people where their lifestyles and ideas would not be under constant scrutiny or derision.

A homogeneous society can, at times, seem like a kind of paradise, but the quest for homogeneity has led to some of the most repressible crimes in history. Religious persecution from the Spanish Inquisition to the holocaust, Ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda, Political slaughter, under Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot, the ultimate outcome of the quest for homogeneity is slaughter. And no matter how many people you kill, no matter how many differences you wipe off the planet there will be no end in conflict, because with every difference that is eliminated 10 more emerge to sew discontent and conflict. Even a world populated by one race, one religion, and one sexual orientation would still find differences to fight over because we have so many too choose from.

The tragedy of this is that difference is not our weakness but our strength. No one, ideology, talent or perspective can solve all the world’s problems but many different kinds of people working in many different ways might just be able to save the human race.

I tend to approach the world in relatively scientific terms. If there is a genetic trigger for a belief in God it seems to have passed me by. In fact, my description of spirituality as a primarily, evolutionary phenomenon is pretty good evidence that I am not myself a believer. However, does my scientific predisposition mean that I would want to live in a world that never saw Jesus, Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.? Without religion, these great men and many others would simply not have existed.

On the other side, there are many, religious people in the world who are distrustful of science and see the unstoppable march of progress as a journey away from key values and important traditions. But would most of those people want to live in a world without Galileo, Newton or Einstein? They might not believe in Darwin’s theory of Evolution but would they want their children to die of diseases that the study of evolution has cured?

Just as our primitive tribe needed specialists like Sam, Bob and Charlie to build their civilization, we need specialists like, Jesus, Gandhi and Darwin to build ours because,
the reality is, that as much as our differences can be difficult to deal with, they are an inseparable part of what it is to be human and a key to our future survival.

So as the tide of intolerance rises, and the threats to our most sacred beliefs grow stronger, it is only natural to cry out for acceptance, to demand that those on the other side open their ears and eyes and hearts to our ideas, our lifestyles, and our choices. But the truth is the demand for acceptance can sometimes be little more than another form of intolerance. Because, in the final analysis, acceptance, like love, is not something which can be demanded, but only given. How can we criticize others for their failure to accept us when we have made no effort to accept them?

The human race will never be one thing. They will never follow one philosophy, or live in one, particular way. Humans are difficult and different. They are as talented as they are unpredictable, as driven as they are unique. These differences create incredible opportunities but they also carry with them incredible dangers. Navigating through this minefield of diversity takes patience, compassion and above all, acceptance.

Rain Man, Jimmy Carter and the Polarization of Values

2006-08-11T18:12:00.000-07:00

In the movie Rain Man there’s a scene where Dustin Hoffman’s character, Raymond Babbit proves his genius at mathematics by calculating incredibly complicated equations in his head. However, in the next moment he is unable to differentiate the price of a car and that of a candy bar. Everything, to Raymond Babbit is worth “about a hundred dollars”.

This scene gives us powerful insight into how differently Raymond’s mind works because the ability to determine relative value is so much a part of our lives. How could we face the myriad of decisions in our daily lives without evaluating the costs and consequences of those choices? A candy bar and a car are very different. They have different uses and sizes. They require different expertise and material to produce and are therefore given vastly different values, not just monetarily but emotionally, practically and socially.

To complicate matters even further, those values are not constant but rather flexible and situational. We judge them, not on absolute values, (a candy bar should be worth “x” and a car “y”) but rather on a sliding scale. For instance If you’re a billionaire, the $100.00 candy bar might be a good deal. If you’re desperate for transportation the $100.00 car might be just what you are looking for. A starving man might pay his last dollar for that candy bar and a rich man might not pay $100.00 for a Rolls Royce if he lives in a place where there are no roads.

We make hundreds of these decisions every day without thinking much about it and money isn’t the only value we are balancing. We balance time against pleasure, work against family and our personal desires against everything else. Every single person on earth makes his or her choices in a slightly different way. All it takes is a brief look around to see all the subtle variations and gray areas that these choices entail. Think about the people you know the best, your friends and family. How do they spend their time, money, affection and energy? In many ways, the choices we make, whether conscious or unconscious, are the sum total of our unique characters, our identities. After all what makes an individual an individual if it’s not their personal values?

But some values aren’t considered to be flexible and personal. Some values are considered universal absolutes – Commandments, carved into stone, which, when violated or ignored can lead to eternal consequences. They stand at the heart of our cultural identity and, not coincidently, at the center of our deepest conflicts.

We have been told that the world today stands at the brink of a clash of civilizations, an epic struggle between good and evil, where the nations and peoples of the world must all choose a side. There can be no compromise, no negotiation. In dealing with pure evil there are only two choices. Destroy it, or be destroyed by it.

The origin of this inflexible philosophy lies in the basic framework of our ethical structures. Unlike money, or time, the value of evil is not situational. The bible does not say, “Thou shall honor thy mother and father except when your mother is being a bitch”. Good and Evil are presented as rigid binary concepts, drawn in stark monotones of black and white.

Abortion is either right or it is wrong. Homosexuality is either right or it is wrong. Lying, stealing murder—These are absolutes, without room for equivocation or negotiation. A single, statement, photograph, cartoon or idea can cause world wide outrage because it violates some fundamental principle, some line which must not, under any circumstances be crossed. Saying something is “evil”, fixes its value in a universe of absolutes and this construct of ethical absolutism gives us no guide for choosing between two moral imperatives. In other words, all these sins are worth “about a hundred dollars”

Take, for example, the most divisive issue in American politics today, abortion. The lines have been drawn in this country between those who call themselves “Pro-Life” and those who call themselves “Pro-Choice”. The fact that they do not call themselves “Pro” and “Anti” abortion gives some insight into how complex our nations view of this issue is and how far apart the two sides are. In fact, if you listen carefully to their arguments you will get the impression that they are discussing two unrelated topics. One side views the issue as one of women’s rights, health and education. The other side sees it quite simply as a question of murder. No compromise has ever been found to satisfy these starkly different points of view. Consequently, political candidates, medical professionals and court appointees have done everything they can to avoid speaking directly on this topic because they know that any statement they make on abortion will automatically alienate one faction or the other. This happens regardless of their other opinions. A liberal democrat who happens to be pro-life is almost impossible to elect just as a pro-choice republican is sure to alienate the religious right. All of this is because abortion is perceived as a black and white issue, which forces all of us to pick a side.

The same can be said of Gay Marriage, Flag Burning, The War on Drugs and The War on Terror. These issues divide our country. They swing elections and, at times, reduce the national debate to name calling and issue baiting. And of course, these are the issues plaguing the relatively homogeneous American society. The conflicts are multiplied many times over when we are confronted with nations and peoples, whose cultural and ethical world views are vastly different from our own.

But is this binary approach to ethics the only possible system? Are we doomed to an eternity of these costly and unproductive battles between intractable points of view?
To answer this question, I would draw your attention to one of the most devoutly religious presidents of the last 50 years.

Jimmy Carter, in his book Our Endangered moral Values: America’s Moral Crisis, talks in great detail about the importance Christian teachings play in his life. He has always been a regular church-goer. He has taught weekly bible study for most of his adult life and has done extensive missionary work throughout Africa and South America. As one would expect, this Evangelical Baptist is strongly “Pro-Life”, believing that the early termination of a fetus is a serious sin. He was therefore placed in an extremely difficult position when he was elected President in 1976 just three years after the Supreme Court legalized abortion with Roe V. Wade.

He had sworn an oath to execute the laws of the land but his religious beliefs told him that one of those laws was wrong. It was a difficult dilemma and one that gave him many sleepless nights. In the end, however, it was his most basic beliefs in the American system of government that showed him the way. For democracy to work, it isn’t enough for the President to enforce the laws he believes in. He must be equally vigilant in enforcing the ones he does not believe in, even while he is determined to change that law. So, Jimmy Carter directed the Federal government to enforce Roe V. Wade despite the fact that he was personally opposed to it. However, he did much more than that.

His constitutional obligations forced him to ensure the availability of legal abortions throughout the United States but his religious beliefs forced him to do everything he could to reduce the number of abortions in this country. In order to reduce abortions without criminalizing them, Carter attacked the causes of unwanted pregnancy, poverty, teenage promiscuity, lack of education, lack of opportunity and lack of viable alternatives. He created after school programs, which focused on teenagers at risk. He promoted a national adoption system. He vastly increased funding for sex education, including the distribution of condoms, which is a sin according to many religious groups, but, in Carter’s opinion, was a far lesser evil than the widespread use of abortion as after the fact contraception. In other words, Carter did everything in his power to reduce the frequency of abortions while staunchly defending a woman’s legal access to them.

Did Carter compromise with Evil? Did he commit exactly the kind of sin that his religious upbringing should have warned him against? Personally, I don’t think so. I believe that what President Carter did was to strike a balance within his personal value system. He examined his religious views on life and conception and his secular views on democracy and the rule of law. Then, instead of being trapped in an impossible impasse, he looked for a third, non-binary course of action would maximize the positive elements of a free society while minimizing the negative elements.

This, to me, is an incredible model for ethical interaction. Instead of interpreting our ethical codes as rigid, black and white structures, we should consider them values, as flexible and situational as the price of a taxi or an hour of your time. We must endeavor to keep one eye on the question in front of us and another on the big picture.

For instance, I was raised Jewish and, in my life, have spoken to many Holocaust survivors. So, as you can imagine, hearing a Neo-Nazi explain how the Holocaust never happened, or worst that it didn’t go far enough, is deeply offensive to me. Personally, I would rather no such person should ever be allowed to speak in public. However, deep down I know that my rights to free speech are intimately related to his and if I want to keep them, not only must I allow him to say that which is offensive to me but I must doggedly defend his right to say it.

Dividing up the world into good and evil might seem like a powerful way to direct our actions but this oversimplification leads to more conflicts than solutions. The current situation in the Middle East is a perfect example of just how dangerous that kind of polarization can be.

We live in a complex world and we need a complex value system to deal with it. Attempting to solve the incredibly intricate problems that face the world with a rigidly constructed ethical code, is like trying to prescribe medicine from a textbook rather than from a careful examination of the patient. The decisions we face are rarely as simple as choosing between right and wrong. They are far more frequently questions of balancing many rights and many wrongs. Finding the best path through these mazes is difficult, but it is possible, if we look beyond the hyperbole, and open our eyes to what’s really going on around us. Only then can we follow the path of our personal values towards the greater good.

After all, for a blind man to miss all the subtleties of color in the world is tragic, but for a sighted man to refuse to see them, choosing instead to reduce this incredible tapestry of hues to a lifeless monotone -- Now that’s a sin.

Joseph Campbell and the Pursuit of the Happiness

2006-06-16T18:05:00.000-07:00

The US Army Field Manual outlines Nine Principles of Modern Military Strategy. Of these, the most important principle is to, “Direct every military operation toward a clearly defined, decisive and attainable objective.” What constitutes victory? What constitutes defeat? At what point can we stop fighting and move on? Without a clear objective all military action, no matter how well executed is unlikely to succeed.

The lack of a clear, decisive objective is often sited as one of the principal reasons for our failure to achieve victory in Vietnam, despite the fact that we won almost every major battle and inflicted terrible damage on the enemy. In fact, many historians believe that no amount of military might (short of total annihilation through Nuclear attack) would have been sufficient to win a war under those circumstances. There are those who believe we are in the same dilemma today.

However, the concept of objective is not simply a military consideration. Businesses outline their goals in detailed plans to guide employees and inform their stockholders. Non-Profits publish carefully worded mission statements to focus their actions and garner support. Organizations, which can clearly and simply communicate their vision, are far more likely to succeed than those who cannot.

But often, in our own lives, we simply react to the situations we are presented with. We make our decisions, on career, family, friends, and future, based not on an overall strategy but on the expediency of the moment. Opportunities are missed. Old wounds are allowed to deepen and fester. Relationships weaken and finally break. Time passes us by.

And the objective of life? The purpose which guides our days on earth? Is it the accumulation of possessions? Love? The service of community or a higher power? How can we hope to succeed in our lives if we don’t know what success is?

But defining success in life is not easy. We all look at our lives in very different ways. We seek different goals, face different obstacles and enjoy different pastimes. Success for a corporate raider bares little resemblance to success for an environmental activist. In fact, the way we think about the word success itself is as dependent on our cultural bias, and family background as it is on any rational analyses.

But I believe there is a goal, a purpose which, seen clearly, can guide our choices through the dark maze of our lives and when ignored brings pain and destruction not only to ourselves, but to those we care about the most.

Many people don’t know this, but the ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence did not originate with Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson merely took his place as part of a long tradition of philosophical thought. In fact, one of his most famous statements is an almost direct quote from the 17th century British Philosopher, John Locke. The only difference is that where Locke, defined our unalienable rights as “Life, Liberty and Property” Jefferson defined them as “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Notice that Jefferson makes no reference to religious freedom or free expression. There is no discussion of privacy or the right of habeas corpus. Instead, he gives us three unalienable rights which, seem to me, to be an incredibly powerful guide to the purpose of life in a free society.

Life is our state being. Liberty (a rational component of any free society) is the means through which we achieve our goals and happiness is the goal itself.

Think about that for a moment. Is it possible that the purpose of our lives on earth is nothing more and nothing less than happiness?

Some might argue that that’s a pretty lame purpose. It’s too selfish, too vain. Making happiness the goal of life would lead to a society so self absorbed that it would consume itself in greed and consumption. But those people are confusing the pursuit of happiness with the pursuit of pleasure.

A heroin addict feels tremendous pleasure as his drug of choice caresses every nerve and sooths every anxiety but one would be hard pressed to describe her as happy. A chronic shopper on a spree at the mall can empty his wallet on the latest fashions or gadgets and come home more depressed than ever. Millions of people flock to Las Vegas seeking pleasure and few, if any, find happiness.

What we are talking about here is something stronger, deeper. Something that goes beyond the excitement of the moment and penetrates into the heart of our lives on this planet.

What makes you happy, deeply, lastingly happy? It’s an incredibly important question and one which few of us really take the time to consider.

Maybe even the word, “happy” isn’t enough.Joeseph Campbell , the world-renowned expert on heroes and mythology, once said something so profound that it has found it’s way into our cultural lexicon. When asked what lesson we should take from all the spiritual journeys of all the heroes of mythology, he replied, “Follow your Bliss”.

You can’t buy bliss in a store. It’s not advertised on television or found at the end of some pseudo scientific “quick fix”. Bliss is something deeply personal and difficult to achieve. After all Campbell, like Jefferson does not require that we achieve this exalted state but merely that we follow it.

The wonderful thing about this idea is that it allows our corporate raider and environmental activist to pursue the same goal through vastly different means.

Bliss might be found beneath an icy stream deep in the mountains or in the thundering chaos of the crowded streets of New York.. It might be composed of solitude and personal exploration or in the deep intimacy of a long term romance It might focus on the raising of children or the caring for the elderly. Some might find bliss inside a microscope or looking out into the infinite mysteries of space. And, if we’re lucky, some people might even find lasting happiness building a society which can help others on their own journeys to bliss.

One could argue that all of the other rights we are so proud of in this country, all of the protections and freedoms guaranteed by our constitution flow from our right to pursue happiness as we see it. Expression, religion, assembly and privacy, are weapons against tyranny and the laws we live by are protections so that our pursuit of happiness does not interfere with someone else’s.

Poverty, oppression, racism, intolerance, violence, and despair are the enemies of bliss. They are the limiting factors of our cultural objectives and must be fought both individually and as a society.

However it is important to note that Thomas Jefferson in his wisdom does not guarantee happiness. No society can do that. The only thing we are guaranteed is the right to pursue it and perhaps, in the end, pursuit of happiness is the goal itself. The Journey is the destination.

After all, To achieve Nirvana is to be the Buddha, but to pursue Nirvana is to be fully human.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

2006-05-11T18:09:00.000-07:00

You and your partner are being held by the police and you are faced with a horrible choice. You can rat him out, thus reducing your sentence or you can protect your partner by saying nothing. If you both keep silent you will each receive 1 year in prison. If you turn him in and he says nothing, you will go free and he will get 4 years in prison. The reverse is true if he says you did it and you say nothing. If you both turn on the other, you each get 2 years in prison.

What do you do?

This is a Prisoner’s Dilemma.

The history of the prisoner’s dilemma can be traced back to one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century. John Von Newman’s influence can be felt in such diverse fields as quantum mechanics, economics, nuclear physics and cryptology. He is considered by many to be the father of modern computing and was a highly sought after advisor for the defense department during the cold war. However, in many ways Von Newman’s greatest influence might come, not from his professional work, but from one of his hobbies.

You see, John Von Newman loved to play poker. Unfortunately, despite his tremendous analytical powers, he wasn’t very good at it and he began to wonder if it was possible to apply mathematical theory to games. After all, mathematical models had been used to predict the incredibly complex dynamics of planets, electrons and explosions. Why couldn’t they be used to find the ideal strategy for poker, chess or tic-tac-toe. And, if that was possible, why not apply those strategies to big business, the stock market and geo-political military strategy. After all, aren’t those endeavors simply games on a grand scale?

Von Newman was joined in his quest by some of the greatest mathematicians of his time. Men like Richard Selton, and “The Beautiful Mind’s” John Nash made their reputations on game theory and one of the “games” they played over and over again in countless variations and repetitions was The Prisoner’s Dilemma.

Every variation of the prisoner’s dilemma presents the player with two choices, which the game theorists name, “cooperate” and “defect”. To cooperate is to abide by the social construct and trust the other player to do the same. To defect is to betray the other player.

If you cooperate in this version of the prisoner’s dilemma, which means you say nothing, one of two things can happen. Either your friend also cooperates or he defects and turns you in. Therefore, the two possible outcomes are, that you get 1 year in prison or 4.

If you defect and turn your friend in, and he cooperates you will be set free. If he also defects you will get 2 years in prison. In other words, the two possible outcomes for defecting are 2 years in prison or none. The conclusion? Mathematically, you are better off defecting than cooperating.

So why is this important?

During the cold war, John Von Newman and other game theorists worked at the Rand Corporation, where they used these theories to map out our strategy against the Soviets. Their conclusion, the only logical solution to the cold war was to defect. Defecting in this case meant a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union.

After all, the cold war is nothing more than a very dangerous Prisoner’s Dilemma. Two sides, are faced with two choices, cooperate by maintaining the peace, or defect and fire your missiles. If there is even the slightest possibility that the Soviets might strike the United States preemptively, an action which would be catastrophic for this country, then we must attack them first.

Fortunately for the world, cooler, and possibly wiser, heads prevailed. Unfortunately, this same argument for preemptive war has been used far more successfully in recent years.

Another variation.

A magazine advertises a contest where they will give away either $20.00 or $1000.00 to everyone who writes in. All you have to do is specify which amount you would like. The catch is that they will only pay if less than 20% of the respondents ask for $1000. If more than 20% ask for $1000.00 they will give out nothing and everyone loses. In other words, if everyone cooperates and asks for the lesser amount, everyone gets paid. If too many people defect, nobody gets anything.

What do you do?

Game theorists again conclude that you should defect because $20.00 is not a significant amount of money. It will have practically zero impact on your life. $1000.00, on the other hand, is significant. Therefore, it’s better to gamble on everyone else’s good will and try for the big money.

Think of this example, and then think of Enron, a company who’s only goal was to generate tremendous profits for a few, very rich, men. The fact that those profits came at the cost of their customers and stock holders or that the means to those profits were dishonest simply didn’t matter. If profits were the goal than the best strategy was to defect.

Today, game theory is one of the pillars of our nation’s economic and geopolitical strategy. It is taught in MBA programs, military academies and foreign policy seminars.

But it isn’t just the rich and powerful who are choosing defection. We live in a culture of “me first”, always asking not what we can do for our country but what our country can do for us. This attitude rises from the average citizen, callously tossing their garbage on the street, to the multi-national corporations callously spewing their pollutants into our environment.

Another variation.

It’s the middle of the night and you are alone in a subway station. You can either pay the $1.50 toll or jump the turnstile. There are no cameras, no police, no possibility of being caught. If you jump the turnstile you will be $1.50 richer. However, deep down you know that if everyone were to jump the turnstile, the subway system, which the whole community benefits from, would collapse.

What do you do?

Again, game theorists recommend defection. There are no negative consequences to your defection and the subway system will only collapse if an overwhelming number of people defect along with you and if that’s going to happen your $1.50 wont save the whole system.

What is so disturbing about game theory is how logical it is. This isn’t some pseudoscience, heralded by chanting mystics and slick salesman. This is a well-researched, deeply analyzed, theory, which seems to suggest that being “bad” is far more profitable than being “good”. And yet, at the heart of Game Theory lies the certain knowledge that if everyone subscribed to its precepts our world, as we know it, would fall apart.

But the prisoner’s dilemma has a flaw, not in its conclusions but in its formulation. The Prisoner’s Dilemma asks, “Which strategy works most effectively to your best interests?” It does not bother to define what our best interests are, or even if that’s the only question we can ask.

Today, in this country, self-interest is generally accepted as the prime motivator of every social interaction. However, this was not always the case. In fact, for most of human history other interests were considered equally or even more important than self-interest. In pre-communist China, women would willingly sell themselves into virtual slavery for the sake of their families. In 12th Century Europe, peasants and artisans, worked under impossible conditions, spending their life’s blood for an unseen deity. In feudal Japan, a Samurai would willingly disembowel himself at the slightest whim of his liege lord. The image of a soldier heroically throwing himself on a life grenade to save his friends is evidence that other motivations than self-interest can be extremely powerful.

How would the solution to the prisoner’s dilemma change if instead of asking for the strategy which best served your need, we asked which one is best for your friends, your country, or your God?

This is further complicated by the fact that while The Prisoner’s Dilemma exists in a vacuum, free from equivocating and compromising circumstances, we do not. Our lives and experience form the background data for our current decisions, just as those decisions form the foundation of our futures.

What if we return to the police station, only this time it is with the certain knowledge that our partner is a known rat who has sold out everyone he’s ever worked with? Under these circumstances the only rational strategy is to defect. Just as if you are the ruler of a nation who has just come into conflict with another nation known for a policy of pre-emptive war, you no longer have the luxury to wait for peaceful solutions. All evidence suggests that you must attack first.

We are, above all else, products of our environment. It is irrational to assume that a child raised in a world of violence will adopt a philosophy of pacifism just as one wouldn’t expect someone raised in a world of religious absolutism to embrace a philosophy of pure science. There are exceptions to this, of course, but those exceptional people are frequently destroyed by the societies they rebel against.

The prisoner’s dilemma is more than just a strategic tool. It is a litmus test for how we view the world. Do we see the purpose of life as merely the unrestrained quest for our own self-interest or are we guided by a higher calling.

Our response to the Prisoner’s dilemma is more than just an expression of our present desires. It is harbinger of things to come. Every decision, we make effects the world around us. Every act of kindness, no matter how small, makes it that much more likely that others will act kindly. Every act violence, sends ripples of distrust throughout the world, creating fertile ground for more destructive behavior.

We all live, day to day, in a prisoner’s dilemma, forced to choose between our needs and those of our friends, family, community and environment. Any system which continually sacrifices the needs of the community to the desires of the individual will descend into anarchy and distrust. Just as any system which continually sacrifices the needs of the individual to that of the state will deteriorate into oppression and abuse.

The solution, I believe, is one of balance, in which the first strategy is always cooperation, even if it means sacrificing some of what we see as our short term self-interest. However, we must also be prepared to protect ourselves when our good intentions are met with abuse.

Perhaps, the best solution to The Prisoner’s Dilemma is the golden one. Do onto others as you would have others do onto you. It isn’t an easy rule to live by, but, in the long run, the more of us who follow it, the better the world becomes.

Nietzsche, God and the Search for a Rational Morality

2006-04-24T18:13:00.000-07:00

In 1885 Fredrick Nietzsche declared that God was dead. Regardless of whether or not you accept his premise, the theoretical absence of a deity creates an interesting dilemma.

You've all heard the old riddle about a tree falling in a forest. Well, if a man lies or steals or kills and there is no God around to judge it, is it a sin?

This is more than just idle speculation. We live in a world beset by the endless clashing of moral codes. Right, left, religious, secular, traditional and progressive, view good and evil in decidedly, different ways. The source of this conflict is the belief in an absolute morality, an ethical code that cannot be questioned, merely accepted or broken.

The problem with such a belief system is that at the heart of its infallibility lies the obvious conclusion that all other philosophies must be wrong.

All it takes is an examination of our diet to see the truth in this. Jews and Muslims will eat beef but not pork. Hindus hold the cow as a sacred. Most Americans will eat pork and beef but would be disgusted by the idea of consuming a dog which is considered a delicacy in many parts of Asia. This might seem like a minor question of culture, rather than code, but many of the manifestations of morality in our societies are merely reflections of the culture that gave birth to them.

Far more dangerous are the world’s divergent attitudes, towards, abortion, promiscuity, homosexuality and the role of women. The sides in these debates are absolutely convinced that they are right and the origin of that certainty lies in the divine pedigree of their moral convictions.

It wasn’t always like this. The old polytheistic religions did not imbue their gods with moral infallibility. The gods of old possessed the same desires and foibles as the men who worshiped them. Zeus was no paragon of virtue. He was lustful, vain and vengeful. The same is true of Native American and African gods. Despite their powers, the early gods were recognizably human in their behavior. They were gods with flaws, desires and personalities.

Even the early Judeo/Christian God was far from an icon of moral perfection. The God of Genesis was, in his own words, “A Jealous God”. He demanded worship, sacrifice and obedience. He said nothing about moral codes. It wasn’t until Exodus when Moses brought the Ten Commandments to the Hebrews in the desert, that the concept of God as the source of all morality was introduced.

This is where the trouble begins because as soon as moral truths become absolute, you are faced with a myriad of conflicts both internal and external.

The internal problems come because, while opinion can evolve and change over the years, absolute truths should not. If the bible is the absolute word of God, then, the only rational response would be to follow that word absolutely, without interpretation or equivocation. Of course, nobody, not even the most devout Catholic, follows everything to the letter. If we did, stonings would be required for everything from taking the Lords name in vain to working on the Sabbath. Instead, we pick and choose. We interpret and update. The religion followed by Jews today bares little resemblance to that practiced by the Hebrews who wandered the desert for 40 years and yet it is still treated as absolute truth.

If the inconsistencies merely existed between the modern world and the past, the problem would be one of personal faith. Can you believe in an absolute truth, which is constantly changing?

The problem, however, has a far more dangerous, external manifestation because these varying interpretations evolve on divergent paths, so that after a few generations the absolute truth of one branch can barely recognize that of the other. Catholics and Protestants, Shi’a and Sunni might share the same Holy Books but that hasn’t stopped them from killing each other.

And, unfortunately, absolute beliefs leave little room for discussion, logic and compromise. This is because God does not need a reason for his commandments. If he says not to kill, not to steal, or not to comb your hair to the left, they are all God’s will and to disobey any of them is a sin. “Because God says so” might be the true origin of morality but it is not an element of rational discussion.

Is it possible that one of these interpretations is actually correct and all the others are wrong? Of course it is. But it is in our nature to always believe that that correct interpretation is the one we were raised with and a whole world of people who think that is a dangerous place indeed.

What’s so tragic about this is that most moral codes are far more similar than they are different. There are restrictions against theft, and violence. Elders are generally respected. The responsibilities of the young are increased as they age. If the only source of morality is God, how is it possible that so many disparate religious cultures follow such similar ideals? Is it possible that morality emerges, not from heaven but from us?

So, let us, for the moment, accept Nietzsche’s premise. Let us speculate on a world where there is no God, no divinely inspired vision of right and wrong and see where it leaves us. Is there still such a thing as morality? Sin? Is an ethical code based on non-mystical, rational thought even possible? If so, what form would it take? What would its precepts, postulates and pillars be. How would it balance the rights of the individual versus the needs of society? How would it treat free expression, sexual preference and non-conformity? Without the power of God to back up our moral precepts would the human race simply tear itself apart?

Personally, I don’t think it would. After all, we did not spend our days killing, raping and stealing before Moses brought those tablets down from the mountain. There were laws in China, philosophers in Greece and governments in Egypt long before morality was linked to divinity.

I believe that a rational morality is possible. In fact, I believe that rationality is the true heart of morality. Most of the basic, ethical guidelines, which we all subscribe to, have their origins in rational thought. They are survival tools. We are social animals. We depend on each other for food shelter, protection and companionship. A society without behavioral codes will not thrive and might not even survive.

If that is true, could we then define morality as simply those behaviors which help a society to thrive? If we accept that definition (or one like it) it could form the basic foundation for a logical system of right and wrong.

A rational, non-mystical approach to morality could have serious advantages over a mystical approach. Within such a framework it would no longer be enough to simply say something is “wrong”. You would have to say why it is wrong. Premises would have to be tested. Theories could be presented and debated. There would be room for adaptation, and compromise.

This quest for a rational morality is no easy task and I doubt that any final solution is really possible, particularly since our lives are constantly changing and any rational code would have to be able to change with them. More importantly, we are all flawed, irrational creatures, forever, chained by the shackles of our own perspective.

In fact, there is only one being wise enough to fully understand the mysteries we are attempting to explore and he, according to Nietzsche, is dead.

But despite, the obstacles, I believe it is a worthwhile quest. To study right and wrong is to peer into the heart of the human condition. And who knows, maybe if we shed enough light into that deep, dark mystery we might find within ourselves, the real purpose of our lives and see, for the first time, the true face of God.

Reflections on the Team

2006-04-10T17:21:00.000-07:00

It was halftime. The Stanford band was on the field, posing and goofing in their usual way and we were booing and screaming in ours. Then a Cal fan, bolder than the rest, began to climb the chain link fence that separated the fans from the field. We laughed as he evaded the security guards. We cheered as he swung over the top of the fence. We screamed as he hit the field and ran, flat out, towards the Stanford mascot, a ridiculous tree that bopped and weaved with no sense of style or rhythm. Every Cal fan in the world hated that tree. As he ran, we noticed he was carrying something in his hand. We couldn’t see it clearly but whatever it was, you knew it was going to be good. He was almost there now. A wild hysteria had burst across the crowd. He raised his hand and for the first time we saw what he was holding.

It was a baseball bat.

The cheer died in my throat. I watched, in shock, as he raised his bat and brought it down again and again. Who knows who was inside that costume? Boy, girl? Strong, frail? Maybe it was the sweetest kid at Stanford. The mascot was on the ground now and the Stanford band was trying to pull the assailant off as he struggled for one last swing. I turned to my fellow Cal fans, expecting to see the same shock and horror I knew was on my face. They were still cheering. My brothers in blue and gold, the strangers I had felt so close to a moment before, were actually cheering.

I’m not making this up. This really happened.

At some point in life we choose sides. We pick our allegiances like options on a car or dishes at a restaurant. There is no limit to the number of teams you can join. I am a man, a Jew, an American, a Cal Fan, etc. Pick a team and suddenly, you are connected with hundreds, thousands or even millions of people and they are connected to you. You belong. It’s a powerful feeling. When soldiers in the field are asked what is really motivating them to risk their lives, the answer isn’t usually country or ideals, it’s the guy in the trench next to him. It’s the unit, the platoon, and the team.

And of course, our teams are special. They are “The Chosen People”, imbued with manifest destiny and blessed by God. (One is forced to speculate, however, on the value of God’s blessing when, if you listen to us, he bestows it on Christians, Jews, Muslims and both teams before the super bowl.) Joining a team makes us part of something special. The problem is, the moment you define what you are, you also define what you are not.

Racism, Sexism, Anti-Semitism, Homophobia and a thousand other examples of man’s inhumanity to man are inextricably tied to our allegiances and associations. After all, it is a basic human imperative to look out for your own first and everyone else second. In fact, the presence of an opposition can be a very strong motivator. Hitler united a broken and defeated German people by manufacturing an enemy out of the Jews. Ethnic cleansing in Bosnia or Rwanda, have at their heart the certain knowledge that one group is good and the other evil, and that for one to survive the other must be destroyed.

So, where does it come from, this need to divide up the world into us and them, right and wrong, friend and foe?

I used to believe that we did this because it was the only way we could comprehend the world around us. Our minds simply can’t contemplate, trillions of stars or billions of years, or even millions of people. There are almost six billion people on this planet, each with their own, history, aspirations, fears, and loves but to think of every individual is beyond our capability. We can think of India, but not every Indian. We can think of Christianity but not each Christian. And so we divide up the world, making decisions along the way about the character of each of our divisions and since everyone is doing this, a world of allegiances is formed.

But I have come to believe that there is another reason, a deeper reason. A need, which emerges from the moment of our birth and haunts many of us until the day we die.

It’s not just that we don’t know the world. It’s that we don’t know ourselves. We are looking for more than a team. We are looking for a reflection. After all, how can you know who you are without a mirror?

When you are born, you know almost nothing about the world and you look to your surroundings, your parents, siblings and friends to define who you will become. Without even realizing it you adopt a thousand details of behavior, how to eat, walk, speak, humor, manners, tastes, God. We are sponges for behavior, constantly adopting and adapting new modes of speech, dress, and action. Most of us don’t walk about with a constant identity, an ideal self that never changes from situation to situation. We are, in fact, constantly shifting, blending in with current circumstances.

So, who are we really? What is the truth hiding beneath the shifting fog of our artifice? Maybe we don’t know. Maybe we can never really know. And so we reach out to our reflections in the world, those others of our perceived kind, and we know our identity through them. I am a man, a Jew, an American, a Cal Fan. I know how to dress, speak, act properly within those groups and when Cal wins, I win and when the Jews loose, I loose. Attack my team and you attack me.

But it is important to remember that all of us are, for the most part, the product of our circumstances. We have all adapted to the world we find ourselves in. The odds are, had we been born in Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia, or the Taliban’s Afghanistan, we would not have fought against the conception of the world that we were presented with. We would have lived, worshiped, fought and hated along with everyone else. There are occasionally exceptional people who rise above their surroundings and fight against the common will, but those people appear far to infrequently and they rarely survive for long.

This “us and them” view of the world seems so natural we hardly ever think to question it, but question it we must.

The world today teeters on the brink of a culture war. Each day we hear of another death, another bomb, another tragedy. Each day our world seems to shrink and hope disintegrates into the mist.

So, as we stare at the stranger on the other side of field, the enemy whose very existence is a threat to ours, we must remember that he too is simply a reflection of his environment. He is a human being, just like us, struggling to find his way through a difficult world. We might not understand his motivations but he does have them. Christians and Muslims. Rich and Poor. Black and White. Republican and Democrat. The truth is they have far more in common than we care to admit.

Maybe if we can learn to focus on our similarities rather than our differences we can find our way onto a much greater team. And if there is God, and if he were to single out one team for his blessing, let us hope it would be this one.

The human race.

Because the truth is, we are all members whether we like it or not. All the other teams are just the illusions of our limited imaginations.

So, when I am filled with anger at the player on the other side. I try to remember that halftime, so long ago, when I watched one of my brothers attack one of theirs and all I can think is, “that could have been me, dressed in that ridiculous costume that day”. After all, I applied to Stanford. I just didn’t get in.

Icons and Etymology

2006-03-30T18:38:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine has devoted his blog, The Daily Planet, to Heroes. Not just the super powered ones in colorful costumes (although he writes about them too) but “the ones who amaze by inches instead of leaps and bounds”. It’s a great blog, a growing repository for stories, of generosity and kindness, but it awoke an intense debate over the meaning of the word “hero”. Could an act of everyday kindness really be considered heroic? It was argued that heroism, must involve, risk, courage, and sacrifice. A bit of generosity or personal consideration, although laudable in itself, simply didn’t qualify.

The argument went back and forth. Both sides were intelligent, articulate and persuasive but they made no headway because the argument wasn’t about substance but about symbols.

The substance wasn’t up for debate. Everyone, agreed that kindness is an admirable, even inspirational quality and everyone agreed that there are differences both of substance and scale between giving someone a helping hand and running into a burning building to save a child. The real controversy was about the word itself.

Words are incredible containers for meaning. Use them correctly, and people will literally worship at their feet. Use them offensively, and people will kill to defend them.

Stephen King once said that words had the power of both telepathy and time travel, because they could transport ideas directly from the mind of the author to the mind of the reader years, even centuries later. There is no diminishment of meaning. The words of Dante, Shakespeare, and Hemingway reach across the years to echo once again in the mind of every new reader.

And words aren’t the only magical symbols. A cross, a swastika, a flag. People have killed for these symbols. People have died for them.

Throughout history, armies marched to war behind a banner or flag. To carry the flag was considered a great honor and soldiers would compete for the right. They did this knowing that the flag bearer was the most vulnerable soldier on the field, as he had to march weaponless at the head of the column, an easy target for the enemy. The army will follow the flag in a way they will not follow a man because a flag is more than just a strip of cloth. It is family, and home and love. It is God and country and justice and identity. Is it any wonder, that people are outraged when someone talks of burning one?

In many ways these symbols can become more powerful than the ideas they represent. How else can you explain nations that kill in the name of peace, religions who torture non-believers to accept a God that was himself tortured to death, or the enslavement of one people by another in the name of freedom. Peace, God and Freedom are three beautiful ideas but the words that represent them have been the battle cries of a thousand tyrannies.

Words, and symbols have started revolutions and toppled empires. They can unlock the best and worst in man, they can change the face of history and set the course of our future.

Powerful magic indeed.

But as my friend who writes the Daily Planet blog would be sure to remind me, “With great power comes great responsibility”.

We must remember that words have no intrinsic value, no ingrained meaning. They are simply sounds, or lines on a page. They have only as much or as little meaning as we give them. The most powerful words in our world, love, hate, rape, God, country, have no meaning whatsoever to a person not educated in their usage. Just as written Sanskrit or Aramaic would have no meaning for us. They are tools. Incredibly powerful tools, to be sure, but tools nonetheless. They allow us to describe, not only, the material world but the immaterial world as well. The invisible world of emotions, and ideas of Gods and Devils becomes tangibly, indelibly real through the use of language. In fact, one is forced to wonder if those concepts themselves could have existed in a world without words to describe them.

To make matters worst, words are not stable. Meanings shift from year to year, person to person and place to place. What was offensive a few years ago is commonplace today. “Nigger”, probably the most powerfully charged word in America, can have vastly different meanings depending on how, when and by whom it is used.

So, how are we to navigate this maze of meanings? What else can I use to understand what you mean if I can’t trust what you say.

The solution, I believe is to strive to listen deeply. To hear the words, yes, but also to listen to the intention behind them. When someone says something that we find offensive it is important to ask ourselves if they were trying to offend. Seek the meaning not the medium. If someone says they love you but their behavior is cruel and demeaning, then perhaps you must ignore the word and listen to the actions. If a nation offers freedom at the point of the gun, then they have forgotten what true freedom is.

But the burden doesn’t lie solely with the listener. Free speech is, in my opinion, the most important of our rights, but the words and symbols we use can have consequences well beyond our intentions. If your intention is to offend, then by all means do it. But if you offend accidentally, or use a word, which can be misconstrued, then your meaning will be lost and only the words will be remembered.

Saying the right words isn’t enough. Most religions in the world agree on fundamental principles of peace, compassion and forgiveness, yet most religions have at one time or another indulged, in violence, vengeance and greed.

Hearing the wrong words isn’t enough. Words are excellent tools for dividing things up, for pointing out flaws, and differences. But only through compassion and understanding can we hope to overcome the barriers that divide us and find harmony.