Reprogramming the Corporation

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.

The Maximum Wage

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.

Fuck The Auto Industry!

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.

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

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

“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

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

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.