Sinking Into Sedated Mindlessness, Daily

SEVENTY EIGHT THOUSAND PEOPLE, worldwide, have apparently signed up to go live on Mars. Unfortunately, only a handful will ever be needed, but hey, its the thought that counts, and, since the privately funded mars colonization project will supposedly launch in 2013, or thereabout, this is truly something to get excited about,truly something to inspire us.

Something to inspire us, to bind us together as a species. We need this. Some of us in the older generation still believe in the dream, the dream of a planet free of war and poverty, with a fulfilling life for all, a clean healthy environment, a healthy human race,; and a space exploration and colonization program to uplift us, in more ways than one.

And wouldn't it be nice if one could see and hear and read more about this sort of thing in the american media. New ideas for clean cheap energy are emerging, our orbiting telescopes are showing us thousands of newly discovered planets, and we are getting ready to go to mars. So it aint all bad news.

but the media tells us about gruesome acts of kidnapping, about the deranged kidnapper, about the tortured victims.....over..and over again, every day, every day a new twist, a new angle, a new extension of something gruesome which we just can't seem to let go, can't seem to do without.

We watch hour after hour, day after day, of a woman on trial for butchering her boyfriend, and we sit sedated by the corporate seduction, intended only to take our minds away from the grotesque inequalities and povery of our pseudo civilization. 

We don't talk about how to eliminate poverty,violence, other social ills, and we do not talk about mars. But we do talk about the kardashians, and the women held hostage for ten years..day after day...

wouldn't it be lovely to disconnect your cable TV, then wait awhile, then hook it back up, and see programs that are not only relevant, and important, to us all, in a meaningful, productive way, but also in a way which inspires us to think great thoughts, rather than sink daily into sedated mindlessness.

We Only Deceive Ourselves

SYLVIA BROWNE HAS MADE quite a good living for herself as self proclaimed psychic. Many books, many lectures and public demonstrations of her alleged talent, television shows, and last but not least, a lucrative business charging people seven to eight hundred dollars per half hour for a psychic reading on the telephone.

She is surely a millionaire many times over, and she is also a convicted felon, as of twenty years ago, for financial crimes.  She's been married five times, and her first husband claims she confided to him that she merely pretends to have phychic gifts, and that anyone gullible enough to trust her deserves to be swindled. Beware of what people say about their ex spouses.

Most recently she has come under fire for having told a woman, nine years ago, on the montel williams show, that her daughter, who was just the other day rescued from ten years of captivity, was dead. Her troubles have stemmed mostly from telling people that their missing loved ones were dead, only to have them turn up later, or, from telling people that their missing loved ones were alive, only to have them turn up dead.

A lot of people make a lot of money giving psychic demonstrations; we are a culture, we are a species, inclined to prefer credulity to skepticism. Tell people what they want to hear, they tend to believe it. To one degree or other, advertising always works.

Whenever purported psychics are offered the opportunity to subject their claims to intense scientific analysis, they tend to defer. Sylvia Browne has even turned down an offer of one million dollars by a man named Randi who heads an organization devoted to skeptical analysis of claims of the supernatural.

The jury is still out on whether human beings possess supernatural powers, what those powers are, and what the term "supernatural" actually means. If a person can predict the future accurately, or read minds, then those talents must be natural, rather than artificial, or beyond natural.  All that is is part of the natural universe, correct? The term "supernatural", ultimately, is no more meaningful than the term "empty space" or the term "unknowable".

The day may come when we understand precisely what people can, and cannot do. Until then, we are at the mercy of those who take advantage of our ignorance; but only so long as we permit it. As Goethe said, "we are never deceived, we only deceive ourselves".

All In Good Fun

DURING THE BILL CLINTON monica lewinsky fiasco a professor of electrical engineering from argentina, teaching in the united states, expressed amazement at the fuss and furor being made about the presidential sex scandal.

"In Argentina, the people expect the president to have many mistresses. I do not understand why you americans are so concerned about and ashamed of your president for having women".

Well, professor, it has to do with a schizophrenic american culture in which prudish victorian protestant values clash with a corporate capitalistic marketing of sex, through advertising and media entertainment. And which conflicting force is stronger, christianity or capitalism, depends on one's politics, it would seem.

Now former governor mark sandford, who resigned in disgrace following his exposure for having an affair with a latin american lady, is back in action, newly elected to the U.S. house of representatives after defeating the liberal sister of a well known television comedian.

It appears conservatives are far more willing to overlook the iniquities of a self deposed conservative republican governor than a moderate democrat president caught with his pants down. Impeach the president, restore the  ex gov to political power. 

That, even though the governor misused public funds to travel to south america for trysts, all the while claiming to be hiking on the appalachian trail. Good cover story, radiating good health, lacking only abduction by aliens.

But its all in good fun. We enjoy the soap operas, and if they keep us off the streets, all the better.

Competition and/or Art

FELIX MENDELSOHN  SUPPOSEDLY SAID "competition is for racehorses" in response to an invitation to participate in a piano competition. This was in the early nineteenth century. In 1958, at the prestigious tchaikovsky piano competition in moscow, a twenty year old american named van cliburn showed up and blew everybody away.

The judges, themselves accomplished pianists, voted cliburn the winner, and announced their intention of awarding him first prize. Upon reporting their decision to communist party officials, trouble began.

The party officials reminded the panel of judges that it would be greatly preferrable for a russian, or at least a non american, be given the award. This, in the midst of the cold war, when all forms of competition between the two super powers attained the highest importance. Communism must be proven superior to capitalism, even in the production of piano players.

The judges refused to change their decision. Integrity, they insisted, required that the prize go to the best, regardless of nationality, and the american was quite simply the best. The party officials made all kinds of threats, demanded that the judges acquiesce to political considerations, even threateniing to take the matter to russian premier Khrushchev, but still the judges would not relent.

So the party officials took the matter before the russian dictator. "Was the american the best piano player" asked the premier?...  "That's what the judges said", replied a party official. It didn't take much to anger nikita khrushchev, and, angered, he responded: "you have not answered my question. Please answer it now, or prepare to live in siberia".

"Yes, they said, the american was the best talent". "Then give him the damned prize, and bother me no further" said the big man. Kudos to the judges, and kudos to premier khrushchev, for having the guts and integrity to do the right thing.

Another possible solution would be for everyone to acknowledge that art is not the same thing as competition, and that activities such as piano competitions are petty, frivolous, and irrelevant. Competition is for racehorses.

Filling Up Our Lives

IT IS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to pay attention to circumstances and events in the united states without at least vaguely sensing that the behavior of americans is a bit, shall we say, "bizarre". Here in the fun house one has a wide variety of inanity from which to select. The same, or much the same can be said of people all over the world, but one must pick and choose, to avoid excess.

Our current diversion is the sudden reappearance of three young women who disappeared ten years ago in Cleveland. For cause we discover the usual suspects; perfectly normal, average middle aged middle class american men, with nothing better to do with their lives than maintain a harum of sex slaves.

All serial killers emerge from mainstream american culture, and why not?

Maybe these guys watched a tad too much television; creative ideas always have origins in imitation. Or maybe they just plain had too much time on their hands; but how can this be, with so many television channels, so much vicarious twisted violence, and such long work hours for anyone gainfully employed?

This is not an aberration, not in the great american fun house, where nothing is at it seems, and our mirrors distort our lives at our complacent behest. Sit back, enjoy the show, and don't bother asking questions; our corporate masters are not in the business of explanation, but only of seduction.

Has anyone produced a television program called "Road Rage" yet? We line up six year old girls in front of an audience and select the cutest one for special treatment, we sit transfixed while famous people, famous for their physical beauty, dance for our privilage of voting on the most attractive of the attractive, and no act of violence stemming from mental illness goes untelevised.

The road age idea has great merit and potential. Get your cell phones out, fellow americans, and point it at the car behind you. Chances are its some thirty year old upper middle class cutie pie, talking or texting on her smart phone, driving forty in a thirty five, less than ten feet away, and becoming increasingly angry with you for neither catering to her momentary desire nor providing her any intoxicating diversion from her life, which she dimly percieves to be less than fulfilling.

The Process of Economic Instability

A SYSTEM AS COMPLEX, unorganized, and unplanned as the american economy cannot escape the violent contortions manifest throughout the past two hundred years: depressions, recessions, inflation, unemployment, levels of production inappropiate to actual societal needs have been a permanent feature of the american economy.

A large part of the american economy is invisible because of drug laws, straight cash employment and other transactions. and various forms of organized crime, resulting in billions of annual dollars of unreported economic activity.

Social security, medicare, and medicaid are often wrongly described as "entitlement" programs, but are in fact paid for by the people who receive their benefits. Nonetheless, these programs contribute greatly to the staggering national debt, but perhaps the most draining of all is unemployment insurance, which presently goes out to approximately fourteen million american, and is in fact a disguised form of unemployment insurance.

But the most damagin effect on teh american economy is in the form of military procurement, which has accounted for about half of the sixteen trillion dollar national debt, and which serves primarly to enrich the corporations who pay to elect the politicians who legislate military budgets.

Doomsayers have forever predicted the imminent collapse of the american economy, and their dire prognostications may yet eventuate. Competitive and cooperative economic systems (capitalism and socialism) are both viable, but seldom can anyone be found who is willing to acknowledge this.

There is no shortage of intelligence availabe to contend with economic difficulties, but there seems to be a shortage of people willing to expand their thinking to open mindedly embrace available solutions. And until that changes, our economic instability is likely to proceed apace.

The U.S.N.A.

ONE POSSIBLE SOLUTION TO THE GUANTANAMO SITUATION, the situation in which the united states has since 1899 maintained a military base on cuban soil by having extorted it from spain at the conclusion of the spanish american war, is to arrange for its return to cuba, and

to transfer the prisoners there to U.S. territory, and try them. Or maybe the united nations international tribunal could handle the legal proceedings, as if the united states would ever accede to such an arrangement.

An arrangement could be made in which gitmo is transferred back to cuban ownership and control, in exchange for the restoration of full economi cooperation between the two countries, including the importation of cigars into america.

Soon thereafter, the cuban people could be given the opportunity to hold a referendum on the question of whether to become a state within the united states. This would give the united states the opportunity to expand its empire by voluntary inclusion, rather than by coercion and military occupation, the usual method.

A union of mexico, canada, cuba hispanola, and the united states: the united states of north america!
The Amero!

Productive Enterprise

A HOMELESS MAN in Texas decided to augment his panhandling with a sociological experiment, wherein he laid out several cardboard boxes, each marked with the name of a specific religion. He had a catholic box, a protestant box, and hindu box, an islam box, an athiest box, and several others.

Passersby were invited to contribute to the box matching their personal belief systems. It might be argued that anyone sufficiently energetic and intelligent to arrange this is quite able to not only seek but gain employment, but, that is another matter.

While homeless and soliciting free money, why not pursue a little scientific research, eh?

It turns out that, on that day in Texas, the athiests were the most generous, with the agnostics close behind, and adherents of most of the world's great religions lagging far behind. The study fails to include any evidence whether there exists any correlation between religiosity and generosity;

it could be that generous people and parsimonious people are both distributed evenly throughout the philosophical spectrum, but that on this particular day the generous athiests simply happened to be out in greater numbers.

This is where the scientific method comes in handy. Similar experiments could be conducted throughout the country, indeed the world, which would produce independently verifiable results. This would have the added advantage of providing the homeless an opportunity to engage in meaningful research,

while inculcating within them an awareness of their own capacity for productive enterprise.

What Good Now?

RETIRED SUPREME COURT JUSTICE sandra day o'connor recently said that the united states supreme court might well have made a mistake in agreeing to hear, then hearing, the bush versus gore case in 2000 which determined the identity (bush) of the president of the united states.

gore won the election in popular vote, by about half a million votes, but amid confusing circumstances in florida, involving hanging chads, recounts, and court battles, bush won florida, and the presidency. surely you who are over the age of twenty five remember all this.

those of you who are younger can either consider yourself fortunate, or unfortunate, to have missed all the excitement.

with bush slightly ahead in florida after several days of vote counting, but with thousands of votes still uncounted, florida decided to throw in the towel. gore's legal army filed for a recount, which was granted in florida, but bush's legal army appealed to the high court, which saw things his way.

and of course, the vote in the high court was five to four, along predictable court party lines, and bush took office, all after several weeks of this wrangling. people are forever trying to determine which vote was the deciding or "swing" vote, failing to realize that any of the nine might be so considered.

o'connor does not say that the court ruled wrongly, but only that perhaps  it should never have ruled at all, and let it be decided in state. One possible reaction to this is to congratulate her on her honesty and deliberation.

another reaction is to say"what good does it do now"?

So What!

THE FACT THAT a professional athlete in a major american sport has openly proclaimed that he is homosexual became a public affair of the highest importance, as the nation reacted, mostly by praising said athlete's courage, which might be considered a testament to our modern enlightened society.

He's a ground breaker, a brave soldier in the fight for sexual orientational equality. Also, he is nearly thirty five years old, and currently without a contract to continue playing professionally, so, its possible that, like eisenhower, he timed his shocking revelation to coincide with consequencelessness.

Then again, does this indicate that we have become more enlightened, or that our benighted state has merely assumed new characteristics?

There is somethng surreal about all this. Like, who in the hell cares, or, who in the hell should care, or, why should anyone care? There was a time, not long ago, when one simply did not discuss sex in any way, shape, fashion, or form, for any reason, ever.

Might we live to long for a return that time? Or perhaps long for an evolved version of it, based on acceptance and indifference, rather than denial. WE might hope that there will come a time when nobody cares who, other than ourselves, is gay and who isn't.

Maybe we could get the ball rolling this very moment. Someone is gay? So what!

Until such a time arrives,

Avoiding the Verifiable

YOU JUST NEVER KNOW. The minute you think you're on safe ground, the shells start landing. It all started like this. In a typically fascinating email, a good frined of mine casually mentioned that the galaxy is inhabited by quite a few lifeforms that are genetically very similar to humans.

My first mistake was to ask: "how do you know this"? Just leave it alone, right?  But no. After enduring a cobbwebbish exposition exploring the rhetorical question "what does it mean 'to know'?", i shoulda known i was whipped, or dead meat, or whatever.

Instead i plowed straight ahead, joyfully explaining that the scientific method has, for four hundred years now, provided a solution to the problem of gaining knowledge and communicating it to others, by defining a standard, universal process of logical steps to examine, test, retest, verify, and explain.

In other words, i crooned, the question of whether there are human like beings scattered around the galaxy is an answerable question, answerable by direct, clear observation, accessible, explainable, presentable to everyone. another mistake.

By implication, by extension, said question has yet to be answered, remains open, eh?

Well, free freee to try that on a true believer, and see how far you get. Its just that I never in a million years thought I would end up using and defending the scientific method as an aswer to a intellectual argument; and be rejected summarily.

WE live in credulous times, maybe because we seek escape from verifiable reality.

Education, not Legislation

SOMEWHERE IN THE good ole U.S. o f A., the land of freedom, (is it new york) there is a movement afoot to raise the legal age for purchasing tobacco products to twenty one. Currently , its eighteen, just about everywhere.

Since new york city now prohibits the sale and purchase of large sugary drinks and cholestoral, new york figures.

If we really want to keep cigarettes legal, but discourage people from smoking them because  people are too young and ill informed and cigarettes too harmful, why not raise the legal age for purchase to, say, ninety five?

When will we finally accept the basic reality that we can educate people against smoking, and other self indulgant hedonistic pleasures, such as drinking, but we cannot, and should not, attempt to legislate against it.

It simply does not, and will not work. Not in the land of freedom, where freedom is designed to give the individual maximum control over his or her own destiny, whatever it may be.

Surely this is one issue upon which right wing conservatives and left wing liberals can agree: freedom. What we put into our own bodies should be our own choice. Government should not exist for the prspose of protecting people from themselves, but for the purpose of protecting them from others, domestic and foreign.

Should public schools teach sex education? Yes, in biology class.
see how easy this is?

Getting Started

THE VERY MOMENT an american gets into an argument, he, or she becomes a historian. people who ignored history in high school and avoided it in college are suddenly, magically overflowing in knowledge of the past.  Such people are the most likely to utter such banal platitudes as "history repeats itself".

 Red flag raised, your next decision is whether to correct the standard misconception, and how. Just explain that whenever two different people, or groups of people seem to be doing the same thing that other people did in similar circumstances, history is not reallyrepeating, but imitating, and only because we say so, only in our categorization.

Then, when you have them thoroughly confused, start talking about patterns of human hebavior , and how sociology and psychology can be used to help explain history. And explain that making causal connectons in history does not change or create history, but only helps us try to understand it a bit better.

Telll it like it was, admonished the great german historian von ranke, and who could argue."Wie es eigentlich gewesen!"  You see, not only does every historian have a unique version of history, but  how history should be researched, interpreted, and written: "historiography", the study of the writing of history.

Soon enough historians will be asking about cultural connections between all the random mass murders in early twenty first century america, so why not start now?  why all the violence?

was american society in the early twenty first century competitive, individualistic, unequal, with high rates of poverty, depression, lonliness, alienation, and anger, they might ask? future historians need to make a living too. let's help 'em get started.

Just Like the Rest of Us

THE MORE WE LEARN about the boston marathon massacre the spookier, eerier, yet somehow more strangely familiar it all seems. The two russian kids have turned out to be more american than russian. And they have turned out to be much like the rest of us, very "normal".

WE're used to the carnage by now, of course. It happens too often for us not to be innured to it, to an extent. We are reminded that weapons can be anything other than a gun. And that in modern america, violence is random, frequent, and deadly.

What's amazing is the testimony of the people who knew these brothers best. By all indications, they were so normal as to be beyond even remote consideration as mass murderers. Pleasant, quiet, friendly...normal... just reagular guys. Whatever darkness lay within, it lay deep.

And so it makes you wodner what lay deep within the rest of us. So often the serial killer is comebody nobody would ever have suspected. Somebody whom you would never even think capable of murder.

These two newest enignatic murderers never would have been denied a gun permit based on any  personal history or psychological profile. They are just like the rest of us. And so you can't help but wonder what lives deep within the rest of us, and next time, who from among us will emerge as the next mass murderer.

when they finally caught the younger brother after a lengthy dramatic pursuit, the entire nation (U.S.of Advertising) paid rapt attention. After all, that's what its all about, isn't it? Who knows how many suspects will be cornered next time, or what kind of ratings they'll get...

The Power of Better Behavior

SOMEONE SUGGESTED THAT, as we go about the business of exploring space and looking for life in teh solar system, we should look at place other than mars, places such as the satellites of the big gaseous planets, like jupiter and saturn.

That's a good point, though the best way to really look is to probably train our telescopes on distant stars and galaxies, rather then sending rockets and space probes around the solar system. Another advantage of this method is that anyone can particpate, helping out from the comfort of one's backyard or compter. For information on how to get started, contact NASA.

we could really kick start the exploration  of space, and thus give us something worthwhile to do, to keep us off the streets, and out of trouble. kids in india could be logged on...listening, while reading or doing other homework.

THE point we all seem to be missing in our eternal debate on whether to require paperwork for gun sales and a limited amount of bullets per firing, is that the problem with pervasive violence in the united states is too deeply rooted in basic american culture to be remedied by some new weak willed gun law.

The problem is our self serving narcissistic twisted sense of entitlement,  which leads us to renounce our communities in favor of violent fantasy entertainment. we want to be successful so desperately that we forget to even attempt to be valuable.  

Mind foreruns all consitions, says the first line of the Dhammapada. Our behavior is greatly influenced by our environment, our cultural values. IN america, we are constantly being told by our corporations that we want to experience violence and sex, vicariously. Those are the two great corporate drugs.

if we could just keep our addictions and seductions down to a dull roar, think positive about our own lives and our value, we might do less damage to ourselves and others, and begin to build a better world through the power of better behavior.