The Missouri legislature is entertaining a bill that would require a signed permission from a student’s parent(s) before the student may receive sex education.

A few weeks ago, while listening to Talk of the Nation on NPR, I learned that, according to recent polls, Americans exhibit NO MAJORITY CONSENSUS on the issue of sex eductaion.  In other words, while majority opinions concerning abortion (60% believe if should remain legal), cohabitation (over 70% believe living together is not a bad idea as prelude to marriage), birth control (close to 80% believe this is a personal choice and a matter of privacy), there is no single group over 20% on any opinion about sex education.  In other words, the state of sex education in this country as a matter of public policy is in a mess because people themselves are nothing but confused about it.  We can’t find a 51% majority anywhere on when to start it, whether to start it, what should be in it, who should receive it.

Back when John Ashcroft was governor of Missouri, he solicited a report on this matter.  The agency (I believe it was Health and Human Services) issued its report concluding that the most effective program was a combination of early sex education combined with easy access for students to on campus clinics.  The report also concluded that “abstinence only” programs DO NOT WORK.  (Seems kids–like humans of any age–are contrary little buggers who insist on digging into the things adults try to hide from them.)  Ashcroft locked the report in a room and refused to distribute it.  He didn’t like those conclusions.  He had already decided that children should not receive such education.  They might “get ideas” and start having sex.  Not that they weren’t already, but at least when the girls got pregnant–or, more appropriately, in an old time idiom, “got caught”–you knew what they were doing and you could punish them.

In the United Kingdom, the state mandates sex education, beginning at the equivalent of our fourth or fifth grade.  Parochial schools as well as secular state schools must administer the program.  Cause and effect can be difficult to trace in such things, but let it be recognized that abortion rates in the UK, as well as in most of Western Europe, are much much lower than they are here.

A personal anecdote:  I attended a parochial grade school.  When I was in sixth grade, the school board decided to look into the matter of a sex education program.  They found one they thought appropriate and put it before the PTA.  My mother told me later that it was tasteful, informative, not the least offensive (to her), and she–along with one other parent–voted for it.  One other parent.  Everyone else said NO.  They didn’t want their children learning about it outside the home.

One of the girls in my class was pregnant by 8th grade.  Two more that I know of did not finish high school because of pregnancy.

I have concluded on my own, in no very scientific way, that parents who vote No on such things do not then tell their children anything (except perhaps a warning not to “do that”).  Therefore, if this bill passes, it would be interesting to learn how many students get signed permission slips and how many do not.  We will then have a pretty good idea how many kids will end up understanding virtually nothing about sex and will be accidents waiting to happen.

(Rhetorical question follows)

What IS IT with people?

Today, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said:

Gasoline prices have soared an average of 60 cents a gallon in less than a month because suppliers are unable to keep up with demand, a situation that could persist up to three more years.

Bodman went on to suggest that stablilizing Iraq is a key to getting prices under control.

My reaction: 

1) This administration has a long track record for being less than honest with its estimates of time and money.  This three-year number is not evidence-based.  Bodman’s “three year” estimate is designed to stave off panic in the street.   This number is only designed to keep the American SUV producers from promptly going bankrupt.

2) Our thirst for oil (we gulp down 5,000 gallons per second) combined with our fragile oil supply lines (we’re one hurricane or one blown up oil tanker from $5/gallon oil) puts the U.S. economy in great danger.  

3) Republicans often argue that we cause massive losses of jobs and we put a drag on the economy by doing things like imposing safety or environmental regulations on businesses, paying out welfare benefits or allowing people to sue a corporation for making a dangerous product or suing when a hospital’s negligence kills a loved ones.   Their concern, of course is that these things make goods and services more expensive.  But these “drags” on the economy shrink to nothing in relation to the current jacked up price of gasoline.  Gasoline goes into the cost of everything else that is sold, including food (the average item of food travels more than 1,000 miles from the point of production to your plate).  To put it in perspective:  when Bill Clinton floated the idea of imposing a 7.5 cent per gallon tax on each gallon of gas, the republicans were furious.  Yet the current so-called free market has cranked up the cost of fuel 60 cents in the past month alone. Clinton’s tax would have reduced global warming.  The recent increase has profited oil executives and our middle eastern suppliers.

4) We could do something about this problem by educating consumers and regulating motor vehicle manufacturers.  For example, if new cars averaged 45 mpg and new light trucks averaged 34 mpg, we would save 1,507 gallons of gasoline per second. 

5)  Conservation should be an obvious priority–well, obvious for anyone not constantly being wined and dined by oil lobbyists.  Here’s why it’s obvious:  The supply/demand curve is sacred to many republicans–I suspect that many of them keep copies under their pillows.  To keep the high price of gas from trashing the economy, we need that price to be lower.  That can be done by increasing supplies of oil (but this isn’t possible in this age of peak oil) or decreasing demand–the “C” word. The most obvious way to conserve is to restrict the further creation of huge personal vehicles that get only 7 or 8 miles per gallon on real-life streets.  The oil we waste on such oversized vehicles compels us to send money that could have been used to solve massive domestic issues to countries that despise us.  Energy is energy.  Gasoline wasted is energy wasted–much of our electricity is generated by burning oil.  We don’t like to waste electricity, do we?  Then we do we acquiesce in wasting oil? Check out the following from the Sierra Club :

Switching from driving an average car to a 13mpg SUV for one year would waste more energy than if you…

• Left your refrigerator door open for 6 years
• Left your bathroom light burning for 30 years or
• Left your color television turned on for 28 years.

Just imagine how much less dependent on foreign oil we could have been had this president (and the past few presidents before him) proclaimed that national security depends on lowering our dependence on an obviously diminishing stock of oil.  Just think how much less a crisis we’d be in had our current fleet not included tens of millions of gas gulping behemoths, most of which will continue to be on the road for the next decade.  Just think of the millions of gallons of lowered demand that we could have by making mass transit more accessible for the middle class, by replacing insulation and outdated HVAC equipment, by car pooling.   It would truly be like “making” oil.  But it’s not yet macho or sexy to conserve, I suppose.

I’m still waiting for the president to frankly discuss the concept of “peak oil” with the citizens.  I’m still waiting for an honest national dialogue on the massive restructuring of our economy required by the arrival of “peak oil.”   We’re getting there slowly, but at the pace we’re going, we’ll won’t end up having an honest dialogue until we finally have it over a campfire lit by the last tree of our national forest.

Erich’s post about George Washington and not prejudging the opposition reminded me of a superb essay written by Benjamin Franklin about Native Americans, titled: “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America” (1784). The essay is reproduced below and I think it illustrates why Mr. Franklin is considered one of America’s most important individuals.

======================================

Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs.

Perhaps, if we could examine the manners of different nations with impartiality, we should find no people so rude, as to be without any rules of politeness; nor any so polite, as not to have some remains of rudeness.

The Indian men, when young, are hunters and warriors, when old, counselors; for all their government is by counsel of the sages; there is no force, there are no prisons, no officers to compel obedience, or inflict punishment. Hence they generally study oratory, the best speaker having the most influence. The Indian women till the ground, dress the food, nurse and bring up the children, and preserve and hand down to posterity the memory of public transactions. These employments of men and women are accounted natural and honorable. Having few artificial wants, they have abundance of leisure for improvement by conversation. Our laborious manner of life, compared with theirs, they esteem slavish and base; and the learning, on which we value ourselves, they regard as frivolous and useless. An instance of this occurred at the Treaty of Lancaster, in Pennsylvania, anno 1744, between the government of Virginia and the Six Nations (1. A confederation of Iroquois tribes: Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Mohawk, and Tuscarora.) (more…)

I recently dug out three interesting quotes of George Washington, our first president:

• A historical revision on a unique scale has been imposed on us by the Creator. 
• Only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting an idea on the memory of the crowd.
• I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker.

It is striking that Washington was such an especially religious man and that he expressed psychological insight regarding group memory . . .

Actually, I’m conducting a little demonstration here.  Only now can I reveal that the speaker of the above quotes was not George Washington.  The author was actually Adolf Hitler (I pulled each of these quotes out of the Encarta Book of Quotations). I’m not conducting this experiment to show any admiration for Hitler.  I don’t admire Hitler. 

What I’m trying to show is that people we hold in low esteem often speak in ways that we would entirely excuse had the same words been spoken by someone we admired.  By not fighting this tendency to prejudge everything spoken by our enemies (we all have this tendency), we risk missing out on chances to connect with those we generally oppose.  Why would we want to make connections with those we generally oppose?  Because we might otherwise waste enormous energy by devoting our entire lives to destroying each other.

Allowing ourselves to characterize individuals as being in the in-group or out-group grossly distorts the manner in which we interpret the things they say.  We tend to write off what the “opposing” side has to say as “insane” and “ridiculous” regardless of whether it is reasonable.  We also overlook many ridiculous things spoken by people we generally admire, a tendency that can inflame the opposition. 

Our country and our world are highly polarized.   Perhaps the starting point for establishing some sort of benign collaboration is this:  We need to expend focused mental effort to downplay the past conduct, words and affiliations of speakers we generally oppose and we need to take extra care to consciously and carefully listen to their present words.  Without these difficult first steps, we will never be able to bridge the gap between our own beliefs and those of the opposition.  Failing to put the opposition’s best foot forward precludes the possibility of forgiveness and redemption, traditionally religious concepts that this skeptic has long found useful.  When we automatically bristle at whatever the opposition says, the opposition must forever remain the opposition.  

“But why should we judge the opposition’s words fairly when the opposition keeps mangling the meaning of our words and, in fact, trying to kill us,” someone might ask.  Perhaps the answer flows from my version of faith.  Based on the work of numerous cognitive scientists, I believe that human cognition is ultimately embodied in our own physical animal existences. We each have human bodies that generate urges, emotions, expressions and gestures that are
immediately understandable to cultures around the world. 

This common grounding of all of our emotions and concepts gives us much in common with each other–a huge head start.  My faith is that shared meaning can become apparent if we work hard to avoid prejudging each other.  We can’t do this hard work unless someone courageously takes the first step. If someone does step up and take the chance, a cascade of additional connections might become apparent. If no one steps up and if no one makes that first move, both sides will be forever locked in defeat.

Isn’t that reason enough to try?

I have to admit, when I read grumpypilgrim’s post that the evidence supporting Christianity is on par with the evidence supporting alien abduction, I got nervous.  It sounded so very harsh. I couldn’t help thinking of the many sincerely Christians who would be insulted by such a comparison.  I’m well aware that many Christians (including many of the people who regularly visit this site) are incredibly generous people who give much more back to this world than they take.  I truly admire their good works.  It is not my purpose (and I’m sure it’s not grumpypilgrim’s purpose) to insult them.  I’ve tried to make this clear as part of other posts.

On the other hand, grumpypilgrim’s post reminded me of some of the many questions Daniel Dennett raised in his recent book, Breaking the Spell (2006).  On page 210, for example, Dennett cited Richard Dawkins (from A Devil’s Chaplain):

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in.  Some of us just go one god further.

I have often criticized believers who are so absolutely certain of their own beliefs, all of which are based upon a personal “feeling” and apocryphal writings, that they take political steps to disparage the beliefs and doubts of all other people.  Jimmy Carter has termed such people “fundamentalists,”:

A fundamentalist believes, say, in religious circles, that I am close to God. Everything that I believe is absolutely right. Anyone who disagrees with me, in any case, is inherently wrong and therefore, inferior. And it violates my basic principles if I negotiate with anyone else or listen to their point of view or modify my own positions at all. 

To me, the fundamentalists’ rampant certainty amounts to blaspheming the mysteries of the universe.   Such people have lowered the bar for only a certain category of beliefs—their own beliefs, which are typically those with which they themselves were raised.  Fundamentalists don’t lack skepticism, however.  They apply more skepticism that I apply toward all religions other than their own.  They scoff at the tattered sacred texts of Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists.   They shake their heads with condescension or even derision at the ceremonies of those “misguided” Moonies and Wiccans.

Strong believers can be skeptics and they are skeptics.  They are perfectly OK with their tool of skepticism as long as it is not aimed at their own precious beliefs.  Those who are skeptical toward a believer’s own religion are termed misguided or immoral.  In my experience, believers (included those big-hearted sensitive and heroic sorts of Christians I’ve met) try to change the subject as soon as one turns the lens of rigorous inquiry toward their own religion.   (more…)

I just finished reading Michael Shermer’s book, “Why People Believe Weird Things.”  It’s very long-winded — the book could easily be 1/10th its size and still make the same points — but it did make me realize one thing.  The book discusses alien abduction as an example of a weird thing that many people believe, and points out that it is based entirely on anecdotal stories without a single shred of physical evidence.  As I read this, I realized that the same can be said of Christianity or, indeed, any other religion.  There is as much physical evidence for Christianity as there is for alien abduction:  i.e., none.  Indeed, if we consider the scars that supposed abductees claim were caused by alien medical experiments, there is actually more physical evidence for alien abduction than for Christianity. 

Moreover, the mental processes that leads to both beliefs are remarkably similar.  Both depend upon a leap of faith based on highly improbable stories told by people of unknown credibility.  Both heavily rely on dreamlike visions:  abductees call them “memories,” Christians call them “prophesies” or “revelations.”

And, significantly, both beliefs gained popularity during times when contemporaneous events caused large numbers of people to be receptive to the belief.  It cannot be mere coincidence that the rate of reported alien abductions grew dramatically during the 1960s and 1970s, when the NASA space program — and the idea of space travel — was capturing attention around the globe.  Likewise, Christianity arose at a time and place in human history when many people were claiming to be the Messiah, and many more were claiming to be prophets sent by God.  The belief in witchcraft during the 17th century fits this same pattern.

Does this mean Christianity is invalid?  No, but it does mean Christianity has a lot more in common with alien abduction and witchcraft than it does with, say, Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Why do we laugh?  Introspection and common sense tell us that we laugh because someone said or did something funny.  This is usually incorrect, however.  In Laughter (2000), Robert Provine reported the results of his carefully conducted experiments, showing that in social situations, between 80 and 90% of laughing is not a response to jokes or other formal attempts at humor.  Rather, most laughing is in response to innocuous statements such as “I’ll see you guys later.” “I should do that, but I’m too lazy” or “I told you so!”

Provine has found that laughing serves a function similar to small talk:  it facilitates or maintains social bonds.  “Laughing plays a . . . nonlinguistic role in social bonding solidifying friendships and pulling people into the fold.  You can define ‘friends’ and ‘group members’ as those with whom you laugh.”  In The Human Story, Robin Dunbar cites studies finding that laughing is correlated with the release of endorphins and that this release of hormones facilitates bonding.

Unless we’re at a comedy club, then, laughing usually serves a function much different than common sense and introspection suggest.  The research of Provine and Dunbar is but one of many examples where conventional wisdom and introspection fail to explain human behavior. Where one truly wants to understand human cognition, one must turn to the scientific method.

We need to keep this caveat in mind because common sense seduces us with powerful illusions, illusions that look like uncontestable “facts” to those of us who believe we can merely sit around and think in order to figure out how human animals think. Although the image was compelling for centuries, the sun did not really go around a flat Earth. Likewise, science has shown that our ears do not operate like microphones and our eyes do not work like cameras. “I” am not really like a little person who dwells in my head.  Likewise, we don’t think the way we think we think.  We need rigorous science to see around our own corner. (more…)

Stating the obvious, in ever-new and creative ways . . .

http://cagle.com/news/SUVMe/1.asp

I can’t believe that it’s actually necessary to argue that we should allow medical research that might give numerous people a fighting change to survive horrible diseases.  But here we are.  We live in an age where many things have been turned upside down. 

I wrote the following letter on November 27, 2005 after attending Catholic Mass at a church in my neighborhood.  I attended because I had heard that priests throughout Missouri had been instructed by their superiors to preach against a proposed Missouri Constitutional Amendment that would allow stem cell research to continue

Washington University in St. Louis is a major medical research center that conducts stem cell research.  The Missouri legislature has regularly threatened to prohibit stem cell research in Missouri, giving rise to a proposed Amendment that is being promoted by  The Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures.

http://www.missouricures.com/

MCLC describes the amendment as follows: 

Should Missouri patients have access to medical cures that are available to other Americans?
That’s the key issue that led a coalition of patient and medical groups to develop the Missouri Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, a voter referendum measure proposed for the November 2006 statewide ballot.

Stem cells could provide cures for diseases and injuries that afflict hundreds of thousands of Missouri children and adults and millions of other Americans – including diabetes, Parkinson’s, cancer, heart disease, ALS, sickle cell disease and spinal cord injury.

Unfortunately, some politicians in Jefferson City are trying to pass state laws that would ban and criminalize important types of stem cell research in Missouri – and actually prevent Missouri patients from having access to future stem cell cures that are federally-approved and available to patients in other states.

The MCLS site is an information-rich site on the topic of stem cell research.

Missouri voters will decide this issue in November 2006.  I am in favor of this proposed amendment because stem cell research gives doctors more tools and more hope for curing numerous vicious diseases. 

I knew that priests all over St. Louis would be condemning this proposed Amendment because it allegedly “kills babies.”  I wanted to hear the sermon for myself. 

With that introduction, here is what I wrote to one priest who delivered one of the many anti-stem cell research sermons in St. Louis on November 27, 2005:

–
I attended Mass today out of curiosity.  I wanted to hear what you had to say about stem cell research. I saw you carefully holding that beautiful baby at the front of the church, as you spoke of being faithful to life’s little things in order to fully appreciate “big ideas.”

Then I heard you characterize stem cell research as the creation and destruction of human lives, all paid for by tax dollars.  You announced that embryos are human lives and that they should not be “used and discarded.”  You stated that there were “other ways” to cure debilitating diseases.  You told your parishioners to consider these things when they are asked to sign the stem cell initiative petition.  You indicated that one Saint Margaret of Scotland parishioner was a medical ethicist and that he would explain the technical issues at a later session. (more…)

Using the planning and dedication this country employed in Iraq and Katrina, Bush promised today that he will try to minimize the price gouging committed by some of his biggest contributors.  Many people are expressing relief that the president has finally realized that Americans are being victimized by big corporations.

I have a different theory about Bush’s announcement:  Bush is asserting that he’ll rein in his oil industry contributors only because his OTHER major contributors (e.g., telecommunications, pharmaceuticals and banks) are now complaining that Big Oil is taking too big a share of consumers’ wallets and not leaving enough for them

In other words, this latest rhetoric is not aimed at protecting citizens, but only to encourage the monopolists to get along with each other a bit better.  They can still carve the American consumer down to the bone, but they need to do so with decorum.  After all, when monopolists steal from consumers, they need to remember that they are really stealing from each other.  And THAT is just plain wrong.

Let the national debate proceed, then.  Beware, though, that the following things remain off the table for all practical purposes: urban sprawl, high efficiency machinery appliances, mass transit, minimum requirements for heating/cooling efficiency and, of course, THESE things:

And here’s why this administration won’t really do anything about gas guzzlers.  When it comes to one’s freedom to burn gas, most Republicans see cars much as most Democrats see a woman’s body: 

• Keep your hands off my vehicle. It’s MY car. 
• My right to choose whether to drive and WHAT to drive. 
• It’s not the government’s business how I am pleasured in the privacy of my own vehicle.
• The decision of whether to drive is between a person and his Hummer Dealer.

All of these reasons are couched in terms of “freedom,” of course, as though the wrack and ruin of the national economy is not a contending interest to one’s right to drive a vehicle that gets only 9 miles per gallon when tested under ideal road conditions.

Arianna Huffington succinctly explained why.  

Withdrawing our troops from Iraq does not mean abandoning Iraq.

Withdrawing our troops from Iraq does mean eliminating the insurgency’s best recruitment tool.

To win in Iraq, we need to leave Iraq. To win, we need to stop being the issue. To win, we need to give our money, our brains, our support in every way — but no longer the lives of our soldiers.

 It’s time for our alleged leaders to follow through with this plan. 

Part I: What’s really in the Bible?

Although I have regularly picked up my King James Bible, I haven’t had the stamina to plow all the way through.  Kudos to the authors of the “Skeptic’s Annotated Bible.”   We know they really made it to the end because they left proof along the way:  They annotated the entire Bible, using sassy icons to point out its many contradictions and absurdities. 

Reviewing the SAB reminded me of the protests of one of my evangelical relatives, “You shouldn’t spend so much time finding fault with the Old Testament.  You should move on the the New Testament.”   Her approach was to ignore the embarrassing parts.  In my experience, the great majority of those who quote the Bible skip over these many embarrassing parts.  Hence, the project of the SAB:

The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible attempts to remedy this imbalance. It includes the entire text of the King James Version of the Bible, but without the pro-Bible propaganda. Instead, passages are highlighted that are an embarrassment to the Bible-believer, and the parts of the Bible that are never read in any Church, Bible study group, or Sunday School class are emphasized. For it is these passages that test the claims of the Bible-believer. The contradictions and false prophecies show that the Bible is not inerrant; the cruelties, injustices, and insults to women, that it is neither good nor just.

You can find the entire Skeptic’s Annotated Bible at:  http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/index.htm
 

Part II: Americans say they read the bible, but do they actually read it?  Apparently not.  See this commentary from Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary:

“Americans revere the Bible–but, by and large, they don’t read it. And because they don’t read it, they have become a nation of biblical illiterates.”

Fewer than half of all adults can name the four gospels. Many Christians cannot identify more than two or three of the disciples. According to data from the Barna Research Group, 60 percent of Americans can’t name even five of the Ten Commandments. “No wonder people break the Ten Commandments all the time.

Some of the statistics are enough to perplex even those aware of the problem. A Barna poll indicated that at least 12 percent of adults believe that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. Another survey of graduating high school seniors revealed that over 50 percent thought that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife. A considerable number of respondents to one poll indicated that the Sermon on the Mount was preached by Billy Graham.

These observations are entirely consistent with my own observations that those who bark the loudest that the Bible is the Word of God know very little about it and care very little about the meaning of the actual words of the Bible. 

This hypocrisy reminds me of one of Daniel Dennett’s many points from Breaking the Spell (2006):  Most Believers don’t really believe in God.  Rather, they believe in belief.  They feel compelled to say that they believe in God even though they don’t actually believe in God. 

How else can we explain that they need to remind each other of the Bible’s basic “truths,” week after week, in church?  Why so many reminders?  Do they keep forgetting the world’s most imporant events?  And how else can we explain that we rarely if ever see anyone carrying the world’s most important book to professional sports events, to a shopping mall or to cocktail parties?  If Believers truly believed, they would carry the Good Book everywhere and talk about it constantly, not just while in church. 

Ergo . . .

Bill Moyers thoughtfully analyzed this distinction in tompaine.com.   He describes the access our legislators give to special moneyed interests:

The total spent per month by special interests wining, dining, and seducing federal officials is now nearly $200 million. Per month.

Moyers writes that this huge legalized bribe is “a small investment on the return,” pointing to specific pieces of corrupt legislation passed by Congress in the past decade.  All of this has been given the combined stamp of approval of “big money” and the religious right:

Their religious strategy was to fuse ideology and theology into a worldview freed of the impurities of compromise, claim for America the status of God’s favored among nations (and therefore beyond political critique or challenge), and demonize their opponents as ungodly and immoral.

Moyers ends his piece with the following:

This is the heresy of our time – to wrestle with the gods who guard the boundaries of this great nation’s promise, and to confront the medicine men in the woods, twirling their bullroarers to keep us in fear and trembling. For the greatest heretic of all is Jesus of Nazareth, who drove the money changers from the temple in Jerusalem as we must now drive the money changers from the temples of democracy.

Many people think that they are motivated to act morally by reference to a set of external rules.  Not me.  Although rules direct our attention to various problem-solving strategies, there are so many rules (and so many interpretations of rules) that people can easily “justify” almost any behavior by reference to rules.  “Do not kill” unless, of course, you want to kill, such as when you want to start a war.  In other words, rules are attention-directing devices–they are codified (and sometimes ossified) recipes.   They don’t serve, however, as any sort of “engine” of moral reasoning.

Now consider the people whose opinions we value.  These people do constitute an important part of our engine of moral reasoning.   These are the people with whom you interact in real-life, of course–they call you and email you and run into you at the grocery store.  But even when they aren’t really interacting with you they are “there,” providing a durable moral compass as a result of the thoughts they have planted in you.

If the people with whom you spend your time consider only their own desires for amusement and consumption of material things, it is their sorts of thoughts that will be most available to you when you make decisions.  If you spend time with people who have burning desires to improve social justice (e.g., to make decent health care available for all children), then those are the types of thoughts that will be most available to you.

But who exactly are they, these people who you become?  You know some of them very well. They might include family members.  They also include those people you respect.  For me, one of them is a fellow who appeared out of nowhere to calibrate my moral compass in 1988.  Back then, my boss, then the Attorney General of Missouri, worked harder at corruption than at consumer fraud.  I relied daily on this friend’s “voice.”

We don’t generally fill out scorecards to designate exactly who they are at any given time.  If you move in a diverse social circle, the aggregate “voice” of your friends consists of diverse thoughts and opinions.  They speak to you in recognizable “chords.” If you’re fortunate, they are beautiful, richly harmonic chords. They constitute your personal Greek chorus.  They are your conscience and your guardian angel.   It’s questionable whether you could ever know yourself without these people.   

The people whose opinions you value, then, are always “with” you, even though they are often not physically with you.  When the people you choose are good and decent, they are “there,” nodding their heads approvingly whenever you dig deeply to achieve ends that are truly morally admirable. They hover over you, always somewhat accessible, always watching. 

There are certainly other such voices, though, and you might not recognize them to fill such important roles in your life until they suddenly die. Even when they die, you can still be inspired by your memories of these people, but it’s not quite the same.  When one of your “moral jurors” dies, the true importance of that person might finally dawn on you.

Susan Ehrenfest

Susan did not believe in God.  She did not attend church.  Rather, she believed in helping people who needed help and she attended to them.  Her mission in life was truly to help others in need, which she continued to do until yesterday, when she died of a massive stroke at the age of 87.

Born in 1919, Susan escaped the holocaust by fleeing to the United States in 1938. She was then a penniless Austrian woman whose mother had died when Susan was seven and whose father (who stayed behind, thinking that the madness wouldn’t last much longer) was about to be killed in a concentration camp.

Safely in the U.S., Susan married Steven, who she had known in Austria.  She was successful in her career as a fashion buyer for a large department store.  Though she didn’t have children of her own, she made her community her family.  She was a longtime active member of the board of Logos, a St. Louis school for children with academic and emotional needs that cannot be met in traditional classrooms. She was a active in supporting children’s theater productions.  She helped people who had health issues.  Over the past few years, I’ve learned some of the details regarding many of the people she helped with her time, money and encouragement (and this help went way beyond her work at Logos).

Susan was honest to a fault.  If you asked her what she thought, she told you. No crap. You would always know where you stood and that is why so many people valued her opinions. Opine she did, though her delivery sometimes bordered on curmudgeonly.  She was also street smart—no half-baked excuse or reason got past her.   But she more than made up for her “bedside manner” with her huge heart. 

At age 87, she retained a vigorous sense of curiosity and interconnectedness with her community.  When we brought people out to visit Susan, she always took the time to sit down with them to find out, in detail, who they were. Then she made them part of her family.  Whenever I saw her still actively reaching out to her community in her mid 80’s, I thought about so many other people in their 80’s who stop trying, who cloister themselves in their homes with their televisions and crossword puzzles.  It made me think of this great waste of human potential.

This brings me back to my first point.  Susan was a highly moral person because of her well-developed and well-practiced sense of reaching out to others in need.   Aristotle wrote extensively that morality is not about rules, but about moral character.  Being moral is not learned by memorizing external rules, but by practicing good-heartedness. Susan was quite a character, in every sense.

For the past decade or two, American consumers have enjoyed low prices at Walmart, which imports many of its products from China.  Simultaneously, American companies have enjoyed low prices by out-sourcing service jobs to India and manufacturing to China.  Americans, both consumers and business leaders, believe they have saved money by doing this.  And, in the short term, they have.

Unfortunately, actions often have unexpected consequences.  This is due, in part, to the fact that actions do not happen in isolation, but rather occur within the context of larger systems that operate dynamically — usually to negate change.  Systems do this through feedback, usually negative feedback that tends to either return the system back to its original state or to undermine the original advantage.  Everyday examples abound: 

• Cities build more roads to reduce traffic congestion, but then more people move in to take advantage of the roads and soon traffic is back to where it was. 
• A peaceful beach offers quiet relaxation, but then more people find out about it and soon the peaceful quiet is gone. 
• Antibiotics are invented to fight infection, but then bacteria develop resistance and soon infection rates return.

The same thing happens in the business world and, in fact, is now happening to Americans who believed they were saving money by shopping at Walmart and exporting jobs:  all that demand for goods and services from China and India has greatly expanded the economies of those countries, to the point where they are now rapidly growing their demand for oil.  The inevitable result:  global oil prices have exploded.  Who is to blame?  All those Americans who believed they were saving money by shopping at Walmart and exporting jobs.  In the short term, they did save money, but now the system is responding to negate those savings:  Americans now pay a lot more at the pump.

For more information about system dynamics, a field credited to renowned MIT professor Jay Forrester and which has been applied to a wide range of problems in both the public and private sector, look here.

Speaking about the lack of hard factual international news reporting by our nation’s major news outlets, Ted Koppell stated the following as part of his speech to the Overseas Press Club (where he received the President’s Award):

They have almost surrendered even the pretense of civic responsibility. That is not just a shame, but a travesty.”

See: http://www.cagle.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/boligan.asp

Angel Boligan of the El Universal newspaper in Mexico City just won the World Press Cartoon contest with this cartoon. Wonderful commentary on one of my favorite topics.

Interesting missive, that moral rules, dirty secret, thing.  Got me thinking.  I am one of those people with too much stuff.  I’m also one of those people who would just as soon give money or time to kids on the other side of the world as pay my own bills, but that’s a different problem altogether.  Let’s call it a problem with authority, and we’ll just visit that one some other time.

I’m on mission right now to rid my life of stuff.  If you entered my house at this point, you’d laugh at how, thus far, I haven’t fared particularly well in this area.  Stuff has sort of taken over.  None of it is particularly expensive or luxurious stuff, just stuff.  I have kids.  They like stuff.  ‘Nuff said.

In figuring out how to rid our lives of the extraneous junk and the stress it inevitably causes - particularly when it trips me up in the middle of the night causing swear words to wake my children - I’m faced with a choice.  Sell it, trash it or donate it. 

Trashing some of it is a favor to all involved - junk is a kind word to describe much of the effluvia of childhood.  Small plastic things, 40 drawings of essentially the very same flower, more small plastic things, pieces of other things we’re sure we’ll find the rest of eventually, single socks (even a shoe or two) in a house full of bi-peds but surely-the-mates-are-here-somewhere-and-if-I-toss-this-one-I’ll-immediately-find-the-other; hey look, more small plastic things, wrinkly copies of piano music long since mastered, paint brushes hardened with paint that didn’t exactly get rinsed out - and on and on and then some.  Good Lord!  Throw it out already!!

Agreed.  But it must be done stealthily, lest those children see me tossing out such treasures.  They tend to not like that so much.  They tend to whine and complain if they catch me.  And since I homeschool them, meaning they are with me CONSTANTLY, well, that’s harder than it sounds.  But I will, I promise.  Erich, will you watch my kids for awhile?

(more…)

Many people feel that to be moral is to follow a set of rules.  But there’s an implicit unwritten preamble to every set of rules or commandments: they don’t apply equally to everyone.

Consider “Do not injure or kill other people,” for example. Assume that two people have fallen off a ship and you’ve only got one lifesaver.  One of the people is a stranger and the other is your mother.  Should you consider throwing the lifesaver to the stranger instead of your mother?  Most people would say no.

A second example:  you might voluntarily put your life in danger to save members of your immediate family, but most of us wouldn’t offer our extra kidneys to people we’ve never met. We walk around simply assuming that having an extra kidney (when someone else desperately needs one) is not a moral act.

Here’s a third example:  You have $100.  You want to spend it on a fancy dinner for yourself and your significant other.  You are aware that if you sent that same $100 to your favorite African relief association you could save the lives of two starving people.  Are you allowed to spend the money on the fancy dinner knowing that doing so will condemn two people to certain deaths?  Most people would say yes. The same dollars that could be used to save human lives can also buy jewelry, souped-up car stereos and expensive tickets to sports events.  If you ever bring up this undeniable fact to a guy who’s about to plunk down big money to buy a fancy new TV, though, don’t expect him to thank you. He will inevitably  get perturbed because you just exposed him to the toxic thought that dollars are “fungible” (there aren’t special kinds of dollars that buy only luxuries–every dollar that can buy a luxury can also be used to buy food for a starving person).

We have great power to manipulate ourselves by roping off troublesome thoughts, such as the thought that dollars are fungible.  Humans have limited attention. Our minds work like spotlights.  When we shine our attention here, we don’t attend to what’s over THERE.  We are thus exquisitely able to stop thinking about things that interfere with our immediate impulses.  NOT thinking about desperately starving people allows us to buy amusements and luxuries with clear consciences. 

Those who claim to live by rule-based morality (e.g., the Ten Commandments), like to pretend that all the rules simply “apply,” as though humans don’t retain the full power to decide when their favorite rules apply and to whom.  (more…)

Congress is now pushing a law that would abandon Network Neutrality, the Internet’s First Amendment. Network neutrality prevents companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from deciding which Web sites work the best — based on who pays them the most. Your local library shouldn’t have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to have its Web site open quickly on your computer.

Net Neutrality allows everyone to compete on a level playing field and is the reason that the Internet is a force for economic innovation, civic participation and free speech. If the public doesn’t speak up now, Congress will cave to a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign by telephone and cable companies that want to decide what you do, where you go, and what you watch online.

This isn’t just speculation. Last year, Canada’s version of AT&T — Telus— blocked their Internet customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to workers with whom Telus was negotiating. And Shaw, a major Canadian cable TV company, charges an extra $10 a month to subscribers who dare to use a competing Internet telephone service.

From its beginnings, the Internet has leveled the playing field for all comers. Everyday people can have their voices heard by thousands, even millions of people. Congress thinks they can sell out and the public will never know. The SavetheInternet.Com Coalition is out to prove them wrong.

For more information, see http://www.savetheinternet.com/ or http://www.freepress.net/

Rumor has it that one reason the Whitehouse hasn’t had much staff turnover is because they’ve had trouble attracting replacements – not surprising given the stunning incompetence and dishonesty of this Administration. Unfortunately, those they are trying to attract seem unlikely to reverse the situation:

 http://mediamatters.org/items/200604190003

“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”

Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

A logical argument, known as a syllogism, looks like this:

     PREMISE 1:  All dogs have wet noses.
     PREMISE 2:  Max is a dog.
     CONCLUSION:  Max has a wet nose.

Easy, right?  Now, let’s see what happens when we remove one of the premises:

     PREMISE 1:  All dogs have wet noses.
     CONCLUSION:  Max has a wet nose. 

See how the conclusion no longer follows logically?  Regardless of whether or not the premise is true, the argument fails because it is incomplete.  Would it make sense for us to debate the argument?  No, because the missing premise makes the whole argument defective.  Would it make sense for us to even debate the premise?  No, for the same reason.  Of course, we might guess at the missing premise — that Max is a dog — but we won’t necessarily be correct.  Max might be an iguana.  Bottom line:  we can’t have a meaningful debate about whether or not Max has a wet nose until we first identify the missing premise.

OK, now, let’s look at how abortion opponents (so-called “pro-life” activists) frame their anti-abortion argument:

     PREMISE 1:  Life begins at conception.
     CONCLUSION:  Abortions should be illegal.

Do you see the problem?  The argument makes no sense, because there is a missing premise that makes the whole argument defective.  Does it make sense for us to debate the premise?  No, because even if we agree about the premise, the argument would still be incomplete.

So, what is the missing premise?  Your guess is as good as anyone’s.  The only two things we know for certain are:  1) the anti-abortion argument is defective without it; and 2) pro-choice supporters need to stop wasting their time debating the premise of when life begins, and start insisting that abortion opponents provide the missing premise.  No meaningful debate can occur about this argument until that happens.

The last question we might ask is why haven’t abortion opponents provided the missing premise, knowing that their argument makes no sense without it?  Could it be because the missing premise necessarily involves quoting the Bible, and they know that doing so might instantly render their argument unconstitutional according to US law?  Pro-choice folks will never know unless they ask.

Here’s a recent example of the effective use of sharp-edged rebuttal (see the comments) to puncture bloated and unthinking terror-mongering (see the post). 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-smerconish/play-the-tape_b_19449.html

The point of these comments is that two wrongs don’t make a right.  The post-writer, a good example of tens of millions of like-minded others, is apparently oblivious.  I guess “turn the other cheek” and the golden rule have become quaint platitudes to him.

In my opinion this truly is the right time and place for rough exchanges like this.  As this administration gets ever closer to launching missiles at Iran, if only the MSM would feel 1% of the emotion and urgency displayed in the comments to this post.

I listened to an NPR essay on the way home from work today by a woman who was a 31-year-old virgin when she got married.  It started me thinking about the whole subject, because I used to react to such claims with impatience and perhaps a bit of disdain.  I used to think that virginity was one of the most useless things people get worked up about.  In certain ways I still do.

But by and large, the whole topic kind of bores me anymore, because it is beside the point.  The national spasm of moralism right now is just the flip side of the hedonism of the 70s, which also largely missed the point.

We lump people into categories.  We do, don’t deny it.  It’s an obnoxious habit and one of the most persistent, because we want to know what each other is all about without taking the time and trouble to figure it out the hard way–which is, to actually communicate with each other and listen. By and large, such categorizing is relatively harmless–some are sports fans, others not; some are democrats, others not; some like rock music, some country, some classical.  It’s a quick way to find our level in a mixed group.

But some of it isn’t harmless, like–do you think a woman should be a virgin when she gets married…or not?

Why is always the woman?  Once in a while you find people including males in that, but lost virginity for a male doesn’t have the impact it does for a woman.  That’s because we treat a woman’s sexuality as a commodity–property–and some lucky lottery player wins it.  A woman who elects not to play that game and participates in the sexual lottery as if she were a man…well, it seems her sexuality is somehow debased. 

It’s nonsense, of course, but the rules were set a long time ago by people who never heard of political correctness and really did deal in women’s hymens as a business commodity.

With all that most people today don’t have an attitude that renders a woman a whore if she has sex before wedlock or opts not to play the marriage game, it is still a Big Deal.

And publicly at least we still miss the point.

Who cares if someone waits till age 31 to have sex?  I mean, what real difference does it make?

None.  It’s their choice.

Choice.

That’s the word everyone seems to get hung up on.  Parents treat a girl’s virginity as if it were a decision about which college to go to and what degree to take.  As if giving it up were a matter of her entire future.  With that kind of attitude, they make it so.  The rest of us seem to have some standard of cool which people fit into–or shame.

And it’s nobody’s business but the person’s in question.  Choice does not mean You Get To Go Have Sex Now, So You Better!  It means what it says.  Do what you want…when you want to.

Of course, if we’re really going to embrace that as an ethic–and it is the only human way to be–we have to be prepared to equip everyone to handle it.  Just Say No won’t do it.  You’re really going to have to teach prepubescents what sex is and what birth control is and, most importantly, what Choice is.