Thich Nhat Hanh in 2003

Here's a video sketch of Thich Nhat Hanh from 2003 that I enjoyed and decided to share. A sample quote:

THICH NHAT HANH: Using violence to suppress violence is not the correct way. America has to wake up to that reality. [Interviewer]: That’s not a sentiment you hear everyday at the Capitol. Nor is Nhat Hanh’s recommendation to this bitterly divided Congress that its members practice what he calls deep listening (to each other) and gentle speech.
At the persistent urging of Lisa Rokusek (an author at this website), I've been reading some of the works of Thich Nhat Hanh lately, and enjoying their elegant wisdom. Here are a few of his quotes:
Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos - the trees, the clouds, everything. People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar. The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions. People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air,but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle. Many of us are not capable of releasing the past, of releasing the suffering of the past. We want to cling to our own suffering. But the Buddha said very clearly, do not cling to the past, the past is already gone. Do not wait for future, the future is not yet there. The wise people establish themselves in the present moment and they practice living deeply in the present moment. That is our practice. By living deeply in the present moment we can understand the past better and we can prepare for a better future.

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Time for a national usury law?

First Premier Bank has just introduced its new 79% interest rate sub-prime credit card. No, that's not a typo, and some experts expect to see more credit cards with sky-high interest. Which makes me again bring up the topic of a national usury cap. Thomas Geoghegan recommended such a cap last year, in his article in The American Prospect. He suggested a credit card interest cap of 12% and a law completely barring payday loans.img_1180 I have filed several class action suits against large payday lenders (here's a post on one of those suits). These lenders often argue that people need these 400% interest loans for short term emergencies. At what cost, though? In my experience, these lenders are commonly stretching out these "short term" loans for many months. People who borrow $500 will pay $2000 in interest over the year and they will STILL OWE THE $500. Many states allow payday lenders to charge in excess of 1000% interest. These loans suck the very life out of working class folks. They amount to financial crack cocaine, because people often end up taking out a second, and a third payday loan in order to pay off the first one. It's a terrible mess and it's ruining lives. That's why 13 states have passed laws making sure that payday lenders cannot operate in those jurisdictions. It's time for the other states, and Congress, to get with the program. To put this all in perspective, remember the stories about "loan sharks?" Those were the good old days. "Simple nominal annual interest rates on extortionate mafia loan shark debts averaged 250%." Syndicate Loan-Shark Activities and New York's Usury Statute, 66 Colum. L. Rev. 167, 167 (1966). And here's another irony. The Bible clearly holds that usury is a sin comparable to murder. Usury is prohibited by Exodus 22:25: "If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.” Usury is also prohibited by Leviticus 25:35-37. In spite of these Bible quotes, if you want to find lots of payday stores and payday lenders, look for geographical areas where you'll also find conservative Christians. That is the finding of Steven M. Graves and Christopher Peterson, in a law review article entitled "Usury Law and the Christian Right: Faith-Based Political Power and the Geography of American Payday Loan Regulation," 57 Cath. U. L. Rev. 637, 640 (2008):

We conclude, with a high degree of statistical certainty, that states with powerful conservative Christian populations tend to host relatively greater numbers of payday loan locations per capita as well as a greater commercial density of payday lenders. These findings propound a tragic and sad irony. Those states that have most ardently held to their pious Christian traditions have tended to become more infested with the progeny of money changers once expelled by Christ from the Hebrew temple. Legislators in those states, who have effectively used biblical principles to shape their legislative agenda on social and cultural issues, have failed to consistently apply biblical principles to economic legislation.

All it would take for Congress to outlaw payday loans is to write up a bill, have a majority of members of Congress approve of it, and then refer it to the President to sign it. But that can't happen these days because the financial services industry pays our politicians huge amounts of money so that they WON'T sign these sorts of bills. And, of course, with regard to Congress, the banks "frankly own the place."

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Population Tetris

A few years ago, in a post called "Oil Tetris," I used the game of Tetris to illustrate the dangers of being dependent on petroleum and the fact that the United States consumes 5,000 gallons of gasoline per second. Today, I am offering a similar set of images to illustrate my concerns regarding the dangers of overpopulation (and its attendant degradation and depletion of natural resources). As one who has pledged to support the 2010 GPSO effort, I am advocating that we directly and unflinchingly address the issue of whether we have overloaded our planet, our little lifeboat in outer space, with people. Here's the general idea: If there were still only 2.5 billion people in the world (as there were as recent as 1950), it starved_girlwould be monumentally easier to sustainably tap into the world's resources to feed, house and clothe them. In 1950, it was not an empty world; 2.5 billion is a hell of a lot of people. Admittedly, it was not a peaceful world--it never has been a peaceful world, but it wasn't a world where so many basic critical resources were being stressed and exhausted (including water, oil, phosphates for fertilizer, food supply, ocean fishing and soil). So here is the illustration. Back in 1950, the baseline for providing for 2.5 people was much lower than it currently is. There was room for error--room to make changes in the way the world was being run while still giving access for most people regarding most resources. Here is the world in 1950: tetris-lowThe falling pieces represent societal needs, and there was more ability to meet those needs in 1950. But now the world is a different place, where 2 billion people live on less than $2/day. It's a world where huge numbers of people are without water and sanitation. It's a world were valiant efforts are necessary to keep the food supply even stable, much less to increase it. Back in 1950, we could increase the food supply significantly, because we hadn't yet filled the world with 6.7 billion people and we hadn't yet planted virtually every square mile that could be planted. Now, many emergencies regarding resources require desperate responses that aren't often publicized by the Western media; knowing that there are billions of hungry people throws a damper on our annual Christmas-time consumerist orgy. That's how difficult it is for affluent Westerners to give a damn about the big picture, making it naive to suggest that we simply need to redistribute existing resources and continue packing greater numbers of people onto the planet. Nor is it easy to reason with many religions that find it utterly inconvenient to limit the ability of their members to "go forth and multiply." There is little room for error these days, as represented by the following Tetris board: tetris-highThe question, then, is whether it is responsible to run our world like a highly stacked Tetris board, where starvation already affects one billion people and yet we continue to add 1.5 million more people to our resource-challenged world every week. Is it wise to live so dangerously? And for those who are tempted to comment that I should focus on things other than population, such as new technologies and social justice, by all means. I do that almost every week in my posts. But let's consider whether we would be better off also having the courage to address the basic issue of the carrying capacity of the planet.

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Training people to quantify risks

In the October 29, 2009 edition of Nature (available online only to subscribers), writer Michael Bond considered whether members of the general public could benefit from specialized training so that they could better appreciate risks. Believe it or not, there's a controversy in this field. According to Bond, many specialists think that the public "will never really be capable of making the best decision on the basis of the available scientific information." This pessimistic position advocates that risk-related decision-making should be conducted by paternalistic expert agencies, which should nudge people into making better decisions without educating them deeply as to why they should make the choices they are being encouraged to make. A classic example is changing the default on one's driver's license with regard to whether one would like to donate one's organs after death. Making the default that one will donate one's organs unless the box is checked dramatically increases those who participate in the program. The optimistic camp is represented by a variety of experts, including psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer, who advocates that "people can be taught to improve their decision make and skills." As the Nature article points out, poor decision-making is ubiquitous and it seriously undermines the well-being of people. When faced with unfamiliar emotion-fraud situations, "most people suspend their powers of reasoning and go with an instinctive reaction that will often lead them astray." Bond gives the examples of people refusing to get vaccinations for measles-mumps-rubella, and the unjustified fear many people have with regard to genetically modified crops. He also mentions the statistical deficiencies of healthcare providers, an issue I discussed in an earlier post. We still get all exercised about snakes, even though we rarely encounter them, but we ignore such things as peak oil and the danger of getting into automobiles. Why do people have such a hard time evaluating risks?

The problem, as many researchers in cognitive neuroscience and psychology have concluded, is that people use two main brain systems to make decisions. One is instinctive--it operates below the level of conscious control and is often driven by emotions. The other is conscious and rational. The first system is automatic, quick and highly effective in situations such as walking along a crowded pavement, which requires the near-instantaneous integration of complex information and the carrying out of well-practiced action. The second system is more useful and novel situations such as deciding on the savings plan, which calls for deliberate analysis. Unfortunately, the first system has a way of kicking in even when deliberation would serve best.
Gigerenzer argues that proper education and training could assist people to put the rational system in charge of the instinctive one. He claims that even one half-hour of training in statistics significantly improves people's ability to quantify risk. Bond lists several promising methods for improving critical thinking. One method is to train people to look at problems from an outsiders’ perspective. Another is training them to weigh multiple options simultaneously rather than looking at options one at a time. Another trick is to use "actively open-minded thinking," which requires people to intentionally consider more than the first conclusion that comes to their mind. How important is it that people learn better how to evaluate risks? In addition to the examples cited at the top of this article, research suggests that people who suffer from innumeracy overestimate the likelihood of terrorist attacks. They "tend to have a high body-mass index and tend to be poor at managing their own health." Those who believe that people can be trained to better appreciate statistics believe that people need to be taught to better "feel the numbers." They need to use real-life situations to illustrate the statistics. Many students don’t receive any training in statistics at all. In fact, your article mentions that only one law school in the United States requires a course in statistical thinking. This means that many judges and lawyers are not properly prepared to assess risks in our modern world. Younger students are neglected too. They are only taught the mathematics of certainty (such as geometry and trigonometry), not the mathematics of uncertainty. Bond’s article concludes with the suggestion that we now have a society of people who don't understand that they don't understand. He argues that society would see long-term benefits if we would only stress the need for a rigorous education in the statistics of risk.

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