tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32633976069155818682024-03-08T09:56:46.655-08:00Self-UniversityAdult learning is more than alternative education, self-help, self-study, or training. Self-directed inquiry can free you from the cultural traps of today’s postmodern world. When you think for yourself, you take control of your life. Intellectual ability and critical thinking soon become substitutes for paper credentials. Simply stated aggressive learning is the most practical guide to a passionately rewarding life.Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.comBlogger73125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-86122934548092908132021-06-05T15:45:00.000-07:002021-06-05T15:45:41.864-07:00Post-Publication Notes on Blue Bias<p> </p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Post-Publication
Notes on Blue Bias</span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">© Charles
D. Hayes<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Notes from a couple of Zoom appearances I have
made recently, one at a university and another to a private organization</span></i><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I am seventy-eight years old. I grew up in Oklahoma and Texas
in the 1940s and 50s. During those years, children grew up acknowledging that
most of the people who lived in nice homes were white, most nurses and schoolteachers
were women, and nearly all doctors, lawyers, and politicians were white men. I
don’t recall during those years ever hearing the term white supremacy, but white
superiority was accepted as common sense. If you had suggested otherwise, you
would have been set straight by adults with a tirade that makes today’s notion
of cancel culture seem quaint. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In 1960, on my 17<sup>th</sup> birthday, I joined the Marines
and served a four-year tour of duty. I joined the Dallas Police Department in
1966. I brought my racist indoctrination to the job as did most everyone else I
worked with. Having internalized the notions of superiority I grew up with, I
still viewed myself as did most others—as not having a racist bone in my body. I
began my work as a police officer with over-the-top enthusiasm only to suffer
what is commonly called burnout in a little over four years.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police
officers in May of 2020 began a nationwide call for police reform. It raised
the age-old question of whether we have a few bad apples in policing, or if
instead the whole barrel is tainted. My view is that there is truth in both
counts, but it is too easy to misunderstand why. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In real estate, it’s location, location, location. In
policing, it is attitude, attitude, attitude. If officers are not up to a
genuine and sincere effort to take their oath to protect and serve seriously,
then poor public service is the best we can expect. At worst, misconduct will
likely follow. Police officers with a jaded mindset are analogous to a person
using a GPS with bad coordinates: Every interaction one has with the public is
a bit off-kilter. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When citizens call 911, they are requesting a form of
thoughtful dominance that will bring order to chaos. It is assumed that alpha
males and alpha female officers will respond to the call, because the job
requires such a disposition, regardless of whether such a character trait comes
naturally to them or not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
unfortunately, because this boldness is required by law enforcement, the
occupation is attractive to individuals with authoritarian personalities, people
who see the world in simplistic terms: right versus wrong, black versus white,
with no room for gray areas, nuance, or the need for deliberation. When racists
become police officers, they have effectively been given a license to hate, but
the nature of the work and the physical changes that ensue can have a negative
effect even on officers with noble intentions. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Peace officers in America have for generations been afforded almost
complete autonomy in a culture in which their word has been traditionally
accepted as the truth, creating a license to act without needing to worry about
consequences, and over time, this has led to abusive behavior as having been
effectively grandfathered in as acceptable. Technology has upended this sovereignty,
and increasingly police union reps are angry in part because they are being
asked, for the first time, to be subject to the law, rather than assuming they
are above it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I know something about bad cops because I was one. I wasn’t
corrupt or abusive, but I didn’t meet the standard of education then that I
believe is necessary to be a police officer. In <i>Blue Bias</i>, I mention
Michael J. Nila’s book, <i>The Nobility of Policing</i>, and his advice that
police officers will be “both blessed and cursed to see more of life in a year
than most people see in a lifetime,” and that they must be prepared
“emotionally and spiritually.” I was not prepared. At the time, I simply did
not have the knowledge that would have armed me with the perspective to deal
with witnessing so much of the worst of human behavior without becoming overly
cynical and jaded. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I let domestic disturbance calls get to me because they seemed
so infantile that I became disgusted by them and began to resent being asked to
answer them. But a decade after I left policing, I developed an insatiable interest
in the behavioral sciences, and as I became engrossed in an ethos of
self-education, I began to regret having given up on policing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In the 1970s, I moved to Alaska and went to work at Prudhoe
Bay for Atlantic Richfield. The work schedules offered an equal time off and I
began to use that time to study history, primatology, anthropology, evolutionary
psychology, sociology and myriad other subjects. I have been writing books and
essays about the value of self-education for more than 35 years. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In preparation for writing <i>Blue Bias, </i>I have spent the
past five years studying the history of policing and race in America, and how biology
and neuroscience applies to policing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In my time as a Dallas police officer, I never hit anyone with
my fist or a nightstick. I didn’t even carry one. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We used chokeholds in those days long enough
to get a person handcuffed. I am not exaggerating when I say that if the number
of men whom I used a chokehold on were in an average-sized living room, there
would be standing room only.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But when
someone told me they couldn’t breathe, I gave them the benefit of doubt. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Being a police officer today, in my view, requires an
extensive education about the history of policing in America just to be
grounded in the knowledge about how one’s presence is viewed by the members of
minority communities. The history of policing in America regarding race is appalling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As I point out in <i>Blue Bias</i>,
every time I hear a police officer express doubts about the legitimacy of the
Black Lives Matter Movement, all it reveals to me is someone egregiously
ignorant of that history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As Ta-Nehisi Coates has observed, America has
experienced two and a half centuries of slavery, ninety-plus years of Jim Crow,
three generations of separate but equal, two generations of legal redlining,
followed by illegal redlining that is still alive in some states today. Add a
century of lynching as a measure of silencing protest, and then being
restricted only to menial labor and domestic servants in employment for more
than a century, and you must ask, how then could the result be anything but
poverty?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">From the very beginning, low-income communities have
experienced a markedly different standard of policing—a double standard that
still exists today. Nothing is written in police procedure that calls for
different treatment in low-income minority neighborhoods. Instead, the behavior
of police officers is rooted in tradition, as in, “this is how we do it here.”</span><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Officers don’t need to mention that they treat people
differently; the subject doesn’t need to be discussed. The double standard has
been internalized through actions that began when the first officer donned a
uniform with a gun and badge. </span><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Simply stated, the history of policing in America
regarding minorities, especially Black and Brown citizens, has been horrific.
For decades after the Civil War, once the backlash to Reconstruction began,
peace officers in the South arrested Black men en masse on trumped-up charges
to supply prison labor for convict leasing by individual white farmers and
private companies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, the
atrocities committed by police officers all over America, but especially in the
Deep South, were on par with the darkest periods in world history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">The reason for having
police departments is decidedly simple: It is to keep communities safe—safe
from bad actors and increasingly in many cases, safe from over-policing, as
initiated by local politicians who see their police departments as a major
source of revenue. Through such policies, the police edict becomes a relentless
effort to write traffic tickets and to issue summonses for misdemeanors, for
offenses that have much less to do with public safety, and everything to do
with funding government. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">The issue of police
departments as major sources of revenue is notably missing from the calls for
defunding the police, but in so many cases this is the underlying reason for
many instances of the excessive use of force, simply because these incidents
are so often born out of the implicit goal of revenue enhancement. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">The impetus begins in the
detail room of each shift, as officers are told not to focus on making
community safety their highest priority, but instead to focus on petty offenses
and to produce results. One of the most egregious examples of this is detailed
in the Department of Justice March 2015 Ferguson Missouri Report. Read the
report online and don’t kid yourself that this kind of policing is not still
going on in many communities. But add to this revelation the fact that the
existence of a bedrock implicit racial bias has resulted in a double standard
in policing and the mistreatment of African Americans that is deeply rooted in
the horrific history of American law enforcement. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Over-policing creates a
higher reported incidents rate of criminal activity (albeit of misdemeanors and
minor infractions), which is then used to justify more over-policing, even
though over-policing created that higher crime rate in the first place. Because
police departments are already short of the number of officers needed to meet
the demand of 911 calls, the lack of officers to respond to true emergencies,
simply because too many officers are out in pursuit of revenue, exacerbates the
difficulty in making a neighborhood safer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Instead of focusing on
defunding the police, concentrate funding local governments through sources
other than fines for petty offenses. In most communities, police officers know
who the active criminals are in the areas where they are assigned—being
available to keep abreast of their activity is critical to public safety.
However, oppressive tactics aimed at stopping everything that moves in hopes of
deterring crime makes any neighborhood a candidate for being what I call a “Cortisol
Canyon,” a place which elevates the residents’ stress hormones beyond all
reason.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">From <i>Blue Bias</i>: “Pick a city: Dallas, Chicago,
Atlanta, or Ferguson, Missouri. Imagine two young black men are walking on a
sidewalk in a low-income residential area, a police cruiser drives by slowly,
and one of the young men says to the other, ‘Nothing for us to worry about with
those guys in the neighborhood.’ Sounds hysterically absurd when you consider
the reality of such a scenario. It is more likely that these young men feel
like quarry, prey, a target. And this, in my view, is prima facie evidence of
law enforcement missing the point of their very existence.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There have indeed been improvements in policing in
America. There are many police chiefs and individual officers working
tirelessly to improve policing, but there are also officers in every major city
in America who routinely behave like Derek Chauvin. The look on Chauvin’s face
when he had his knee on George Floyd’s neck was a look of entitlement: He was
acting in keeping with the double-standard tradition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">While overt explicit racism has reared its ugly head
during the past five years, the most significant problem we still face is a failure
to admit that implicit bias is not about racial hatred or animosity but is
instead simply the way our brains catalogue what we assume comprises reality.
From the time we are toddlers, our brains sort, categorize, and stereotype, and
they do this without our conscious awareness. </span><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Coast to coast, America’s inner cities represent the
fallout of both explicit and implicit bias, as does our disproportionate
percentage of racial minorities in prisons. In our literature, television, and
cinema, black men are often depicted as being exceptionally dangerous. It’s
thrilling entertainment, cast this way for effect, and so it’s not surprising
to hear of black men who are also wary of black men. </span><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As professor of biology and neurology Robert M. Sapolsky
points out in his profoundly enlightening book <i>Behave</i>, we are more
likely to assume a glimmer from the hand of a stranger is a weapon—if it is
dark, if the person is male instead of female, if the person is of another
race. The kind of neighborhood matters too—then back we go from what kind of a
day we are having, all the way back to childhood development, our prenatal
experience, to our ancestral lineage that occurred millions of years ago, in
which evolution equipped our limbic system—all set the stage to make snap
judgments based on appearances. </span><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We don’t have to hate or dislike strangers to treat
them differently than those who are familiar to us. So, arguing incessantly
about whether we are racists or not is a tragic waste of time, and it gets us
no closer to solving the problem, which is that our subconscious snap judgments
based on our cultural upbringing come to us milliseconds before our conscious awareness
has a chance to assess the issue at hand. We are predisposed by nature of our
cerebral architecture to be geniuses when it comes to rationalizing, yet we are
still unlikely to realize we are simply trying to justify our position. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Neuroscientist R. Douglas Fields is a senior
investigator at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and
author of <i>Why We Snap. </i>He puts it this way: “Racial prejudice is wired
into the human brain. Stereotyping of people as members of outcast groups is
also wired into the human brain but by somewhat separate circuits…. The human
brain instantly sorts people into different groups along racial lines. This may
be difficult to accept, but the latest neuroimaging evidence supports this
surprising conclusion…. That there can be no patriotism without a foreign adversary,
no maternal bonding without seeing other babies differently.”</span><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">For 99.9999 percent of our species’ time on this
planet, we were on the dinner menu of large predators and subject to meet
warring tribes at any given moment. As a result, evolution saw to it that our
limbic system (which consists of the hypothalamus, the hippocampus, the
amygdala, and the thalamus) handles our experience by forming a sentinel
awareness which notes and captures anything and everything that may prove
harmful in milliseconds before our frontal cortex (our executive brain
function) is even aware there is danger. In other words, our brains evolved to
jump to conclusions for safety’s sake, and this includes everything that
qualifies as being unfamiliar. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Metaphorically, it is like our limbic system photoshops our
life experience, not as we think it should be, but as it appears. When you give
this some thought from an evolutionary perspective, it makes good sense. Most
of human thought derives from our subconscious, and this intuitive and
instantaneous response is independent of our frontal cortex, which is what we
commonly refer to as our executive brain function. Let’s say you decide through
much executive reasoning and reflection that you are no longer afraid of
snakes. That’s fine, but it will still not stop your limbic system from
freaking out if you are about to step on one. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Now, it is crucial to understand that our brains
have been sorting, categorizing, and stereotyping all through our childhood to
and through our adulthood and that we have all internalized myriad assumptions
about subjects we are consciously unaware of until we have an occasion to
proffer an opinion. It is critical to be fully aware that our subconscious
assumptions are not based on the way we think things should be, but only as
they appear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the same manner that, if we had chicken pox when
we were young, the shingles virus is now a part of us, the same analogy applies
if we have grown up in a culture in which racial bias is systemic. This
includes the whole planet. <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Another way
to visualize how we are instilled with this ability to sort and stereotype is
to think about how easily we recall drama when we are personally involved. When
we study a myriad of subjects, the process requires a concentrated effort to
recall what we have learned, but when we have a part in drama, the recall is
effortless. In some cases, we can never forget, even when we try.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It makes perfect sense that evolution prepared
us to easily recall danger in any guise and to make this memory permanent. </span></span><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As I point out repeatedly in <i>Blue Bias</i>, if
police management is not obsessed with keeping their officers from routinely
using excessive force, then it is inevitable that they will become abusive
because their work will cause both physical and emotional changes in them. Even
with good intentions, their biology will work against them. </span><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">There are four subjects I will mention briefly that I seldom
hear discussed when we talk about policing and behavior. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The first is that we are accustomed to comparing
our gray matter to computers, but it is more accurate to imagine that we have a
chemical factory in our heads, and that we are chemically cocktailed to behave
tribalistically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The hormone oxytocin often called the love hormone because of
its role in mother and child bonding, is also mysteriously instrumental in socially
goading us to ostracize outsiders, but we still do not understand precisely how
this works, or what the tipping point is that causes it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The second is that, as history suggests, we do not
grow up in this country with a clear understanding about how bias works, and
how our limbic system front-loads our life experience to consider <i>risk</i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>assessments up front. Recall Daniel Kahneman’s
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thinking fast and Slow</i> and this will begin
to make sense.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">From the time when we are infants, our amygdala, hippocampus,
and cingulate gyrus act in a sentinel capacity in which our brains sort,
categorize, and stereotype to keep us safe from physical harm and
embarrassment. We make assumptions subconsciously all our lives without being
aware that we are doing so, and neuroimaging confirms it. There is an often-quoted
example of a little white girl in the south who upon seeing a black infant said,
“Look, Mommy, a baby maid.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If we grow up in a society with systemic racism, it is almost
impossible not to have been negatively influenced, at least as a matter of
degree in the form of an intuitive nudge. Implicitly biased judgments come to
us in milliseconds from our subconscious before our frontal cortex or executive
brain function is even aware of the subject at hand. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Simply put, our
personal opinions about whether we harbor racial biases are pretty much
worthless, and police officers who adamantly avoid bias training, while
believing they don’t need it, are the people who need it most. The bottom line
is that implicit bias can only be mitigated by people who care deeply about
doing so. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Third is that police officers who engage in
frequent altercations are likely to experience physiological structural changes
in their brain, with their amygdala growing larger, causing them to become
hypersensitive to insult, or having their authority challenged. Some behavioral
scientists refer to this as a sense of entitlement, which is what I believe we
saw on the face of the officer with his knee on George Floyd’s neck. If police
management is not hypersensitive about scrutinizing the behavior of their officers,
some of them will get out of control just from doing their jobs. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Police work demands hypervigilance. Working in densely
populated cities is emotionally difficult—seeing one’s fellow citizens at their
worst day after day for years at a time is both physiologically and psychologically
taxing. It is hard, extremely hard, not to become jaded and cynical. The
frequent excess of cortisol from emotional stress has long-term physical
implications, made worse because, after an emotionally challenging incident
that causes a flood of cortisol, simply recalling the incident can repeat the surge
of cortisol. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And finally, police work is exciting and the
endorphin rushes one experiences at a slot-machine frequency can become
addictive. If officers are unaware of how this can affect them, they can begin
to subconsciously escalate conflicting situations to get an endorphin rush
without realizing they are doing so. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now,
add to these the physical and psychological changes that come with intensive emotional
activity, and it is easy to see that police officers can begin to crave the
very thing that is causing them personal harm. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">My take is that until we acknowledge the biological and
tribalistic nature of our species, and how our minds work in mechanically and
automatically categorizing and sorting, we are never going to solve the problem
of implicit bias. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Implicit bias, the kind without malice, is ubiquitous simply
because of the way our brains prize familiarity, but explicit bias, the kind
that thrives on hatred is like Covid-19: It is viral, and it is carried via conscious
opinion as tradition from one person to another, analogous to the way viruses
travel through the air. If a group or race of people has been stigmatized for
centuries, then negative feelings are deeply embedded in tradition. We are so
thoroughly influenced by conforming to cultural submersion that we develop accents
in the regions in which we grow up. Pre-Civil War attitudes are known to still
exist in the Deep South. If all it took to eliminate them was a conscious change
of mind, we could have put an end to racial prejudice in 1865. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Bias is what brains do. Accounting for our tribalistic nature
requires an educational patch that is equal to the task of repairing the mistaken
assumptions that our primordial limbic system makes routinely. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In <i>Blue Bias</i> I am trying to improve policing by helping
to <i>prevent officer<b> </b>burnout</i>,<b> </b><i>reduce the incidents of
excessive force</i>,<b> </b>help officers <i>adopt a perspective that prevents
cynicism</i>, and <i>increase mutual respect between officers and citizens. </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And finally, in closing, I hope that what I have said makes it
crystal clear that this advice is not just for police officers, but for every
person in this country because we are never going to deal effectively with implicit
or explicit bias, until understanding how our brains work is common knowledge,
or a no-brainer, so to speak. <b>Thank you</b>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Charles D. Hayes is the
author of <i>Blue Bias: An Ex-Cop Turned Philosopher Examines the Learning and
Resolve Necessary to End Hidden Prejudice in Policing</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1733038604"><b><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">https://www.amazon.com/dp/1733038604</span></b></a><b><u><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">/ <o:p></o:p></span></u></b></p>Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-49980817241481390932020-02-28T09:04:00.001-08:002020-02-28T09:47:07.268-08:00Blue Bias: An Ex-Cop Turned Philosopher Examines the Learning and Resolve Necessary to End Hidden Prejudice in Policing<br />
<h4 style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-line-height-alt: 11.55pt;">
<span style="border: 1pt; color: #201f1e; font-family: "cambria" , serif; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(c) Charles D. Hayes</span></span></h4>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #201f1e; font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; padding: 0in;">Finally, after a half century
of reflection and four years of writing and obsessive rewriting, I’ve just
published <i>Blue Bias: An Ex-Cop Turned Philosopher Examines the Learning
and Resolve Necessary to End Hidden Prejudice in Policing. </i>In
preparation for the flak I’m going to be getting from politically hard-right
conservatives, I recently re-watched all five seasons of <i>The Wire</i>,
written, produced, and directed by David Simon. To those who don’t understand
the problem of drugs and intercity poverty, Simon says watch the series, and if
you still don’t get it, watch it again.</span></div>
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<i><span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #201f1e; font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; padding: 0in;">The Wire</span></i><span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #201f1e; font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; padding: 0in;">, of course, is fiction, but it is in my view a masterpiece
of insightful social commentary. Our criminal justice system is an unmitigated
disaster, yet what is required to fix it is amazingly simple but over the moon
expensive.</span><span style="color: #201f1e; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #201f1e; font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; padding: 0in;">America’s inner cities need a
Marshall Plan that includes compensation for systemic unemployment caused by
decades of racist oppression, from the end of Reconstruction, to Jim Crow, to
redlining, and current recognition of the transformation effects of digital app
technology on employment. The expectation that traditional employment
opportunities are going to spring up en masse in inner cities in enough numbers
to solve inner-city employment without a formidable investment is pure fantasy.</span><span style="color: #201f1e; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #201f1e; font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; padding: 0in;">The moral objective of policing
must be to make communities safe, not play a numbers game based on the pretense
that the numbers are more important than the people served. If you want to
assess the quality of community policing, numbers are less important than the
feelings of being safe, less important than the people who live there actually
feeling safe. When the citizens in poor neighborhoods feel protected from bad
actors and oppressive policing, the goal will be reached, but not until then. </span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #201f1e; font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; padding: 0in;">Worse, local politicians often
fund their government on the backs of poor citizens, by focusing on traffic
tickets and misdemeanor fines that have nothing whatsoever to do with safety,
but everything to do with a funding arrangement that effectively turns petty
crimes into felonies. And while their police officers are tied up with minor
incidents to raise revenue, they aren’t available when real emergencies
occur. So, in a nutshell, over-policing leads to under-protection. </span><span style="color: #201f1e; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #201f1e; font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; padding: 0in;">And of critical importance, the
problem of racial bias in policing won’t be solved until it becomes commonplace
that police officers and the general public have a much better understanding of
how our minds work with respect to implicit bias.</span><span style="color: #201f1e; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #201f1e; font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; padding: 0in;">If the current level of misunderstanding about how bias works had
been the plan of saboteurs to confuse us, it would be hard to figure out how to
do a better job, if the objective was to bewilder and mystify. I can say
this much without worry of being incorrect: If you haven’t studied the subject
of racial bias intensively, you can’t be objective about it. It’s just not
possible.</span><span style="background: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;"> </span><span style="color: #201f1e; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #201f1e; font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; padding: 0in;">What makes these problems so
infuriating and existentially sad is that we have known since Reconstruction
what is necessary to address systemic racism and inner-city poverty, but the
inevitable greed-based corruption that comes with the ambition exhibited by
hierarchal governmental authority is damned near impossible to correct across
the board, and David Simon’s series makes this point crystal clear. </span><span style="color: #201f1e; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #201f1e; font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; padding: 0in;">I had made up my mind that I
was going to shelve this book project if we didn’t retake the House of
Representatives in 2018. Now I must contend with the possibility of promoting a
work on police reform in the event of Trump being reelected, since it seems
that doing so would be sort of like spitting into the wind.</span><span style="color: #201f1e; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #201f1e; font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; padding: 0in;">But after some serious
reflection, I realize that this kind of thinking is misplaced, because I
believe that most of the police officers in this country and most of the public
servants in the Justice Department are well intentioned; most really do want
justice for all, but the bureaucratic mess that has been created by partisan
politics represents a staggering obstacle.</span><span style="color: #201f1e; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #201f1e; font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; padding: 0in;">When you think of the irony in
the fact that at the very time when we have a serial sexual predator in the
White House, that there would be so many positive results stemming from the
#metoo movement, that perhaps the same principle can be applied to Bill Barr’s
right-wing politicization of the Justice Department, and we can improve
policing in the shadows of tyrants, whose call for law and order has more to do
with repressing minorities in what they view as a deserved punitive
comeuppance, than anything to do with justice. </span><span style="color: #201f1e; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #201f1e; font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; padding: 0in;">The paper version of <i>Blue
Bias</i> is available now on Amazon and a Kindle version can be preordered
with a release date of March 31<sup>st</sup>. If you are an Amazon Prime
member, I believe the Kindle edition will be free. This was an expensive book
to produce. I have more than 10k invested in the bibliography alone, and there
are well over 600 endnotes.</span><span style="color: #201f1e; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #201f1e; font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; padding: 0in;">I’m encouraged that some of the readers of the manuscript who
adamantly opposed me on some issues said that, despite their disagreement, <i>Blue
Bias</i> is a pleasurable read. I took this to mean they were talking
about clarity and it being easy to understand. If you should read it, I would
be very much interested in your thoughts. </span><span style="background: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">I believe <i>Blue Bias </i>offers the best
explanation of how bias works than any I have ever read, and recommend it for
that reason. </span></div>
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<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1733038604?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860"><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">https://www.amazon.com/dp/1733038604</span></b></a><b><u><span style="font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">/<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></u></b></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-5708456849226301362019-01-06T14:08:00.000-08:002019-01-06T14:08:31.612-08:00Fraudulent Trickledown
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">©<strong> Charles D. Hayes</strong></span></span></b></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></b>I posted this short piece on Facebook a few days ago without a title and it sort of went viral. </div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">A
half century ago, General Motors was America’s largest employer and the hourly
wages then, were equivalent to $50.00 per hour today. Now, America’s biggest
employer, is Walmart and the value equivalence of their hourly wage is $8.00
per hour. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">This
is the reward of 50 years of trickledown economics and because this loss of
equity happened so slowly over time, we have a frog in the pot scenario, in
which, the frog (we) let the water get too hot, until jumping was not an option.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Moreover,
the small-government-low-taxes mania that accompanies trickledown economics,
combined with a governance that operates on the principle of legal bribery, is
a recipe for oligarchy at best, and tyranny at the worst.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">That the GOP still has wildly enthusiastic support for a
system rigged so effectively that it amounts to Socialism for the top
one-percent, and that CEO’s and Boards of Directors openly loot our public
corporations, without public outrage, is an assault on the very idea of
democracy. Donald Trump currently has an 88 percent approval rating with
Republicans. How in the name of hell is such imbecility possible?<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Supreme Court Justice Louis
Brandeis put our predicament in clear perspective: “We can have a democratic
society, or we can have great concentrated wealth in the hands of a few. We
cannot have both.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">French economist Thomas Piketty’s
exhaustive research on the history of global capitalism, shows clearly and definitively
that over time, unless there are very strict safeguards, capital will exponentially
outpace the value of labor, resulting in an ever-increasing economic inequality.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">This is where we are in 2019,
and it’s going to take a lot more than a little tweaking with the minimum wage to
fix this. Ideas? </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 249, 238); line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><strong>My Books and Essays on Amazon</strong></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
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<br /><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> <span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "times" , "serif"; line-height: 107%; text-decoration: none;"><strong>http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes</strong></span></a></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 4.3pt 0in; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><strong>New Novella</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Benzeerilla-Charles-D-Hayes-ebook/dp/B072QDN9RC/"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">https://www.amazon.com/Benzeerilla-Charles-D-Hayes-ebook/dp/B072QDN9RC/</span></span></b></a></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></span><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx</span></span></b></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span><a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-1377429028721421692018-12-17T09:10:00.002-08:002018-12-17T09:10:28.037-08:00Facing the Reality of Death: Angst, Exhilaration, and Solace<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">(c) Charles D. Hayes</span></h4>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’ve been working on a forthcoming book for 2019 titled: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blue Bias: A Former Cop Rethinks Policing
and Deadly Force</i> and haven’t posted on this blog in almost a year, although
I do post short pieces frequently on Facebook. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wrote the piece below my sixties and now I
am half way through my seventies and this essay that is from my book Existential
Aspirations is one of my favorites and I find consolation in rereading it every
now and then. So Happy Holidays I hope you find it interesting. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The evidence is pervasive that we are predisposed for illusion.
I’m convinced that the best intellectual exhilaration to be had in adulthood is
to break the spell. The way psychologist Erich Fromm characterized it, aging,
especially after age sixty-five, is a time to live as if <i>living</i> is one’s
main business. To do this effectively requires keeping the alternative in
perspective while cutting through cultural fantasies and popularized nonsense. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Thinking recently about Arthur Schopenhauer’s notion that life
is a loan from death and sleep is the interest we pay on the loan, it occurred
to me that forgetfulness qualifies as a reminder of death. Perhaps this is what
makes it so irritating. As we age it makes sense that many of us seem more
easily annoyed. Forgetfulness, when it becomes increasingly noticeable, is a
constant reminder that we are not in control. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Near the end of his own life, Sigmund Freud theorized about his
long-held notion of the existence of a universal death instinct. He
acknowledged that what most people do about facing death is to shelve the
subject and avoid it with distraction. Freud surmised that all living creatures
struggle with the opposing forces of life and death. He believed that, more
often than not, the death instinct shows itself as varying forms of aggression.
Freud’s theory was not well developed and was not well received in academia. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In my view, a far stronger case can be made that a profound
conscious and subconscious existential fear of death favors distraction as a
means of avoiding thinking about death, period. We occupy ourselves with cards,
television, Internet, books, puzzles, sex, religion, mysticism, golf, a
hobby—whatever it takes. Both high and low culture, and drama in particular,
provide blissful escape and perhaps a vicarious but subtle method for
dissipating our aggression through our imagination, as we sidestep thoughts of
our own mortality. Although distraction appears to ease one’s immediate angst,
in the long run it ratchets up anxiety that can readily turn into despair of
the worst kind, “despair unaware that it’s despair”—as Søren Kierkegaard
defined it. So, in effect, the advantage of distraction is more apparent than
real. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Deep into my sixties, and despite the above, I now find more and
more people willing to discuss the notion of their own death. Through
this, I’ve come to believe that there is also a positive side to counter the
dread of nonexistence that has the potential to show itself nearly as
frequently as the negative reminders like forgetfulness. Trouble is, almost no
one speaks about the affirmative side. I’m confident that I’m not the only
person who has such experiences. There are times, for example, when the music
I’m listening to sounds better than it should be possible for music to sound.
The same feeling occurs with the endorphin rush of comprehension that comes
from reading a particularly inspiring passage in a book or watching an actor or
actress in the delivery of a brilliant performance. Similar feelings occur with
other sights, sounds, and even odors that seem more pronounced than ever
before. These occurrences are moments of intense clarity and exhilaration. They
appear as if in bold capital letters, italicized, and underlined. True, they
are fleeting, but they’re no less powerful for it. The impression on my memory
is like an asterisk on the experience. I may or may not recall it exactly as it
happened, but what matters most is that it did happen and left me with the
optimistic expectation that it might happen again. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’m at a loss to explain these experiences. They are describable
only as existential exclamation points—a vivid sense of awareness accentuated
with a hint of urgency, part lament, and part celebration. For a long time, I
thought these incidents were something other than what William James discusses
in <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">V<i>arieties of Religious<b> </b>Experience</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">,</span></span> or what Abraham Maslow
describes in <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Peak Experiences,</span></i>
but now I’m not so sure. The example closest to my own experience that I recall
reading about is philosopher Brian Magee’s emotional elation while listening to
the music of Gustav Mahler, a moment he recounts in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Confessions of a Philosopher</i>. It’s not surprising, though, that
there hasn’t been a lot of discussion about the brighter side of gazing into
the abyss, simply because of the common practice of vigorously avoiding the
subject. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Mingled with these highlighted experiences are memories of
events that didn’t seem so special to me when they occurred but that now give
rise to a sense of regret that I may not experience them again. Such memories
might be the mesmerizing sound of crickets on a warm summer night and June bugs
buzzing under a streetlight, fireflies sparkling like embers in deep woods, the
smell of freshly plowed earth, a sudden, blissfully cool downdraft of air
preceding a thunderstorm on a hot summer day, the crisp smell of the coming
winter in late fall. These are all exclamation points not fully appreciated
until the chance of their being repeated is threatened by want of time. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’m beginning to suspect that all the meaningful knowledge that
prompts people to write books, give lectures, and make movies is a simple
thread of fleeting experience that can only be grasped in brief flashes of
insight. The effect of these moments is so profound that we intuitively spend
the rest of lives in search of more, often without even knowing for sure what
it is that we are pursuing. Thus, for many people, meaningful experience has a
way of becoming the Holy Grail of their existence, often without their ever
realizing it as such.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The longer we live and the more our friends and family members
precede us in death, the more profound I suspect is our awareness of our own
mortality and the more aware we are of our being aware. It’s sort of like a
stage actor who’s observing herself acting but not worrying about how well
she’s doing. Having seen the Discovery Channel’s series about climbing Mt.
Everest, I liken the experience of acknowledging the short time ahead to
trekking at high altitude and seeing the summit in plain sight. It represents
the end. The clearer the end becomes, the more sensitive we are to everything
in our midst, and we can be grateful that the air is too thin at this level to
sustain much pretension. Strewn about below is a lifetime of memories
petitioning to be measured against expectation-- routine and mundane daily
experiences interspersed with moments of high drama that turned days into weeks
and weeks into years. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Our decades are stacked up like chapters in a novel that lacks a
definitive plot; some sections seem as though they belong in the book of a
stranger. “<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Auld
Lang Syne”</span> rings in our ears, honoring old acquaintances long forgotten.
Images reappear in our mind’s eye, the haunting faces of the elders we knew
when we were young. These are the folks who died out of sight and out of mind,
but as we near our own death, we find ourselves wondering what happened to them
and how and when they passed away. We recall events that seemed critical and
profoundly important at the time, that don’t matter at all now, as well as
matters that once seemed trivial but are no longer. All those unpleasant
memories of occasions we would rather forget come to mind, too, along with
those satisfying experiences we wish we could remember more clearly. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">One of the things that I find most regrettable in imagining my
own demise is the reality of the generation break. The fact is that the
memories I have connecting my life to my grandparents will be lost forever.
Sure, I can tell my son and granddaughter about the objects I’m leaving behind
that belonged to my grandparents; I can even explain how and why they are so
special to me, but the meaningfulness won’t be the same. For me, this is an
unshakable existential regret. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Still, so many questions remain unanswered. Has our life been
successful? By whose standards do we judge? What of our legacy? Do we actually
have one? Would we know it if we didn’t have one, or recognize it as a legacy
if we did? What is there left to do that we still might accomplish? If we had
our life to do over again, would it be worth the effort? Would it be worth
reliving eternally? What would we do differently? Have we learned enough about
living to lay down good memories in the present without wishing we could
redirect the scenes? An ending is required to put our story in perspective, and
yet our very nature dictates that doing so will always seem premature. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Perhaps, with the summit in sight, we can imagine that upon our
shoulders rests the mountainous weight of all our earthly problems, and, upon
our demise, these will lift away like a spring mist. Then maybe we can
dissolve some of the angst of our predicament. Moreover, the same can be said
of our discomfort about nonexistence and any aggression we may secretly harbor.
So, even though Freud was probably mistaken about the death instinct, it
doesn’t really matter one way or the other. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">As the aging and openly communicative baby-boom generation makes
its way to the peak, I suspect there will be a lot of discussion about subjects
that earlier generations chose to leave on the shelf. Based upon my own
experience, I think that in avoiding such topics our predecessors cheated
themselves out of something constructive that only comes with a harsh dose of
reality and the desire for perspective. Better to do as Emerson and
Schopenhauer suggested: look death in the eye and refuse to blink. Near the
summit, the air is clearer, and one can be more objective than ever before.
Although enough air to maintain the routine of daily life is lacking, available
still is a panoramic, big-picture view that seeks comprehension,
rationalization, and justification. It yields no great secrets; instead, it
reveals a more realistic view of the way the world is, not as we’ve wished it
to be or thought that it was when we were young. The power of this elevated
viewpoint is that it enables us to observe layer upon layer of nonsense we have
constructed with the help of our culture for reasons that may suddenly seem
inconceivable. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This view may be one reason it’s possible to experience moments
of sharp sensory perception, when music can sound better than we’ve ever
suspected possible. It’s a kind of clarity of contrasted experience, part
bittersweet sorrow because life is passing, and part celebration for having had
the privilege of living. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This kind of perception arises in similar fashion to Alan
Watts's “backwards law,” which says, when you let yourself relax in the water,
you don’t sink as you would expect; instead you float. It’s an unencumbered
observer phenomenon unavailable to those whose thirst for security is never
satiated. Watts said, “Belief clings, but faith lets go.” Counterintuitive as
it sounds, I believe that, just as aging makes our lack of influence over the
future more and more self-evident, the letting go of our personal involvement
with the world enables us to see and think clearly enough to do something that
might have lasting consequences. This may be what prompted life-stage
researcher Erik Erikson to observe that wisdom is a product of “involved
disinvolvement,” and why some aging citizens achieve a sense of
“grand-generativity” as a generous and broadly felt sense of goodwill intended
as an aspiration for posterity. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">On the dark side, though, are the many people among the living
whose daily existence is but one excruciating health catastrophe after another,
not to mention those who die young and those who experience premature senility.
For persons living in constant pain, with relief coming only from
stupor-inducing drugs, who can blame them for despairing about the mention of
exhilaration and aging together in the same sentence? I think of people in this
circumstance when I encounter the New Age nonsense, so often pitched in
self-help books, with its empty platitudes and cliché-ridden slogans about how
wonderful everything is. When I compare these mindless assertions with
Schopenhauer’s example of the feelings among animals while one is being eaten
by another, the bubble comes back toward the center. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Then there is the late Ernest Becker’s award-winning book, <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The Denial of Death</span></i>. Becker argued
that if we were to dwell on it too much, the precariousness of our own
mortality would drive us insane. He may have been right. But too much shelter
from reality also yields deleterious effects. Near the summit, the perspective
is grand, unless, fearing the inevitable, one refuses to look. To perceive of
life metaphorically above the fray of everyday concerns offers a chance for
taking up philosophy, as Thomas Ellis Katen suggests in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doing Philosophy</i>, in order “to get out of the unremitting rain of
unreflected-upon information.” But philosophy, as Socrates demonstrated, and as
many philosophers since have claimed, is also about learning how to die. The
view on high is clear because there is plenty of time and space for the practice
of sheer, unfettered observation and contemplation. Taking in the view from
this level is unique in that after a lifetime of arguing about what is and
isn’t of value, it suddenly becomes clear—real value is not what we thought it
was. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the spirit of Schopenhauer, Becker wrote in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Denial of Death</i>, “Creation is a
nightmare spectacular taking place on a planet that has been soaked for
hundreds of millions of years in the blood of all its creatures. The soberest
conclusion that we could make about what has actually been taking place on the
planet for about three billion years is that it is being turned into a vast pit
of fertilizer. But the sun distracts our attention, always baking the blood
dry, making things grow over it, and with its warmth giving the hope that comes
with the organism’s comfort and expansiveness.” A bit harsh, I think. Speaking
for myself, I would rather have the chance to appear as a stain in the pit than
not, and I bet I could find lots of folks who would agree with me that there have
been some fine moments on our way to the compost heap. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>More than three decades ago,
physicist Stephen Hawking postulated that the existence of black holes means
that all information in the universe will ultimately end. Recently he changed
his mind. Now he argues that the end will come only to information in galaxies
where black holes exist. This kind of logic is probably as close as we will
ever get to why some people seem to live charmed lives and others live in
perpetual misery. It happens sometimes but not always. So, it doesn’t take a
lot of life experience for observant individuals to conceive that for human
beings there are many things worse than death and that both good and ill must
be considered and weighed constantly to keep one’s perspective. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Of course, simply trying to wrap one’s mind around metaphysical
mysteries like time and space being interchangeable, or the unfathomable notion
of space as infinite, or, as the Theory of Relativity suggests, past, present,
and future, coexisting simultaneously, could drive us mad if we thought we had
to reduce these matters to a realm of concrete understanding before we die.
Contemplating these mysteries, I suspect, is analogous to the living brain
trying to comprehend its own nonexistence—the very act of doing so is a
metaphysical violation of causality. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We appear to be wired to shelter ourselves from too much
reality. In <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Wings of Illusion</span></i>,
psychologist John F. Schumaker argues that we should think it worthwhile to
determine a proper degree of illusion as a psychological shelter, but to be
very careful about not overdoing it. Recall his epigraph at the beginning of
this essay. If we are truly honest with ourselves, our predisposition to
believe the unbelievable becomes exceptionally clear near the summit. From
here, we can see the distraction for what it is and not be nearly as distraught
as expected.</span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Another key to understanding the exhilaration possible in facing
death is that when we begin to tweak with our beliefs near the code level of
our biological wiring, haphazardly tripping over endorphins is not unusual. In
other words, contemplating existential matters at high altitude is pleasurable
by design. Schumaker says further that culture absorbs the chaos and
“manufactures the <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">stupidity</span></i>
that we need in order to function in this world.” Not surprisingly then, when
we begin to figure this out during the existential deliberation that comes
naturally with aging, a sense of suddenly seeing through illusions without the
usual dread can be enthralling. As it turns out, looking death in the eye trips
a pleasure circuit. Neurological testing reveals that when we contemplate death
directly, our brain responds by activating positive information to
compensate. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We are all familiar with the process of meeting overwhelmingly
bad news with denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance
that presumably evolves into a stoic resolve. But for many of us, age catches
up-- like the frog in hot water that begins to boil before he can escape—and by
the time we awaken enough to see the summit in plain view, it is much too late
to deny our mortality. There is nothing to bargain about. Time is short.
And furthermore, nothing is to be gained from fear and depression but the
possibility of missing a last chance to make some subjective sense of it all.
Simply stated, the last chapters of life require some graduate- level thinking
to ensure that we’ve fully checked in before we check out. </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">A determined effort to
develop our perspective from a philosophical position near the end of life may
well result in some of the best times we ever have. Such effort has the potential
for having a lasting effect on whatever legacy we leave behind, provided there
are no black holes in the neighborhood and there is new grass to cover the pit.
The payoff from thoughtful reflection is the ability to see through the
nonsensical distractions that are detrimental to civilization and our progeny’s
future. Exclamation points are where you find them, and when you really
start to pay attention because time is short, the rewards are
exhilarating. One final but pleasurable thought on the quandary of death.
Perhaps, if Einstein was right about the coexistence of past, present and
future, the worst that can happen to us is to be lost in time. Thoughts? </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span> </div>
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<br />Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-67487616241309395412018-01-03T10:09:00.000-08:002018-01-03T10:09:47.546-08:00The Fear that Defines and Divides Us
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(c) Charles D. Hayes</span></span></b></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Staring at the Sun</i>, Irvin D. Yalom, says
the gift of self-awareness comes at a high price. “Our existence is forever
shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and inevitably, diminish
and die.”</span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Death
anxiety separates us from all the earth’s creatures. We are the only species
whose lifelong motivation is subconsciously hijacked in myriad ways to avoid or
postpone the inevitability of nonexistence. Death anxiety is the indoctrinating
lifeforce of religion and ground zero for the reasons for doing what we do in
life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Creating
art, literature, scientific research and discovery, reading, sports, hobbies,
business achievement, and gaining wealth and especially power are all
manifestations of a means of pushing back and seeming to close the door the
grim reaper is forever threatening to open. </span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">There
is mountainous research material in the field of existential psychology that
supports mortality salience as being the breach in the dam of the human
condition—at the crux of global conflict, and yet, for all practical purposes
the subject never gains traction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">I’ve
have written about this human dilemma at great length.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This core humanitarian concern is too often
treated like a curious novelty, instead of what it is: humanity’s Achilles
Heel, and the subject never achieves momentum in everyday public discourse,
even though how it is ultimately dealt with may decide our species
survival.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Strangers,
chaos, change, and uncertainty are subconscious reminders of the inevitability
of demise, and even the act of forgetting hints of nonexistence. But nothing is
quite so toxic and psychologically threatening as the feeling that one is
living an unfulfilling life, and this ethos lies at the crux of the political
divide in America. Globally millions of people feel threatened by otherness (a
metaphorical cousin of nonexistence) many of them need someone to blame for
their fears and social contempt works miraculously as a suitable distraction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Worse,
in some cultures the shelter of submission and losing themselves in a cause
produces terrorists, eager to blow themselves up so that in some deranged
sense, they can feel that their lives will have mattered. Yalom says his
ultimate concerns as a psychiatrist for therapy are: death, isolation, meaning
in life, and freedom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">My
point is that we are in the grip of an authoritative regime of dogmatists,
whose rhetoric for gaining the support of their constituents, fuels the fear
that breeds existential angst. When the future seems overtly threatened by
otherness, nostalgia replaces hope, hatred becomes common currency, and one’s
identity group is suddenly perceived as having been an inadequate shelter from
the inevitable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">We
have people these days with enough wealth to spend ten thousand dollars a day
for a thousand years and still be rich. That these people are assumed to be
acting strictly out of greed is a mistaken assumption. The money they are
making, and the power associated with it, is a subconscious means of
metaphorically poking a finger in the eye of the grim reaper, it means they are
still here, still alive, and that they prevail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The ultra-rich people fortunate enough to figure this out for
themselves, stand out, often by giving away their fortune and by devoting their
remaining years to helping their fellow man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">In
the Jan/Feb issue of The Atlantic there is a feature about WeCroak, it’s an app
that sends you a notice five times a day that you are going to die. Being the
existentialist that I am, I signed up for the cheerful reminders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m curious about the effect of being rudely
and randomly informed that I am soon to be toast, and I will let you know what
it is like. </span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><strong>My Books and Essays on Amazon</strong></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx</span></span></b></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-83121314706590023002017-11-05T07:26:00.000-08:002017-11-05T07:26:58.983-08:00The Moral Tax of Inequality
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">©
Charles D. Hayes</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Nineteenth-century reformer Henry George once
pointed out that we never see a herd of buffalo or a flock of birds where only
a few are fat, and most are lean or starving. In our society, however, there’s
an assumption that less than living wages are somehow admissible. Egregious
inequality is accepted as a just comeuppance for not measuring up to cultural
expectations. As I see it, several psychological influences are at work that
allow this to happen. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">One is an unwillingness to assume
responsibility for oneself and one’s family. Another is the human angst and
fear that fester in the existential divide between in-groups and out-groups.
The angst fits hand in glove with a paternalistic and authoritative ethos of
expectations and cultural mores that can be used as evidence that one is
behaving improperly, not doing what one is supposed to do, or not<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>believing what one should believe.
Those who do not meet the expectations of cultural norms will be deemed
unworthy, and if their differences are too prominent, they may qualify as being
nonhuman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">The assumption that less than living wages
are justified for full- or part-time work is ardently contrived. A full-time job
that can’t command the compensation of a living wage, in my view, is a task
better left undone. The only condition in which less than living wages are
justified is when the employees are robots. A residue of contempt and imagined
cultural superiority causes people to assume that some individuals are<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>of lesser value than themselves and<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>do not deserve the human dignity
traditionally ascribed to work. It is time this outdated nonsense be stamped
out altogether. Until we start employing the dead, working people deserve
enough compensation<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>to live.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">The value of labor, or work of any kind,
is only partly attributed to its difficulty, while most of its value derives
from the power of those who enact legislation and make rules and regulations.
Their actions dissolve into the background and become invisible, leaving no
suggestion of having negatively affected the worth of labor.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>What’s left gives the appearance of
reality,<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>and we accept this reality
in the same way that fish do not ponder the legitimacy of water.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Over the past half-century, we have
mangled the ethos of work and reward in this country by letting those with an
economic advantage legislate their advantage into law without visible traces of
having done so. We have allowed capital to trump the value of labor, a
situation that Abraham Lincoln continuously warned against.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That human labor does not have any advantage
over capital is anathema to civilization. In a country that prizes
self-reliance, it is practically subversive.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">In his book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our
Future</i>, Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz put it this way, “For years there
was a deal between the top and the rest of society that went something like
this: we will provide you jobs and prosperity, and you will let us walk away
with the bonuses. You will get a share, even if we get a bigger share. But now
that tacit agreement between the rich and the rest, which was always fragile,
has come apart.” Yes, indeed. I would say it has come apart at the seams and
there is little on the horizon, save voting <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">en
masse</i> and marching in the streets, that will help us regain what has been
lost. As Stiglitz points out, “American inequality didn’t just happen. It was
created.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Poverty-level wages have resulted less from
free-market forces than from the legislated advantage of those who have
attained the power to loot public corporations in the open while<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>shouting platitudes about skill and
success. The clichéd ladder of upward mobility is missing so many rungs that
the sing-song mantra of those who use carrot-and-stick analogies as employment
incentives rings hollow. Less than half of the available jobs in America pay
more than $35k per year. We are rapidly approaching a level of inequality that
resembles the feudalism of centuries past.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">The fact that we have a viable digital
technological society that increasingly does more with less speaks to the
historical contribution of working men and women across all disciplines who
have made such a technological society possible, not to mention those who have
given up their lives on the battlefield on our behalf.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still, every year, because of digital
technology, the number of<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>jobs that
pay less than a living wage grows larger, and there is no end in sight. If
these conditions continue, the foundation that the middle-class rests on is
untenable.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">That this is occurring at a time of a
soaring stock market and record corporate profits is not an aberration—it’s by
design. Corporations used to pay a third of our tax burden; now it’s less than
ten percent, and one in four corporations pays no taxes at all. We need to stop
putting up with the hyper-contemptuous free-market rhetoric that there is divine
justice in poverty wages. We must demand living wages, not anemic increases in
the minimum wage. And I’ll answer in advance the inevitable question from
right-wingers:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It won’t take a rocket
scientist to arrive at a figure.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Egregious inequality resonates with a
strain of existential contempt at the core of the human condition. It’s
connected to the deep-seated psychological insecurity that associates uncertainty,
change, and otherness with mortality salience, allowing suspicion of all things
unfamiliar to fester. And it plays out with people using their false sense of
superiority over those with less perceived status as a psychological buffer
against nothingness.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">We are fortunate to live in a time when
our technology is making it possible to live free of monotonous, repetitious
tasks and many of the hazards of dangerous backbreaking work. But unless we rid
ourselves of the tribalistic contempt with which we are so easily manipulated
into settling for a future stricken by spite and the insane fear that the poor
are keeping us from living better economically, we will never mature as a
nation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Equality of opportunity and a society
where dignity is bound to the virtue of work requires an acknowledgment of the
religious and secular, philosophical and moral declaration that human beings
are ends in themselves and are not to be treated only as means to an end. Views
to the contrary are detailed, complex, sophisticated, sometimes eloquent and ubiquitous,
and yet they amount to disingenuous immoral nonsense. The Donald Trump—GOP tax
reform proposal is an overt declaration that only the rich really matter. </span></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
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Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-76759441212916736592017-09-16T08:13:00.000-07:002017-09-16T08:13:09.363-07:00The Pious War on Science and Reason
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Charles D. Hayes</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 106%;">That<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>Donald
Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, wants Christianity to play a
bigger part in the education of America’s children is appallingly<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>unacceptable. Trump’s appointment of
Jerry Falwell Jr. to lead an educational task force is equally unacceptable,<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>as is the Supreme Court’s loosening of
the separation of church and state. For me, these issues are the straws that
break the camel’s back. An anti-science, anti-intellectual educational agenda in
the 21<sup>st</sup> century is untenable. The Trump Administration is using
organized religion solely for the purposes of regimentation in the creation of
a backward, authoritarian, patriarchal culture that’s rich with contempt and
animosity for those they assume don’t belong. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 106%;">I’m now in my eighth decade on the planet. I grew up
in Oklahoma and Texas in the 1940s and 50s, in a family that professed a belief
in God but did not attend church. In my youth, I was a religious child, but at
some point, in my early twenties, I was hit with a lightning bolt of
skepticism. Since then, I have been listening to arrogant people declare that
if we don’t align the endorphins in our gray matter with theirs, we will burn
forever in Hell. These days, in a country with holidays, laws, tax exemptions,
and other practices of publicly declarin<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">g</b>
that supernatural beliefs are to be respected, we hear a constant chorus of
complaints that such beliefs are under siege. I say, it’s about damned time. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 106%;">We celebrate the human brain as the most complex
entity in the known universe. Human consciousness is staggeringly complex, and
yet there are people who declare that if you go along with their views and if
you believe what they believe, you won’t need your brain in order to live
forever; you will retain your consciousness and you will experience blissful
joy for eternity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 106%;">Any belief system that promises that dead people—people
without functioning<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>brains—will live
eternally and that they will continue to survive in a glorious mental state
simply because they believe something someone said about an event that they
didn’t witness—an event that flies in the face of physics and elementary
science, an event so preposterous that sanity must be put aside to even
consider such violations of physical possibility<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_Hlk489526298">—</a>is
a system that is a threat to global civilization. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 106%;">The credulity required to accept these beliefs defies
rationality. If such radically absurd views were not taught to children before
they learned to think for themselves, they would not long survive, as is
increasingly evident in Europe. Moreover<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">,
</b>these outlandish notions pose an existential danger to mankind because they
come with a surplus of defensive contempt for nonbelievers. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 106%;">True believers are always on alert for those who raise
doubts about their doctrines, and they are understandably wary of science and
secularism. The devastating but largely ignored reality is that believing such
impossible nonsense leads to magical thinking and a license to believe any
damned thing, no matter how absurd the premise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 106%;">People who identify as religious fundamentalists are
very often so fully invested in their beliefs that they perceive opposition of
any kind as a mortal threat. Job-killing automation, social change,
accelerating uncertainty, gay marriage, other worldly religions—these looming
issues threaten constricted worldviews. They cause believers to double down on
their fantastical belief in the promise<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>of
immortality by stressing a need for conformity and obedience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 106%;">The crux of the angst of true believers is deeply
ensconced in the probability that if the world at large assumes they are wrong
about traditional issues as basic as gender identity, gay marriage, and wedding
cake politics, then they could also be wrong about bigger issues and quite
possibly everything. It is not by accident that anti-LGBT laws are being
enacted in states where significant numbers of religious fundamentalists reside.
As millennials fight racism and bigotry via social media in southern states, especially
concerning LGBT rights, the chorus of fearful response is getting louder.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 106%;">A religion promising an afterlife is a psychological shield
against the fear of death. It’s an existential dressing for the wound of
nonexistence. Supernatural beliefs may have positive benefits for some, but the
costs are enormous. Millions upon millions of people have been butchered
because of religious conflict over the true nature of reality and which fantastical
beliefs have credence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 106%;">At the geographical borders that separate divergent
religious communities, the friction we see erupting threatens to favor one
religious view over another. The resulting animosity can fester and smolder
into a strain of hatred which, if it remains unchecked, can lead to genocide. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 106%;">The world is treading dangerously close to a major
religious confrontation between the West and East, Christian vs. Muslim. Many radical
leaders from both religions are eager to engage in an all-out conflict because
it will add great meaning to their lives. Christian conservatives increasingly
call for political leaders to use the word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><strong>Islamic</strong></i>
when describing terrorists. This is precisely what the terrorists want to
happen because it brings them closer to the possibility of Jihad and martyrdom.
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 106%;">Worship is amped-up delusion, and for the sake of
humanity, it needs to be replaced, where possible, with thoughtfulness. Doubt
can be frightening, but the price of willful illusion is high, too high. Take
any mainstream religious text and substitute the word <strong><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">illusion</i> </strong>for the word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><strong>faith</strong></i>.
By doing this, you will be taking a giant leap toward a more objective sense of
reality while dissipating oceanic waves of angst and contempt.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 106%;">Cosmologist Carl Sagan argued that “extraordinary
claims require extraordinary evidence.” There is not a shred of evidence that
there is life after death or consciousness without a brain. None, zero, zip,
nada. Death is simply nonexistence, and if you think it through, we’ve all been
dead before. The first 14-plus billion years went by fast, so to speak. If you
want to emulate those religious aspirations that call for brotherly love,
compassion, and looking out for those among us least able to care for
themselves, I’m all in. But if you expect me to subscribe to supernatural
magical thinking, leave me out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 106%;">While I remain an advocate for religious liberty and
religious tolerance, despite my wariness of organized religion, the separation
of church and state requires an unmovable wall. If your religion gives you
comfort, good for you. But when people use their religion to engage in bigotry,
racism, and ethnocentric hatred, it’s time to speak up and denounce such
rhetoric as having no place in a civilized society. If we violate the Founders’
principles of the separation of church and state, we do so at our peril. As
Voltaire said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit
atrocities.” Let’s not let them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><strong>My Books and Essays on Amazon</strong></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
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<br /><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> <span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "times" , "serif"; line-height: 107%; text-decoration: none;"><strong>http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes</strong></span></a></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Benzeerilla-Charles-D-Hayes-ebook/dp/B072QDN9RC/"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri; font-size: xx-small;">https://www.amazon.com/Benzeerilla-Charles-D-Hayes-ebook/dp/B072QDN9RC/</span></b></a></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
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Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-49089050064232933452017-04-04T06:54:00.000-07:002017-04-04T06:54:17.890-07:00Education Can Still the Brute
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">©
Charles D. Hayes</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">The 2016 presidential election made it
clear that America is suffering an egregious vacuum of goodwill. Too many of
our citizens are ill-equipped to cope with life in the twenty-first century.
Simply put, they lack the knowledge to deal with the angst that comes with
being mortal.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">For decades, I have been trying to articulate
the benefits of a liberal education. I have fully experienced the rewards
myself, having gone from growing up as a hard-right conservative to becoming politically
liberal. Years of study helped unravel my animosity toward progressive points
of view. For me, the learning I experienced dispelled the angst that used to
fester in my mind toward people I considered “others.” Lately the angst has
resurfaced as a growing intolerance for intolerance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">So, like a moth to a flame, I’m drawn to
read every book and essay I can find about meaningful education because, even
though I understand the profound value of broad, liberal learning, I have
difficulty explaining how others might relieve themselves of the contempt that
comes with a narrow worldview. Nor can I name what the tipping point might be
to bring it about.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Although<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>being open to experience is a hallmark of liberalism, it’s not yet
known for sure how much our political disposition is genetically predisposed
and how much it is because of learning. We do know, however, that even some who
hold rigid views can be persuaded to change their minds if presented with a
better argument. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">One of the hardest things to do is to try
to recall what it is like not to know something once you have learned it. It’s
almost impossible. But having been raised without the benefit of a liberal
education, I still have some sense of the void and smoldering anxiety that such
an upbringing provides. Today, much as I want to share the benefits of an
existential education, I’m confounded by the amount of social resistance to
something that’s so life-changing and so beneficial to society at large. Even
so, I do understand the animosity. Anti-intellectualism runs deep.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">There are lots of good books on the value
of a liberal education, but most come up short because they miss an adequate
description of its most important advantage. Finally, after many years of pondering,
I think I’m close to identifying what’s so often been left out. A big part of
the answer is so glaringly obvious that we don’t see it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">When it works as it should, a liberal
education becomes an existential education. By this I mean an education of
enough quality and depth to enable<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>one
to release some of the anxiety that comes part and parcel with the human
condition—that of being mortal. Mortality is a condition from which there is no
escape. Willful illusion is one’s only protection, but it cannot last. Smoldering
anxiety festers when other people recognize this and no longer share the cultural
illusions one has adopted for escape. Contempt follows because the very
existence of nonbelievers poses a deep existential threat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">In essence, an existential education makes
it possible to find one’s own meaning in life without the need to find fault
with others. It provides one<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>enough
confidence to be worry free and unconcerned when the views of others conflict
with one’s own. An existential education enables us to forgive others for their
otherness, most notably because it reminds us that we are soon to be food for
worms. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">To learn about many diverse subjects in
the humanities is like creating a mental mansion with lavish rooms, each with
enough accumulated substance that any new additions are subject to wonder by their
contrast. So, instead of being allowed to inspire fear and contempt from a lack
of understanding, new information is subject to relative reflection and often
creates new corridors between rooms.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">When a person embraces a multitude of
ideas about the world, narrow viewpoints begin to appear immature. More ideas
lead to more possibilities, and more options occur to consider, all of which
assist in quelling anxiety before it congeals into despair, scorn, and
derision. Thus, an existential education is liberating in its capacity to help
dissipate social angst. The effect is the same as taking the lid off a pot of
water about to boil, allowing steam to escape instead of blowing the lid
off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">John Adams was right when he said,
“Education makes a greater difference between man and man than nature has made
between man and brute.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In my view, an
existential education can effectively still the brute in man.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;"><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><strong>My Books and Essays on Amazon</strong></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
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<br /><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> <span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "times" , "serif"; line-height: 107%; text-decoration: none;"><strong>http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes</strong></span></a></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx</span></span></b></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
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Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-11312893170194475712017-02-03T08:31:00.000-08:002017-02-03T08:31:45.868-08:00Winning: What Does It Mean?
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">This is an excerpt from Existential Aspirations:
Reflections of a Self-Taught Philosopher </span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 11pt;">©
Charles D. Hayes</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">A few years ago, I watched an episode of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Real Time</i> with Bill Maher. Among his
guests were comedian Gary Shandling, actor Sean Penn, and former Congressman
Harold Ford Jr. from Tennessee. They were discussing the war in Iraq, and
Shandling suggested that we need to get beyond our “winner consciousness” regarding
the issue of war. Penn seemed interested but remained silent. Harold Ford
appeared mystified by the assertion, but I knew exactly what Shandling was
referring to and have been thinking about it ever since. In short, winning is
an inappropriate metaphor when it comes to war, and we keep having wars
precisely because we haven’t yet figured that out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Speaking in broad terms, we have, as a
nation, adopted something akin to “sports-think” in our conception of how most
issues should be resolved. Winning has become a default position that stops
further deliberation. There are winners and losers and no in-betweens. At first
glance, the win-lose mentality appears to be a type of simple-mindedness born
of a mediated society in which sound bytes serve in place of serious thought.
But I suspect that something deeper fuels this type of thinking. It stems, in
part, from what I call <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">truth by
association</i>, which is an instinctual and tribal-like loyalty that says, “My
side. Right or wrong makes no difference, but our triumph does matter because
we are, after all, who we are.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Here, winning asserts the legitimacy of
the association, especially when “our side” prevails. In other words, we
validate the truth of our superiority when we win. On the flip side, losing
becomes personal, and loss implies we have been wronged. Both liberals and
conservatives are guilty of practicing truth by association. What has happened
with the metaphor of winning is similar in some ways to what happened during
the Cold War to the word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">socialism</i>,
which was stigmatized with such vehemence that even to raise the subject of
economic equity is still, for many people, considered subversive. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">The notion of winning, however, took the
opposite direction from the word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">socialism</i>.
Instead of a negative connation, winning morphed into an aspirational ideal
that is ultimately a dead end. Somewhere in the past century of American
culture, victories in comic books, movies, sporting events, business, games,
lotteries, politics, and the like converged into one all-purpose metaphor:
winning, winning, winning. The coaches who have gone to the furthest extremes
to make the point that nothing is more important than winning are often
celebrated as being <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">great</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">This popular internalization of winning
has become part of our collective psyche. The significant emotional experiences
we share tend to drive the metaphor of winning deep within us, and eventually
we perceive that winning reinforces our association without qualification (when
our team wins it is exhilarating), and the metaphor brings us closer together
without need of further discussion. Moreover, most of us will respond to
criticism of these seemingly self-evident truths with a deep-seated
unwillingness to reason or give ground. In other words, in matters of conflict
between our group and another group, the word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">win </i>is enough to close off the conversation, as in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">enough said</i>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Combat experience in war may be the most
extreme example of experiential emotional attachment. Men and women suffering
the stress of war often bond emotionally to such a degree that their
association will thereafter trump issues of right and wrong. I suspect that
people who have not experienced these feelings can barely imagine what it’s
like. A shared significant emotional experience imbues a strong sense of
commitment and kinship. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i>’s become <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">we</i>’s in combat, and the fortunes of
individuals give way to an emotional sense of camaraderie and attachment to the
outfit. The rigidity of one’s position about the politics at hand during war is
often driven so deep that, for some, reasoning about the issue with complete
objectivity will never again be possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Setting aside the instance of war for a
moment, let’s consider an example in civilian life: cases involving criminal
prosecution where people are shown to have been wrongly convicted. When the
convicted party is found innocent by DNA testing and subsequently released from
prison, the prosecutors who won the conviction more often than not continue to
believe the person is guilty. Prosecuting someone involves internalizing the
righteousness of one’s position; facing off against defense attorneys drives
the prosecuting attorneys’ convictions so deep as to sometimes reside beneath
the reach of reason. Enough examples of this exist on television news that one
need not look very far to find them. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Another example is the racial prejudice
that permeated life in the South during the twentieth century. I have
first-hand knowledge of this experience. People of all races who believe
passionately that they are free of racial prejudice will remain convinced that
they are free of such bias in spite of the results of psychological tests that
detect their partiality. Similarly, when profound emotional experience is
internalized as feelings of betrayal, the resentment can last a lifetime. For
example, an urban legend of Jane Fonda “gotcha missives” exist in the form of
emails circulated frequently. These emails tell the story of how she was
valiantly denied service in a steakhouse in Montana by a restaurant owner who
turned out to be a Vietnam veteran still angry about Fonda’s pro-Communist
actions during the war. Revenge brings some people vindictive satisfaction; it
means they are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">winning</i>, getting even,
making up for having been deceived and betrayed. Better yet, revenge means a
traitor is losing (in Fonda’s case, it was only a steak dinner, but she at
least suffered humiliation). This kind of cultural behavior takes the place of
rational discourse about war and justice. And yet, who could doubt the deeply
felt emotional wounds of veterans who thought—then and now—that Fonda’s actions
betrayed them?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">I was a hawk during the Vietnam War.
Although I had already been discharged from a four-year hitch in the Marines, I
almost reenlisted during the Tet Offensive in 1968. What stopped me was the
fact I was single, still owned a home, and could not find anyone to buy it. But
I have come to realize that, without the anti-war protest movement that
recognized senselessness for what it was, we might have lost another 50,000 or
so men and women to a war that, in hindsight, seems absurd. More absurdity
occurs when people start railing about how we should have <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">won </i>in Vietnam. Perhaps winning would have made any future loss of
life worth the effort. But win <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what</i>?
In an address to the Cato Institute, conservative activist Victor Gold asked
the still-pertinent question that applies to both Vietnam and Iraq: “How do you
win someone else’s civil war?” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">A deeper examination of the concept of
winning is critical here. The metaphysics of the idea of winning is so thin
that, when you stop and give it some serious thought, it boggles the mind. One
foot short of the goal, three inches from the cup, a foot from the hoop, a ball
out of the park, or one punch can make all the difference in the world: one
side wins, the other loses. The reactions of the participants and the
spectators are radically different, yet they do not, in any real way, reflect
the physics of what actually happened. Think about it. Nothing in the world is
changed in physical reality except something did or did not happen with or to a
ball. Now one group of people is beside itself with joy, and the other side is
devastated. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">How can this same pattern apply to war?
How can winning a game parallel the winning of a war? “America 14, Vietnam 7”
doesn’t work. Consider the number of deaths: 58,000 Americans; 1-3 million
Vietnamese. Bedsides getting closer to reality, does that mean anything? The
more you think about it, the more intangible and bizarre the notion of winning
becomes. Scores and blood do not mix. One can receive a mortal wound and still
have time to kill an enemy, but to say then that either side has won stretches
the metaphor of winning beyond its true meaning. The catastrophic circumstances
exceed our ability to comprehend what it means to lose anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Just as the psychic investment of
prosecutors makes it difficult for them to change their opinion about the guilt
of someone they have sent to prison, imagine how the people feel who have lost
family members to a war that others call a mistake. To think that a war in
which a spouse or son or daughter made the ultimate sacrifice was a mistake, is
emotionally untenable, and this adds legitimacy to any war. Vietnam, Iraq,
Afghanistan—the circumstances post sacrifice don’t matter or, to be more
precise, can’t matter without increased pain. The psychological result is that
most people prefer to believe in the honorable sacrifice of their family member
instead of questioning the circumstance of war. Asking hard questions after a
personal loss in wartime results in further heartbreak. When one admits the
illegitimacy of a war, the only alternative is to rethink one’s loyalties;
rebuke one’s truth by association, if necessary; and redirect one’s sense of
outrage at those responsible for the injustice—which makes this kind of action
very unlikely for all but a few.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Does imagining Jane Fonda being humiliated
compensate for the perception that we lost the war? If we were keeping score on
the basis of deaths alone in Vietnam, didn’t we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">win</i>? Not to mention that we got into the war in Vietnam on false
pretense, by claiming to have been fired on in the Gulf of Tonkin. You see,
truth by association trumps ethics. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My
country right or wrong </i>means that our sins are justified and your country’s
are not. It means we don’t need to make amends or apologize because our errors
are beyond reproach. People who assume truth by association believe that
anything they do to prevail is justified by the simple righteous nature of who
they are. And this is why human beings are locked into a feedback loop of
irrationality: hypersensitive to the transgressions of others and oblivious to
our own, we generate the eternal justification for conflict.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">President John F. Kennedy said the war was
the Vietnamese people’s to win or lose. But our strategic view at the time was
that if Vietnam fell, a virtual stampede of countries would suddenly embrace
Communism. Then Vietnam did fall, and nothing of the sort occurred. In fact,
the reverse happened. So, we must ask, was the war worth the deaths of nearly
three million people? Vietnam seems to be a thriving country today, one with
which we have resumed business relations, and, to my mind, the situation makes
the frequent laments about having failed to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">win
</i>even more meaningless. Of course, many would argue that a number of
citizens in Vietnam today feel oppressed by their government, but it is a grand
illusion to assume that, had the South prevailed, there would now be a thriving
American-style democracy in Vietnam. Fast forward to 2010, and we’re confounded
by similar issues in Iraq and Afghanistan, both deeply divided by tribalism? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">The conflicts of religious, ideological,
and financial interests being what they were then, and still are, make
establishing a democracy anywhere in the world a very tall order. The ability
to perpetually balance power is very nearly impossible, even in the best of
cases. Our own government is strangled by lobbyists in cahoots with our
representatives, who are so beholden to various special interests that the
majority in America has very limited influence. Yet we are sustained with
centuries of idealistic notions about democracy and the rights of citizens. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">The end-run philosophical threshold of
winning at any cost is that it results in a perversion of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">us</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">them</i> to such a
degree that torturing prisoners is suddenly deemed okay. The historical records
dating all the way to the Inquisition—suggesting that torture is ineffective
and confessions obtained through torture are dangerously unreliable—don’t seem
to matter. What our recent pro-torture policy achieved is to expose our
servicemen and women all over the world to inhumane treatment by our enemies,
who now feel not only justified but gleeful about the very opportunity and
possibility of being able to torture Americans in the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">There is a huge metaphysical disconnect
inherent in the metaphor of winning: racking up points on an electronic game
offers an illusion of winning that does not transfer to the realities of war.
The ephemeral consequences of winning in athletics are totally inappropriate
for war. Even winning in sports events, when huge sums of money are involved,
does not qualify as an analogy for combat. War is catastrophic change, writ in
blood. It’s long past time for average Americans to think this conundrum
through, to get beyond the consciousness of winning, as Shandling suggested,
and to quit acting as the cheering section in a culture that behaves as if <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">winning</i> is a currency for endless
incompatible assumptions and analogies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">It’s unfortunate that we can’t discuss
this subject without people getting red-faced and stomping off, mumbling
clichés about patriotism. Such a response demonstrates just how easy it is to
resort to war in the first place. Perhaps the saddest thing of all is that we
did not learn from our experience in Vietnam. But the proponents of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">winning</i> a preemptive war in Iraq may
have once again duped themselves. These same people incessantly champion small
government, yet our bungling in Iraq and Afghanistan has so inspired the
exponential recruitment of our enemies that we may never again be able to
entertain having a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">small</i> government
with such a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">big </i>threat facing us. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">The yearning for small or limited
government is understandable but only in an idealistic sense. It’s hard to be
against limited government when you see your government as an oppressor. But
what small or limited government really amounts to—in this day and age—is
emasculated government, incapable of protecting citizens from a collusion of corporate
interests whose lobbyists, in effect, purchase legislative support from
politicians. A government that cannot protect the rights of citizens above
those of corporations is not a democracy, nor is it a fair <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">game.</i> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Winning as a metaphor for games is
appropriate, but for war it is insanely inadequate and morally bankrupt.
Winning as a crossover to a war analogy is an anti-intellectual shortcut that
eliminates thought about the very things we should <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">think </i>about. We need a political makeover in America. We need to
understand the concept of winning in all of its manifestations, and we need to
stop being consumers and reclaim our roles as citizens. This, in my view, is
the only way for average citizens to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">win</i>.
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;"><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><strong>My Books and Essays on Amazon</strong></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 4.3pt 0in; text-align: center;">
<br /><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> <span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "times" , "serif"; line-height: 107%; text-decoration: none;"><strong>http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes</strong></span></a></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span></strong> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></span><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx</span></span></b></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
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Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-90717939496474770802017-01-13T06:55:00.000-08:002017-01-13T06:55:14.718-08:00America’s Celebration of Ignorance
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: small;"><strong>© Charles D. Hayes</strong></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">If you care about future generations and
have reached an age when you realize the time you have remaining is short, perspective
about what is truly important has a way of surfacing with a resounding sense of
urgency. This is ironic because you realize at the same time just how little impact
you have for influencing future events. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">I grew up in a racist culture in the 1940s
and 50s. Now in my eighth decade, I’ve spent more than thirty of those years writing
about how the process of self-education radically changed my worldview and made
me realize the utter immorality of bigotry and racism. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">So, when I apply a big-picture perspective
to the current state of life in this country, it’s clear to me that a very large
percentage of our citizens are willfully ignorant and proud of the fact. A lot
has been learned during my lifetime about human behavior, and yet we do not
make good use of the knowledge we’ve gained. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Time and again, I go back to the writing
of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, who argued that leaving the subject
of human behavior to experts “leads to a general imbecility.” Does it ever. To
overstate the case would be difficult. I offer here three major concerns about
what we have failed to learn and bring to bear for the public good. They’re all
connected.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">The first is about our identity, who we
think we are. Who we identify with is easily determined by who we believe
speaks for us, indeed, if anyone does. I’ve written ad nauseam about this
subject, but not many people seem to understand it, even those who are supposed
to be the experts. At least, if they do understand the fundamental nature of
political identity, they tend to keep it to themselves. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">In a nutshell, we human beings are
tribalistic by nature. We evolved living in small groups, usually fewer than
300 people. We are so inclined to form these kinds of groups and so prone to
conformist behavior that we develop distinctive accents in different regions of
the country. We are so quick to group together that we readily adopt a
passionate allegiance to sports teams. We can enter a room, chose up team sides
by colors like blue and green, and in minutes begin to relate better to team
members wearing our colors. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">While tribalism is a complicated subject,
my point here is simple: When it comes to politics, far too many of our
citizens let the party they identify with speak for them. They are not
knowledgeable enough to discuss major issues with any level of competence,
which is why so many political discussions become emotionally incoherent. Democracy
requires an informed citizenry and in fact cannot sustain itself without it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">The second concern is about values and the
fact that the things we need most in life are in fact devalued in our society.
The whole thrust of our economy depends upon our seeking and purchasing
products we don’t really need, goods that, once owned, fail to satisfy, and purchases
that often put our future at risk. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">We can’t live without clean air, clean water,
food, shelter, healthcare, family, society, and physical labor. But we take
these things for granted, having created a mass of artificial needs that take
priority over the things critical to our survival and well-being. In the
meantime, we are degrading our air and depleting our water sources at an
alarming rate. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">We have created a society in which the
things we need most are perilously undervalued, including our human labor,
which used to be thought of as virtuous. If we don’t figure out how to reprioritize
our economy, our children and grandchildren are going to pay a heavy price for
our indulgence and indifference. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">My third concern is the imbecility so
apparent in law enforcement. Our criminal justice system is a planetary
disgrace. Having been a police officer myself in my younger days, and having
studied the psychology of human behavior for decades, I find it appalling that so
much of what has been learned is still an open secret. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">If per chance you watched the documentary <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Making a Murderer</i>, it will be obvious to
you how easy it is to get a person to make a false confession, especially a
person with low self-esteem and a low IQ. We’ve known this for decades. That
there are any law enforcement officers or prosecuting attorneys in the country who
aren’t fully familiar with this phenomenon is, in my view, unacceptable. The
war stories from the aging officers I knew as a police officer in the 1960s
would curl your hair. I was in uniform when the Miranda Rule went into effect,
and for many months we didn’t read people their rights because we thought doing
so was silly. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Human brains are literally bias organs,
and anyone who<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>doesn’t fully
understand this has no business in law enforcement. Moreover, people who wear a
badge and a gun experience an increase in testosterone, becoming alpha males
and females by nature of their positions. For some, the nature of their
experience will likely hook them on spiked adrenaline rushes, prompting them to
unconsciously escalate acts of confrontation for the sake of the added excitement.
I find it mind-bending that the issues above are not a standard<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>part of police behavioral
training.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">These three concerns, of course, are only
a sample<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>of the problems we face,
but fully addressing them in public discourse could go a long way toward creating<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>a more equitable society, one that
would be much more like a democracy than the one we’re experiencing today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;"><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><strong>My Books and Essays on Amazon</strong></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 4.3pt 0in; text-align: center;">
<br /><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> <span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "times" , "serif"; line-height: 107%; text-decoration: none;"><strong>http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes</strong></span></a></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span></strong> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></span><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx</span></span></b></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-75117887984711996412016-12-07T08:52:00.000-08:002016-12-07T08:52:09.698-08:00Pledge of Allegiance or Pledge of Obedience?
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">© Charles
D. Hayes</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">The early European
settlers who first came to America were a diverse lot, but they had one thing
in common. They shared a history in which feudal and monarchical authority had
a way of encroaching upon those who failed to follow the protocols of deference
to the signs and symbols of their time. As I explained in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Existential Aspirations,</i> the perils for misinterpretation included
the gallows, the rack, having molten lead and sulfur poured into one’s open
wounds, and in some cases, being drawn, quartered, and pulled apart by horses.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Today, when
Americans observe students of Wahhabism endlessly reciting from the Koran, some
see it as brainwashing. But when American students daily recite the Pledge of
Allegiance, these same people seldom see a connection with behavioral
conditioning, even though both are a means of indoctrination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Symbols can indeed bring people together, but,
as often as not, they are used as wands of authority. The power to fix meaning
represents absolute power.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">As I see it, the
Pledge of Allegiance amounts to a pledge of obedience. While obedience is
important to a civilized society, genuflecting in rote submission before
symbols and icons is incompatible with a democracy that depends on knowledgeable
citizens to hold their representatives accountable to high standards.</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">I would wager that
most of the people who are adamant that students repeat the Pledge religiously
are unfamiliar with its history. Few are aware that the current Pledge was not
only penned by a socialist but also written as a means of protesting growing
inequality in what was known as the robber baron era.</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">The Pledge was
originally written in 1887, by Colonel George Balch, a Civil War veteran.
Francis Bellamy, a socialist minister rewrote the Pledge in 1892. The original
flag salute during the ritual was to hold one’s right hand upward, palm down,
at an angle that shared similarities with the Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute. This was
changed in 1942 to putting one’s hand over one’s heart to disassociate it with the
symbolism of the Third Reich.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Bellamy lectured
about the socialistic nature of Christianity with speech titles like, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jesus the Socialist</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Socialism of the Bible</i>. His version
of the Pledge was simply ad copy, first published in a children’s magazine, to
sell flags to public schools. In the early years, several versions of the Pledge
were in play, and in 1954, the words “under God” were added to distance America
from Communism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">The creation of
the Pledge of Allegiance and its current role in society are deeply ironic. Bellamy
had argued vociferously that men are not born free but are bound by the
obligations of their ancestors and their culture. The selfish nature of capitalistic
materialism, he said, must be defeated at all costs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Because of the
growing fear of immigrants, Conservative politicians have found the Pledge
useful as a form of demonstrative ethnocentrism. It provides a way of overpowering
alien loyalties. Those of us who oppose or differ with this view maintain that
creating a flag fetish is antithetical to democracy, that forced recitation is
in fact oppressive, and that opting out is untenable because of social pressure.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Unavoidably, I
have left out a lot of the history of the Pledge, but I’ve included enough to
make some points. First, the people who are most fervent about the need for
reciting the Pledge, for the most part, have no idea about its history or why
and how it came to be.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Moreover, those
who insist that school children recite the Pledge daily often know very little
about the civic obligations necessary to sustain a democracy, even though
reciting the Pledge is something they are familiar with. It’s something they
can do, and they think that by practicing this ritual, they are doing their
part. Thus, they are thoroughly invested in the act as a demonstration and
proof of one’s patriotism at a deeply emotional level. I know this to be true
because I grew up in this culture.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">In red states, especially,
learning is viewed to a significant degree as behaving. Symbols and icons are
treated as authoritative reminders that obedience is required and you are
expected to get A’s.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Instead of having
children recite the Pledge daily, I would rather see their time spent learning
what kind of behavior is necessary to sustain a democratic republic. How about
lessons in understanding the psychology of propaganda, the dangers of blind
obedience, and the importance of transparency in government to foster a
complete understanding of how government works, its structure, its history, and
the kind of responsibility citizenship demands?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">We are experiencing
an alarming, fear-based rise in authoritarianism in this country. When a president-elect
of the United States starts talking about putting people in prison for flag
burning, look out. Flag waving, flag burning, and Pledge of Allegiance issues
are going to be used as clubs and as distractions for the foreseeable future.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">We need to be knowledgeable
enough to deal articulately with dog-whistle bigotry, racism, fear mongering, contemptuous
propaganda, and agenda-driven demagoguery.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Simply put: We
need to be prepared to do what the founding fathers intended. Instead of bowing,
saluting, and genuflecting with obedience at the appearance of symbols and icons,
we need to speak truth to power and hold our elected officials accountable. At
the same time, it would be helpful to remember that the Pledge of Allegiance
was written to check power, not to reinforce it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><strong>My Books and Essays on Amazon</strong></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
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<br /><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> <span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "times" , "serif"; line-height: 107%; text-decoration: none;"><strong>http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes</strong></span></a></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></span><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx</span></span></b></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
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Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-37656307622843532032016-10-06T06:47:00.000-07:002016-10-06T06:47:05.352-07:00Slouching Toward a Political Fukushima
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Day in and day out, confirmation that the
political Right has reached a stage-four level of wing-nuttery is evident in social
media, newspapers, radio, and television. Commentators of every political
persuasion have grown weary of uttering the familiar refrain that “You can’t
make this stuff up.” But people can. They are making up bizarre things to say,
and other people are believing them. Every day we seem nearer to DEFCON 1 lunacy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Ultra-conservatives complained recently
that a baker forced to sell a wedding cake to a gay couple would, in effect, be
participating in a wedding. Strangely, they don’t think a gun store owner who
sells a gun to a killer is participating in a murder. Such twisted logic seems
to apply only when it feeds a particular agenda.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">On the Christian Right, Pat Robertson
claimed recently that smoking pot will make a person a slave to vegetables. Another
evangelist warned believers to prepare for martyrdom if the Supreme Court rules
in favor of gay marriage. Mike Huckabee said gays won’t be satisfied until
there are no more churches.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">The unhinged rhetoric just keeps
ratcheting up in tenor, and it’s growing louder with the approach of the 2016
election. Kansas politicians have enacted laws to keep people from using food
stamps on cruise ships, which simply amounts to an existential effort to
humiliate poor people. No doubt they think Jesus would approve.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">The paranoid antigovernment crowd is
hyper-alert for evidence that government forces are out to get them, and their
pattern-matching gray matter is up to the challenge of perceiving connections
where any hint of cause and effect can be imagined. Accusations that stretch
the very limits of the term <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">irrationality</i>
are picking up steam over fears about Black helicopters, secret nuclear
weapons, Muslim plots to take over the government, Communist conspiracies,
elitist collusions, unseen sinister forces, and other bizarre rumors.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Perhaps it only seems that more and more
people qualify as being certifiable, as we used to say, because more media
outlets are giving them voice. The Internet and social media have provided
conspiracy theorists a communication platform never before possible, with the
result that irrationality feeds on itself like a python in pursuit of its own tail.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Conspiratorial paranoia stems in part from
a deep-seated psychological dread of otherness, chance, change, and uncertainty
because they are cousins to mortality. True conspiratorial believers share a
visceral fear of chaos driven by a subconscious fear of death. To them the idea
of a psychotic fiend pulling all of the strings that make the world go around
is much more comforting and less frightening than the thought that no one is in
control and anything can happen to anyone at any time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">In a nutshell, what we are witnessing is
the emotional angst of ill-educated citizens fearful of change they can’t
understand, people they can’t relate to, and a future over which they have very
little control. The reason the rhetoric sounds so bizarre and outlandish is
that this is the playing out of identity politics: It’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">us</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">versus</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">them</i> on technological steroids, bouncing
off the cyber walls of social media echo chambers. Save a national emergency to
get everyone’s attention, there seems to be little we can do to stop the
nonsense or even slow it down. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">I’ve been writing about the critical need
for self-education for more than thirty years, and the 2016 election rhetoric
reminds me that we aren’t making all that much progress. The four-day
Republican National Convention earlier this year amounted to a hate fest,
driven by fear and fueled by deep-seated contempt. In effect, America has a
black hole of ignorance in the heartland, where contempt for the unfamiliar metastasizes
and citizens bond by way of shared derision. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">It’s customary to think that people who
are ignorant simply lack knowledge and what they need is the benefit of an
education. But the vitriolic rhetoric at the 2016 RNC was a clear demonstration
of the great barrier to the kind of learning that can dispel misguided cultural
angst. What stands in the way for these ill-informed citizens is a virtual
fortress of mistaken assumptions—toxic, absurd assumptions like the belief that
President Obama is secretly a Muslim who hates America or that Hillary Clinton
is the incarnation of evil, plotting to take away everyone’s guns and
ammunition. It goes downhill from there. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">This barricade of ignorant assumptions is
almost impossible to breach through the use of reason. The important thing to
keep in mind is that these ridiculous beliefs were born in emotion, so they
have to be dealt with at an emotional level in order to change. Reason is
useless against emotional angst. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">During the Cold War, liberals and
conservatives shared an emotive realm with one another because of the
practicality of dealing with a common enemy. When the Cold War ended, the
common emotional connection was severed, and the vitriol between the political
Left and Right has been escalating ever since. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">A Donald Trump victory in November would
be an overt declaration that insanity prevails, followed shortly by a nuclear-level
fallout of angst when Trump’s voters finally discover that he is egregiously
incompetent and has no clue how to put into practice his maniacal agenda to “make
America great again.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">A Hillary Clinton victory, which I hope
for and expect, is going to result in a misogynistic <span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Fukushima. The big question is the extent and duration of
the emotional fallout. Business owners have threated to close their doors if Hillary
wins, while white supremacists threaten revolution. How long will it take after
the glass ceiling is broken for misogynists to accept the new legitimacy of a
woman as president? This is the existential question. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-themecolor: text1;">When
President Obama was elected, the hope was that racism would subside. Instead
there was a backlash. The effect of that election outcome, as the academics explained,
was that it actually gave people permission to own their bias. If the same thing
happens with misogyny, the question is, for how long and how severe? When will
we grow up? Or are we doomed to forever engage in childish tribalism and call
it politics?</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 12pt; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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</strong><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><strong>My Books and Essays on Amazon</strong></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
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<br /><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> <span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "times" , "serif"; line-height: 107%; text-decoration: none;"><strong>http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes</strong></span></a></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></span><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx</span></span></b></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
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Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-35111533524092172752016-09-17T13:44:00.000-07:002016-09-17T13:44:36.459-07:00Sarah Palin vs. Donald Trump
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><strong>© Charles D. Hayes </strong></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Sarah Palin put my community of Wasilla,
Alaska, on the map, as the land of know-nothings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over a few short months, after she accepted
her place on the Republican ticket as vice president in 2008, her approval
ratings here and nationwide dropped like a rock, mostly for coming across in
interviews and on the campaign trail for lacking knowledge about important
matters, that anyone running for high public office should have. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Sarah Palin, in my view, is still an
ongoing local and national embarrassment. I grit my teeth every time she speaks
up about matters she still obviously knows nothing about. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Palin was not smart enough to realize how
far she was in over her head, but it wasn’t her fault that she wasn’t vetted
properly. She would be due our sympathy if she were not so hateful. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">But, its vitally important to point out,
that Sarah Palin offers a clear demonstration of the double standard and
implicit gender bias at work in American politics. Palin and Trump read the
same nonexistent books, magazines, and newspapers. Neither, could pass a
citizenship test. Both have college degrees, that warrant an investigation into
how such honors are bestowed since both appear to be lacking an education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Both Palin and Trump have a history of
saying things that bear no relation, whatsoever, to reality. Both reveal a bias
toward minorities and both demonstrate they lack a clear understanding of the
role of government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But here is the
thing, Palin may have well cost John McCain the election in 2008, when her astonishing
ignorance was revealed, but in Donald Trump’s case, his equally egregious lack
of knowledge and hate-filled rhetoric is overlooked. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Sarah Palin is considered dingy by many
people for the same behavior and lack of knowledge that makes people see Donald
Trump as a leader.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The implicit gender bias
in this country is so deeply embedded, that it’s simply accepted as reality and
that so many people are blind to the disparity in the way the current candidates
are being treated by media because of gender in this 2016, election cycle, is
an indictment of our maturity as a developed nation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the integrity of journalism were a
priority, most of the press corps would be fired for their unprofessional behavior
up to now. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">That an unscrupulous, narcissistic,
egomaniacal, racist, know nothing braggart, can even be considered a serious
candidate for president of the United States, is the second most embarrassing
political event, in my lifetime, the first, is the pass Trump is getting from
our so called media professionals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Make no mistake, Sarah Palin is a thorn in
American politics and I would be willing to help her pack, if she would move
away from Wasilla, but Donald Trump is more of an embarrassment on the world
stage, than Palin ever was, but then, of course, Trump is a man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><strong>My Books and Essays on Amazon</strong></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 4.3pt 0in; text-align: center;">
<br /><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> <span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "times" , "serif"; line-height: 107%; text-decoration: none;"><strong>http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes</strong></span></a></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span></strong> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></span><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx</span></span></b></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
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Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-86375924978126762542016-08-02T07:14:00.000-07:002016-08-02T07:14:42.911-07:00Why ‘Anyone But HER’ Seems So Obvious to So Many
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;"><div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
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</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;">© Charles D. Hayes </span></b></div>
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</span></div>
</span><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">In the presidential election underway, do
not make the mistake of assuming anything other than different standards apply
when it comes to gender. The eons of our existence have resulted in hierarchal
assumptions so deeply imbedded and ingrained in all human cultures that many prevailing
prejudices are harder to distinguish and comprehend than what fish might have
to experience in order to perceive the nature of water. I’m referring to the
social malignancy we know as misogyny—the fear, disdain, or outright hatred of women
and all things feminine.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A
Brief History of Misogyny: The World’s Oldest Prejudice</i>, a book finished in
2004 just before its author passed away, Jack Holland wrote, </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">“What history teaches us about misogyny
can be summed up in four words: pervasive, persistent, pernicious and protean.
Long before men invented the wheel, they invented misogyny, and today, as our
wheels roll over the plains of Mars, that earlier invention still blights
lives. No other prejudice has proven so durable or shares those other
characteristics to anything like the same extent. No race has suffered such
prejudicial treatment over so long a period of time; no group of individuals,
however they might be characterized, has been discriminated against on such a
global scale. Nor has any prejudice manifested itself under so many different
guises, appearing sometimes with the sanction of society at the level of social
and political discrimination, and at other times emerging in the tormented mind
of a psychopath with no sanction other than that of his own hate-filled
fantasies.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Indeed, until you examine the subject of
misogyny at the bedrock level, it’s simply not possible to understand how
modern society is still so viscerally dysfunctional with regard to gender. The tentacles
and roots of misogyny live in the bone marrow of our species. They are so deeply
buried beneath written history that we take many of their assumptions as
straight-up reality. It’s as if the world was created in a cultural temperament
so entrenched with a smoldering strain of scorn that it need not be discussed,
ever, because it simply represents the way things are, the way they were meant
to be, the way things must be. That the gender that is physically weaker would
bear an unrelenting burden of submissiveness seems like a no-brainer, based on
what we know about primate behavior.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">For thousands of years, men had the right
to kill their wives and daughters, and in some cultures this practice continues.
In ancient Greece and Rome, from the days of Plato and Aristotle, through the
origins of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, through the Dark Ages and the
Enlightenment, right up to today, misogyny lives and breathes as if its ubiquity
is a self-evident necessity for the survival of our kind. The Christian Bible
is a manual for misogynous tradition, and even the teachings of Buddhism,
thought to be the pinnacle of egalitarianism, assume a hierarchy of gender with
a measure of male superiority. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Millions of the females of our species
have been raped, bludgeoned, executed, and murdered at the level of emotional whim,
all under a banner of righteousness. In the Middle Ages, clergy put women on a
pedestal and then condemned them to Hell, burning alive at the stake untold
thousands suspected of being witches.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">The inanity of Original Sin, via the
temptation of Eve and her alleged fall in the Garden of Eden, served then and
now as a virtuous demerit for women in the same manner that Jews are
stigmatized for having been the accused persecutors of Christ. If you think the
pernicious fallout of such medieval thinking is not still present in modernity,
you can’t be paying attention.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">The notion in Christianity that only a
virgin was worthy of giving birth to the son of God has ramifications about the
behavior of women that are incalculable when it comes to the negative judgments
that follow for simply being a female.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
keeping with this ethos, women have been and are held to standards that do not
apply to men. A man who is aggressive and ambitious is seen as a leader; a
woman with the same attributes, a bitch or a shrew. A man who is promiscuous is
a ladies’ man or a stud; a woman, a slut or a whore.</span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">In some Middle Eastern cultures, women are
so subordinate to men that even if they are raped by strangers, they assume the
guilt for the offense. If their behavior is deemed dishonorable to their male
relatives, they may be put to death. And we needn’t even broach the subject of
the way women are still treated in Saudi Arabia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">In America, women have had the right to
vote for less than a century. A woman was elected to Congress for the first
time exactly one hundred years ago, and to the Senate in 1932. For most of our
species’ existence on the planet, women have been regarded as little more than
property. Today the residue of this tradition still applies. Women maintain the
right to reject consent to sexual relations, but many people have been taught to
assume women lose the right over their own bodies in matters concerning
abortion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Readily available contraceptives have
resulted in some patriarchal convulsions because the autonomy they allow women
is a threat to men’s powers of forced submission. The very idea that women
might engage in sexual relations for sheer pleasure, as men have from the
beginning, fractures the social hierarchy. Genuine gender equality is truly
frightening to misogynists.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Gloria Steinem nailed it when she said,
“If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” The right to
control one’s own body has always been an ongoing battle for women. For
centuries, in myriad cultures, the actions of women were taken as a reflection
of the honor of the men in the family, which led to the assumption that women’s
behavior is men’s business; for men to be associated with anything feminine
would emasculating. Suggesting that the gender pay gap is anything but
deep-seated misogyny is purposeful disingenuousness.</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Senator Marco Rubio says he disagrees with
Hillary Clinton about “everything,” which has a high-pitched misogynous ring to
it. The often-heard declaration that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">anyone</i>
would be better as president than Hillary Clinton is so steeped in the ethos of
misogyny that to deny this reality is blatantly hypocritical. It’s equivalent
to saying <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">anyone</i> would better than a
neurosurgeon to operate on your brain.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">When you ask people precisely why electing
Hillary would be a disaster, most will simply spit and sputter about her being
dishonest. After all, regardless of the issue or its importance, her opponents
always declare she is lying. In contrast, the other candidate’s truth telling
is off the charts in the number of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pants-on-fire</i>
acknowledgments by organizations devoted to accuracy in media. His ignorance
about every subject that really matters is mindboggling.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">A candidate who uses bigotry and racism to
rally support, and who is supported by people who choose to ignore his record
of business failures, outright fraud, and serial bankruptcies that left scores
of small businesses in dire straits, has only one thing going for him in the
eyes of many. Namely, he is not a woman. He’s an aspirant for the presidency that
I’m confident time will reveal as being to politics what Bernie Madoff is to
finance.</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Millions of dollars have been spent to
discredit Hillary Clinton. For those easy to influence it appears to have been
money well spent, because when they speak up, they do so with talking-point
clichés drawn straight from the media. Call anyone a liar for twenty-five years,
spend vast sums of money on investigations, and that person’s reputation will take
a hit, even if ultimately cleared of wrongdoing.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Hillary Clinton is a flawed individual, as
all of us are. She has made mistakes, as all of us have. She will make mistakes
in the future, as all of us will. But, gender aside, she is by orders of
magnitude a better candidate for president of the United States than Donald J. Trump.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;"><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><strong>My Books and Essays on Amazon</strong></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 4.3pt 0in; text-align: center;">
<br /><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> <span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "times" , "serif"; line-height: 107%; text-decoration: none;"><strong>http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes</strong></span></a></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></span><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx</span></span></b></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
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Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-48492096111041938522016-07-11T10:52:00.000-07:002016-07-11T10:52:41.136-07:00Life as a Dance with Reality
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">© Charles D. Hayes</span></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;"><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">If a sense of
objective reality (as best as we human beings can discern it) represented the True
North of life experience, where do you suppose a compass would show your
location to be in relation to True North? How far away would you be from being
as close as you could get, that is, if you were to try with all of your might
to discover it?</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Imagine having a
cell phone app that would give your position on a given subject with respect to
True North and tell you how much of what you believe about life is yet unproven
and how much is objectively grounded. If, before we could leave our homes, each
of us had to nail down what we know and believe based on hard evidence as
opposed to arbitrary claims, most of us would never be seen in public again.
The gap between what we think we know and what we can prove is so large that
just acknowledging the reality gap is troubling. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Of course, it is entirely<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>in our nature to accept what we see
when we look out on the world as straight-up reality, but if we have learned
anything at all about human behavior during the past century we know for
certain that nothing could be further from the truth. We are neurologically
rigged for misperception, self-deception, and false attribution. That, more
often than not, things are not as they appear is one of life’s most
underappreciated great lessons.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">According to
philosopher Daniel Dennett, there are two fundamental types of argument for
making a case about something said to be true: skyhooks and cranes. A crane
argument is simply one that offers supporting evidence; it’s like logical scaffolding
that says A is true because B and C show that this is the case. A skyhook
argument, on the other hand, as the name implies, exists simply because someone
deems it so. Now, it’s really disturbing when you fully realize how many
skyhook arguments we accept without question and go about living our lives as
if these things were true.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Our courts are
intended as institutional efforts to find True North. Our jury system is
predicated on an ability to discern cranes from skyhooks, although juries
sometimes fail outright, while attorneys attempt to disguise skyhooks as
cranes. But when a court is functioning as intended, skyhook arguments are
thrown out as hearsay.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Popular culture is
a collective bubble of skyhook assumptions with little interest in, or tolerance
for, cranes. Popular beliefs are widespread, not because they are true, but
because they are popular. Politics is mostly skyhook rhetoric spun to appear as
cranes. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Inevitably there
are many things we have to take on faith because there are times when even science
has to create cranes that rest on skyhook assumptions. For example, we know
enough about the sun to justify our faith that it will shine tomorrow and the
day after, but we are a long way from an ability to completely describe our
very own star in terms of slam-dunk cranes without some guesswork.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">I hope it will not
come as a shock to most people that all religions are held in place by skyhooks.
That’s why the term <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">faith </i>can be a
deal-breaker for some, and it is why, to a significant degree, religious belief
has resulted in reality wars in order to claim ownership of the truth.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">To put this whole
situation in perspective one has to marvel at the amount of time we human
beings spend arguing over things that we literally haven’t the first clue about.
Still we will fight and even go to war over skyhook beliefs<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Politically
everyone I know, left, right, or center, wants pretty much the same thing—a
free and just society with equal opportunity, where hard work is rewarded, and
a system that is not rigged by the government, big business, or special
interests of any stripe. And yet our culture of social media has so
dramatically upped the tempo of our illusionary dance with reality that skyhook
music is getting louder and louder, while groups are polarizing and huddling
with likeminded dancers in opposing corners of the ballroom.</span></div>
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</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">If you don’t
believe your dance with reality is a casual and pretty much thoughtless waltz,
then just ask yourself what argument you’ve had with someone lately where
you’ve studied the subject to the core, eliminated all of the skyhooks at play,
and used only cranes to substantiate your position.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">My point is that
all of the many problems we face in America today—poverty, global warming,
income inequality, political corruption, crime, and drug abuse—can only be
solved with reasonable positions based on factual data, with crane arguments, supportable
all the way down to bedrock. Some things work and some don’t. It doesn’t take
rocket scientists to figure out what does work, but we do have to dispense with
all skyhook assumptions.</span></div>
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</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">I’m reminded that
the only reliable way to achieve a more just and equitable society, is for more
and more of us to care more about solving problems than about whose side wins
the argument. To make this happen requires that we slow our dance with reality
and stop exchanging skyhook opinions. We need to do the homework required to
address the problems we confront and get down to comparing cranes in search of
the better argument. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><strong>My Books and Essays on Amazon</strong></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
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<br /><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> <span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "times" , "serif"; line-height: 107%; text-decoration: none;"><strong>http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes</strong></span></a></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></span><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx</span></span></b></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
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Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-2213684020719170222016-06-01T11:25:00.000-07:002016-06-01T11:25:05.153-07:00How Free Are We Really?
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">© Charles D. Hayes<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Have you ever wondered how the concept of freedom has evolved? Try to
imagine what freedom meant to the immigrants in the seventeenth century who
indentured themselves to five or more years of hard labor to pay for their
passage to America. Then compare that frame of mind to the outlook of the
slaves brought here from Africa in chains. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Imagine longing to fulfill an indentured servitude contract to secure your
independence. Try to assume the mindset of those who would never live as free
men and women, and then consider the expectations of slaves once the
Emancipation Proclamation was signed, even as the Civil War raged on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Our perception of the independence that individuals possess has changed,
especially when we compare the way we live today with the times when most
people lived off the land and on small farms. Home mortgages, credit cards,
student loans, and a business climate driven by shifting technology and payment
plans have had a profound influence on our concept of freedom. Many of us willingly
indenture ourselves to a lifetime of debt. We adopt the subordinate, submissive,
and silent civil behavior that’s so often required to stay employed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Today we accept high levels of consumer debt as normal, while perpetuating
an economic system known for its creative destruction. Our opportunities as citizens
have increased dramatically, while our ability to speak truth to power without risking
great loss has suffered. We have, in effect, fashioned a nearly perfect
environment for the creation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yes</i>
men and women, and yet we wonder why we have so much corruption in business and
government. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Increasingly employees witness wrongdoing but can’t afford to report it for
fear of losing their jobs and, in some cases, everything they own. Our economy
rests on a pyramid of oppressive authoritative control, and those in power have
legislated easy rigging into law. This is not to say that legitimate sources of
authority aren’t necessary for our very existence, but much of the citizen-level
independence necessary to safeguard democracy has been squelched, if not barred,
by law.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">There was a time when most people lived off the land and very few people worked
for wages. Their level of independence and their ability to object to malfeasance
without losing everything is hard to fully appreciate today. I raise this
subject because many of our fellow citizens in this country brag incessantly
about how we are the freest country in the world. But I often wonder if this
shrill rhetoric isn’t a result of their own nagging doubt. If you don’t believe
the pressure to toe the line is intense, just take a hard look at the lives of
whistle blowers after they have nobly followed their conscience.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">I spent many years working for major oil companies on Alaska’s North Slope.
We had a saying up there that by spending years away from home we were being
held in place by golden handcuffs. We did this fully acknowledging that we also
felt very lucky to have jobs that paid so well, but I used to secretly wish the
oil reservoir would dry up so I would have no choice but to quit. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">When we compare ourselves as Americans to the other developed countries
that have much more socialistic forms of government, like Denmark and Sweden, we
see that their citizens exercise more lifestyle alternatives without penalty than
we do in America. Could it be that our own political dysfunction has something
to do with the existential angst we endure because we champion freedom in
theory but not so much in concrete experience? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">I suspect it’s mostly this subconscious anxiety that contributes to the
emotional vitriol driving our political divide. People who are constantly in
fear of losing their job, home, and livelihood because of sought-after innovations
that increase productivity while simultaneously leading to higher and higher levels
of unemployment tend to be hypersensitive about anyone they suspect is getting
a free ride. This anxiety serves as the perfect political tool for generating public
expressions of contempt—something demagogues can depend on for inflaming public
resentment ahead of elections.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">In an earlier essay, I mentioned that Abraham Lincoln was adamant that
labor should maintain a higher premium of value than capital. Lincoln was understandably
sensitive about the subject of servitude, and he was dismayed at the thought of
people working for wages for a long period of time without being able to free
themselves from what he saw as a deeply flawed arrangement. I wonder what he
would say about today’s working poor, whose figurative handcuffs are the
metaphorical equivalent of barbed wire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">We still aspire to an ethos of self-reliance and rugged individualism espoused
by the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson at a time when we were poorer in purse but
much more independent. It’s not so easy now to build a cabin in the woods and
live off the land in the manner of Thoreau. In fact, things have changed so
much that it’s the people who live off the land in rural America who today are
most fearful about their economic future. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Clearly hard work, self-reliance, and the ability to take care of oneself
and one’s family are just as important today as at any time in the past. But we
need to mend the fence, so to speak, to make up for the fact that our society
is increasingly vulnerable to arbitrary economic whims and rapidly changing
technology. We need to address the reality that a very small percentage of
people in our country have accrued the power to indenture most of the rest of
us to varying levels of required servitude, often with little room for
negotiating our compensation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Today capital not only trumps the value of labor, it adds insult to injury
by capturing most of the income from labor’s rising productivity as effectively
as a new Dyson vacuum cleaner scarfs up lint from a bare floor. That a large
percentage of our population believes right-to-work laws are anything more at
their philosophical core than the right to pay low wages shows the
effectiveness of the power of ideological indoctrination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">We now find ourselves in an economy where six heirs of the Walmart fortune have
the wealth equivalent of the bottom forty percent of our population, and yet we
subsidize some of Walmart’s employees with government programs. In my view,
this is sheer madness and it’s only one egregious example of our growing inequality.
There are too many to list.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Franklin Roosevelt’s four freedoms—freedom of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">speech</i>, of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">worship</i>, from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">want</i>, and from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fear</i>—were, in my view, worthy goals in 1941. They are even more
pressing today because our aspirations for democracy have been overwritten by
plutocracy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Call our current economic system the greatest exercise of freedom in the
world if you want, but in my book, it’s just a fabricated illusion in serious
need of redress. I believe Abraham Lincoln would think we have lost our minds
and most assuredly our voices. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">My point is that we need to be civically thoughtful when we use the word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">freedom</i>. History clearly shows that
growing inequality results in conflict that can lead to violence. We know that to
experience and maintain real freedom requires constant vigilance. Without a
thoughtful and responsible public, our freedom is easier lost than gained. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><strong>My Books and Essays on Amazon</strong></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
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<br /><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> <span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "times" , "serif"; line-height: 107%; text-decoration: none;"><strong>http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes</strong></span></a></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></span><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx</span></span></b></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
</span><br />Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-912287264589266082016-05-05T06:07:00.000-07:002016-05-05T06:21:17.882-07:00Threatened Worldviews and Extremism <br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><strong>©
Charles D. Hayes<o:p></o:p></strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">In 1990, Walter Truett
Anderson published <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reality Isn’t What It
Used to Be</i>:<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> <span class="a-size-large1"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Theatrical Politics, Ready-To-Wear Religion, Global Myths,
Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World</span></span></i><span class="a-size-large1"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">. </span></span>The subtitle is discerning. Anderson’s stunning
observations offered cultural insight into the new century we were fast approaching
in the same way Alvin Toffler’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Future
Shock</i> had been prescient twenty years earlier. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The 1990s saw the term <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">postmodernism</i> bantered about by people
whose trouble defining it was crucial to its meaning. For many well-educated
people postmodernism seemed to rest on casting doubt on the ability to know <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">anything</i> with any degree of certainty. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Postmodernists pointed
out that language itself evolves from a foundation based on arbitrary
assumptions. The notion resembled eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant’s
proposition that we do not experience things in themselves but only as
representations of themselves dependent upon the frailties of our cerebral
architecture. The result of such thinking did little but escalate pretense on
one side of the argument and contempt on the other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Now, in a recent article
titled “Despair, American Style” in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The</i>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times,</i> Paul Krugman has
written about the angst of white people and their difficulty in coping with
life today amid the turmoil of growing cultural diversity and economic uncertainty.
He quotes a source who suggests some Americans are suffering from a loss of
narrative in keeping with their sense of reality. Hold this thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">A half-century ago,
Richard Hofstadter published his Pulitzer Prize winning book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anti-Intellectualism in American Life</i>.
In it he said, “At an early date, literature and learning were stigmatized as
the prerogative of useless aristocracies.” But disruptive ideas were all the
rage in the 1960s, prompting Hofstadter to declare in 1964 that we had reached
a point where “anti-intellectualism could be discussed without exaggerated
partisanship.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Come forward to the
present, and Hofstadter’s assertion sounds absurd. Anti-intellectualism is now
thriving in exaggerated partisanship. What went wrong? The answer in a nutshell
is this: People today are experiencing future shock from the unsettling notion
that reality bears little relation to the narrative that most of us
internalized growing up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">We know now that our
brains don’t work as we’ve always believed they do. Rather, we are rigged for
self-deception, seeing what we want to see, and we are born masters when it
comes to easily tuning out or shielding ourselves from contrary information. And
all the while, our beliefs are setting up like concrete.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Cultures serve as
shelters from reality. Some people adopt worldviews very much like read-only
software, often internalizing a creed so rigidly that they do not hear, see, or
even acknowledge contrary views as having any legitimacy whatsoever. As a
result, a significant number of people seek the refuge of echo chambers and
block out all contrary opinion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Cultures also serve as
ideological pressure cookers for the formation of beliefs. We are only a few
generations beyond a time when many Americans were determined to fight to the
death in support of slavery. Our cultural traditions remain so deeply rooted
and so tenaciously entrenched that a residue of racial prejudice from the Civil
War is still with us. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">In many ways the profuse
ideas of the 1960s represented a backlash to an overly conformist and
authoritarian culture. In the two decades that followed, a strong sea of
resentment for secularism and tolerant ideas led to an increase in opposition
and to the growth of traditional enclaves and think tanks based on religion and
traditionalist ideology. Take this smoldering anxiety globally, and the antics
of terrorists begin to make sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">It’s hard to get an
objective sense of the cultural differences among the peoples of the world. In
America, most of us grow up with an unrelenting emphasis on and about the ethos
of individualism. This attitude shapes our worldview and the way we relate to
other people. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">But consider the ideas we
Americans have about family and morality, and then contrast these feelings with
those of cultures where the custom of honor killing is currently practiced. The
moral gap here is so profound and so wide that people on either side of this
issue cannot fully comprehend the point of view of the other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Incidents of clashing
social customs and values<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>are
increasing today as never before, and the future offers no letup. We’re
experiencing lives mediated by technologies that border on magic. Society is
both ripping apart and coming together at the same time, causing many people to
be driven by fear and a thirst for security. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Alvin Toffler asserted
that there are limits to the amount of change we can endure without
psychological injury. He echoed William James’ observation that “lives based on
having are less free than lives based on doing or on being.” The threat of losing
one’s affluence is bewildering, especially when it happens as technology actually
increases one’s life choices in superficial ways with new gadgets one can
acquire on the way to lower and lower rungs on the economic ladder. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">When worldviews unravel,
so does the psyche of individuals. In some cases, the angst generated festers
and results in conflict that leads to violence among people whose worldviews
allow no room for contrary opinion. Although psychologist Steven Pinker has
offered compelling evidence that violence globally is actually diminishing, our
media’s focus on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">if it bleeds it leads</i>
makes this observation seem hard to believe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">My point is that we have
reached uncharted territory. Our species has always had individuals who see the
same things and reach different conclusions, and for centuries our political
divide has been sharp or even hostile. As Walter Truett Anderson once observed,
the fundamentalists fear the loss of faith while freethinking liberals dread
surrender to those who promise certainty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">In today’s world, communication
technology is effectively retribalizing the world at a pace we aren’t prepared
to deal with. Echo chambers serve as obstacles for finding common ground and as
battle stations on stand-by to detect cultural insults and acts of disrespect. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The more contentious the
ideological divide between academics and average citizens, the more attractive
an anti-intellectual worldview becomes to some. As the rate of change
skyrockets, the felt need to seek simplistic solutions and the shelter of
consensus increases. At the same time, technology is<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>rapidly fueling the power of
radicals to retaliate against society at large. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">In short, everything that
can happen is happening, only faster, while the disconnect between perception
and reality gets bigger. As a result of this chaos, groups seek refuge in associations
tenuously held together by ancient customs and supernatural beliefs. Out of
desperation more and more of their members assume that those who disagree with
them are evil and double down on their convictions when challenged. Moreover,
when a culture’s sacred beliefs seem so bizarre that outsiders view them as
preposterous, the passion required to defend them is likely to be fierce. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Barring a natural
disaster or global catastrophe, the speed of change is not going to let up. Neither
is seething cultural conflict as worldviews collide and insecure individuals
and groups resist, believing themselves to be facing mortal threats by the mere
existence of those who disagree with them about the nature of reality. People
who express angst because they believe their symbols and icons are being
disrespected are but the first signs of shattering worldviews. ISIS represents the
extreme. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">It is in the nature of
human tribalism to assume one’s culture represents the pinnacle of humanity.
When you find out what each culture believes is sacred, you expose a
hypersensitive nerve that, when pinched, prompts fear, anxiety, and acts of
irrationality. When handled with tact, that nerve holds a key to the
radicalization of a group’s members.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">If we are going to defuse
some individuals and groups of their fear and achieve a more peaceful society with
fewer acts of terrorism, we need to focus on strategies to help people cope with
disorder without feeling that the escalating change in the world is a personal attack
on their identity and thus their very existence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">If we put a lot of
thought into this enterprise, we could call it education with the caveat that
the way it is presented may be as important as its content. Education has never
been more essential because ideas are the only way to dismantle ideologies.
People who are incapable of creating their own narrative without the need for
hatred as the cultural adhesive to hold their respective associations together
are easy candidates for those who seek to recruit fanatics. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">There is one clear and
profound point to be made here which we ignore it at our peril: Violence begets
violence, and if we have any hope of stamping out terrorism, it won’t be with
bullets. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><strong>My Books and Essays on Amazon</strong></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 4.3pt 0in; text-align: center;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> <span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "times" , "serif"; line-height: 107%; text-decoration: none;"><strong>http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes</strong></span></a></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span></strong> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></span><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx</span></span></b></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 107%;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></span><br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
</span><br />Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-11639202341176898292016-01-06T14:49:00.002-08:002016-01-06T14:49:55.823-08:00Gun Safety: Common Sense, Not Politics
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">© Charles D. Hayes</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’ve been a gun owner since I got a Daisy Red
Ryder BB gun for Christmas in 1948 at age five. I still have it. My grandfather
laid out all of the ways in which the use of guns required common sense. Since
then I’ve served in the Marine Corps and as a police officer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 4.3pt 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
February of 2015 I caught a burglar in my home and held him at gunpoint until a
state trooper arrived. The burglar pointed a pistol at me. I had a shotgun and
convinced him to drop his. He was a second or two away from dying before he put
the gun down. In all of my years with firearms I’ve never shot anyone
accidently or on purpose.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 4.3pt 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
current social uproar over gun rights is endemic of the overall political
divide facing the country. Common sense has been abandoned strictly on identity
based political grounds. In other words, this is not an example of reasoning,
it’s a manner of relating as in my group has a stake in this, so we must win at
all costs. Not to be confused by facts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 4.3pt 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
irony in the rhetoric is breathtaking. Surely a Christian God would deem it a
moral blasphemy and an outrage to forbid women and children refuges shelter
from possible physical harm on the chance that some might someday pose a
terrorist threat, but then cry foul by asking that those purchasing a firearm
must be checked against a no-fly terrorist list. Think about the utter insanity
of such a dogmatic position as it exposes levels of hypocrisy that are off the
charts of any objective standard of human decency, religious morality aside.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Taking
the position that no laws are effective in keeping guns out of the hands of
people who shouldn’t have them and that more people having guns is a deterrent
to violence is a complete abandonment of common sense. And don’t offer me a
quote from John R. Lott Jr’s book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">More
Guns Less Crime</i> because his data has been thoroughly debunked and
discredited.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 4.3pt 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Think
hard about what the politicization of gun safety has done to pervert logic. The
more people swim, the fewer drownings, the more people drive, the fewer the
accidents, and the more children there are who play with matches, the fewer the
burns. The more marriages, the fewer the divorces. The more people with guns,
the fewer the shootings. This is insanity on steroids and it has no business
being a political issue.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We
require driver’s licenses to keep bad drivers off the road and it is ludicrous
not to take reasonable measures to keep guns out of the hands of lunatics.
Granted not having a valid driver’s license doesn’t stop some offenders from
driving, but it does deter enough to make a statistical difference in traffic
fatalities due to DUIs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">From
my experience, there is a grain of truth in the notion that a person is less
likely to pull out a handgun and start shooting people if they believe there is
a good chance they will themselves be shot. But this pales in comparison to the
likelihood that if more people are armed that minor conflicts will result in an
increase in the use of firearms and you only have to witness a few examples of
road rage to fully appreciate this reality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I
understand and I sympathize with those who have affection for firearms, but
take a walk through your town or visit your local Walmart and tell me you think
it would be a good idea that everyone you meet should be armed, some of whom
you must admit are not capable of playing with a full deck.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 4.3pt 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My
point is that common sense gun regulations have been made nearly impossible for
reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the reality of public safety,
but everything to do with partisan politics, as if us vs. them is the only
thing that matters and that if “they win we lose.” Moreover, this divisiveness
is purposefully spurred on by the firearms industry, the very people who profit
from the paranoia. No wonder there is an ammunition shortage nationwide.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Arguing
that common sense firearms regulations have no positive effect at all on human
behavior is patently absurd and the only basis to deny the statistical evidence
that regulations do have a positive effect is political posturing that’s
completely out of touch with reality. An extrapolation of such ideology would
suggest that because some people are lawbreakers we don’t need any laws at all
about anything because after all, some people won’t obey. This is nonsense!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Our
nation is founded on the premise that most people are law abiding citizens
which most people are and this is why it is possible to have a government and a
civil society in the first place. Gun safety requires a slug of sanity and some
double barreled reasoning with politics set aside.</span></div>
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</div>
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 4.3pt 0in; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><strong>My Books and Essays on Amazon</strong></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 4.3pt 0in; text-align: center;">
<br /><br /> <span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times","serif"; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><strong>http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes</strong></span></a></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span></strong> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<a href="http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx</span></span></b></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></div>
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 4.3pt 0in;">
<o:p></o:p> </div>
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</div>
Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-59738741751840639002015-11-07T07:16:00.000-08:002015-11-07T07:16:04.294-08:00Fourth-Down Punt Economics
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">© Charles D. Hayes</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Imagine what would happen
if the referees calling penalties in professional football were paid exorbitant
salaries by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">only</i> the richest teams. One
thing is sure: we would deem it a sham. If the game was obviously rigged, most people
would stop watching. Ironically, that’s precisely what we have today in
American politics. Our elected representatives (our supposed economic referees)
are being openly bribed because not enough of us <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are </i>watching and so many of our citizens don’t vote. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Both of our major
political parties are unduly influenced by moneyed special interests; one is
just more blatant and ideologically open about it than the other. Unfortunately,
the reason many people don’t pay attention to politics is that they know the
system is corrupt and they feel powerless. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Because of special
interest lobbying, corporations never have to punt. They own our referees. Through
legislative influence they have effectively devastated labor unions while enabling
banks to charge excessive fees for administering customer accounts and to move
away from traditional services to casino-like investments where profits are
capitalized. They take big risks, fully confident that, because of their size,
catastrophic losses will be socialized. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Some of our largest and
most profitable businesses pay poverty-level wages with the assurance that
taxpayers will support their employees with food stamps. The sheer amount of
corporate profits in offshore banks to escape taxation is breathtaking, while
lobbying by the military industrial complex is so effective, our generals and
admirals can’t even cancel the manufacture of weapons they don’t want or need. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Inequality has been escalating at
record rates for decades, a direct result of legislation on behalf of those
with an economic advantage and the power to leverage their influence at every
opportunity. One strategy has been to incite public anger at the poor for not
pulling their weight and appearing to game the system by getting something for
nothing, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">even when the evidence shows that’s not true. This
feeds people’s inherent tribalistic tendencies because blaming the poor allows
one to identify vicariously with the rich and powerful. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Capitalism is an
incredibly dynamic system capable of both good and ill, but today’s economic
playing field is not in any sense level. Capitalism works best with strictly
regulated competition. In professional football, we don’t hear arguments about a
minimum wage because teams have to compete for players, causing compensation to
soar. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The same principle
applies to the workplace. Capitalism only works effectively for working people
when business has to compete for employees. To assume that human beings should
work full time for poverty wages in the richest country in the world is as absurd
as it would be to play football without protective gear. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The notion that free
markets magically arrive at fair wages for work performed is a fairy tale. Nothing
is free, and our laws for business and labor are biased by design. The
commercial usage of natural resources does not remotely reflect its
environmental costs. Moreover, elected officials’ dependence on private donations
means legislation is never free of partiality. And finally, far too many of the
rules and regulations we live by are created in secret.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Football, of course, is just a
game and may seem to be of little significance, but we are drawn to it
precisely because of our tribalistic instinct for belonging. Sports fans
display near fanaticism in their insistence that referees be fair when calling
penalties. Notice how upset they<b> </b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">get when a penalty
appears unjust.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> But building</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> an economy where people
can earn a decent living is more important by orders of magnitude than scoring
points in a game. T</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">hat we insist on fairness in sports contests, and
not in matters where so much more is at stake, reveals a tragic flaw in human
behavior.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The only way we will ever
achieve a level economic playing field in which the interests of average
citizens are matters of real political concern is to publicly fund elections
and forbid the bribing of our elected officials. Until this is accomplished,
the ideologies of the Left and Right will always matter less than the degree of
corruption we’re willing to accept. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The first order of
business is to stop cheerleading with the mindset of the 1950s. The American
aspirations for hard work and self-reliance haven’t changed, but our methodologies
for contracting and compensating wage labor have been radically degraded and diminished
over the last half-century. The rules, regulations, and taxes that created the
middle class have been slowly but steadily altered beyond recognition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">If professional football
had kept pace with our politics these past five decades, the Wall Street team
would take the field with equipment and talent comparable to what the New
England Patriots have today. The opposing team representing working people, however,
would be an assembly of high school B-stringers, who would show up without
helmets or shoulder pads. Every time they got the ball, it would automatically be
fourth down with a fifteen-yard penalty tacked on and no time-outs remaining. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">In November 2016, it will
be time for a new lineup of referees to take the field. Let’s make sure they
have an edict for public funding of elections and are individuals who will strive
to overturn Citizens United legislatively. Let’s elect representatives who will
look out for average Americans with an implicit understanding that, if they fail,
they will be held accountable. The penalty will be that they’ll be deemed off
sides, out of bounds, and soon out of office. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><strong>My Books and Essays on Amazon</strong></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<br /> <span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times","serif"; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><strong>http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes</strong></span></a></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<a href="http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx</span></span></b></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></div>
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
</span><br />Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-12875175968213581732015-10-24T07:29:00.000-07:002015-10-24T07:29:21.711-07:00Literature, Philosophy, and the Alaska Highway
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%;">©
Charles D. Hayes<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">My fascination with
Alaska began in Irving, Texas, in the 1950s, when my fourth-grade teacher read to
her class every day from Jack London’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><strong>Call
of the Wild</strong>.</i> Some sixty years later, I’m now a resident of Alaska and have
been for more than four decades. Perhaps it’s my fate that, as a result, I
would have the opportunity to drive the legendary Alaska Highway, not once, but
seven times, four of those times by myself. I never tire of the drive and
always look forward to another trip.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Constructed in 1942, the
year before I was born, as a war measure in America’s defense against Japan, the
highway extends 1,390 miles through the Yukon to the heart of Alaska. It
traverses wilderness so breathtaking and spectacular that at times it doesn’t
seem real, almost like something created by the special effects department for
a movie production. My experience has been that if you have a philosopher-self hidden
beneath your consciousness, it will likely surface when you travel this road
alone.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Not surprisingly, the
fiction I write is largely shaped by these influences. More than two decades
ago, while studying Alaska history and philosophy, I began crafting a futuristic
story featuring the Alaska Highway. In 2003, eight years after I began, I
published <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><strong>Portals in a Northern Sky</strong>, </i>a
science fiction<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>novel envisioning a revolutionary
technological breakthrough that allows people not to travel back in time per se,
but rather to look back in time and observe any location on earth during
daytime hours on a cloud-free day at any time in history.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><strong>Gadsden Times</strong></i>, a newspaper in the Deep South, described <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><strong>Portals</strong></i> as “a science fiction novel, a
history lesson, a guided tour of North America’s beauty and a thought-provoking
work of philosophy.” In places like Dawson Creek, Fort Nelson, Summit Lake,
Whitehorse, and other key locations along the highway route, characters in the
novel discuss the rewards of reading literature. Among other classics, Herman
Melville’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><strong>Moby-Dick</strong></i> features
prominently in the conversation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">As part of a
philosophical exploration into the notion of fate, one of the protagonists offers
an intriguing comparison of the lives and works of Herman Melville and Jack London.
These two authors were obsessed with the concept of fate, and their novels
reflect their fascination. They were deeply aware that both wilderness and the
sea dramatize and magnify mankind’s fear, frailty, and sense of existential insignificance.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">London was born out of
wedlock, Melville with a pedigree. Both men’s mothers had been raised in wealth,
only to marry into hard times, and would ultimately rely on their sons for
support. Both men were drawn to the sea at an early age, and both signed aboard
vessels as deck hands or common sailors. As one character in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><strong>Portals</strong></i> points out, the sea makes us
radically aware of our profound insignificance as individuals, even as it
amplifies the mystery of the vast knowledge we store beneath consciousness.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Both of the authors were
self-educated, voracious readers who wrote to earn a living, each thinking they
were capable of greater work than the public demanded, especially Melville. He
lived to write, while London wrote to live. Each of them earned money by
lecturing. London was a skilled self-promoter; Melville was not.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">At the same time, both
men were moody and prone to depression, frequent disillusionment, and cynicism.
Both had detractors who declared they were insane. Still, both were capable of
writing the kind of prose that penetrates the public psyche in ways that stir
an emotional response as not much else has before or since.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">London and Melville had a
way of exaggerating every aspect of our lives to compensate for the important
little things that so often go unnoticed. They were also very much aware of how
often we are influenced and motivated by our shadowy and immensely mysterious
unconscious. Both men were involved in butchery: Melville with whales, London
with seals. Both witnessed human brutality at its worst.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">These men produced work
with deep allegoric implications beyond their own understanding of the
connections they were making. Both created magnificent, original,
larger-than-life authoritarian sea captains, Melville’s Ahab and London’s Wolf
Larson, who afford us a vision of all that is right and wrong with humankind.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Melville captured the
human predicament and the psychosomatic essence of the American experience in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><strong>Moby-Dick</strong></i>, making all of us passengers
on a metaphoric ship named <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><strong>Pequod</strong></i>. Although
it was written in 1851, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><strong>Moby-Dick</strong></i> has
been described by author Nathaniel Philbrick as a book written for the future
because it contains “the genetic code of America.” He characterizes the novel
as “America’s Bible,” declaring that every time we encounter a new crisis in
this country, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><strong>Moby-Dick</strong></i> is relevant.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Jack London read the
works of Herman Melville, and his stories transport Melville’s epic primordial struggle
with the unconsciousness symbolism of the sea to the wilderness of the far
north, where the brutality of the natural world takes center stage: the weak perish
and the strong survive.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Politically, Melville was
a capitalist who clung to the economic security of civil service employment.
London was a socialist who despised human inequality and railed against
arbitrary authority until the end of his life. It should be pointed out,
however, that he held racist views common to his time and place. And although he
was a socialist, he lived like an extravagant capitalist.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Melville died in
obscurity at 72, having struggled financially most of his life. His recognition
as a novelist smoldered in fits and starts, but his work didn’t really take off
until after his death. London died famous at age 40, having achieved almost
instant rags-to-riches wealth and celebrity. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">As fate would have it, I
once heard Alaska Congressman Don Young say that it was Jack London who brought
him to Alaska, echoing my own reasons for choosing the forty-ninth state as my
home. So, when I heard him being interviewed on a local radio show, I took the opportunity
to phone in. I asked Congressman Young if, as a conservative Republican, he
found it ironic that he was in Alaska because of a socialist. Thinking I had
him in a bind, I wondered how he would talk his way out of it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Not missing a beat, Young
said, “Jack London? My father knew Jack London.” I was the one who was
speechless.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">London’s work confirms John
Muir’s observation that “The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest
wilderness.” Indeed, London claimed that he found his perspective for becoming
a successful writer in the wilderness of the Klondike. In the same way, I’ve
observed that ideas and the Alaska Highway go hand-in-hand. The awe-inspiring
scenery, the isolation, and the absence of available radio signals invite deep
contemplation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The sweeping and at times
overwhelming scenic grandeur puts our human frailties and our brief existence
into a stark light. The natural beauty of the landscape is so formidable as to
give an appearance of permanence in contrast to our fleetingly short lives, and
feelings of insignificance often follow. It’s an existential dilemma that begs
perspective.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><strong>Portals
in a Northern Sky</strong> </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">is set<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
</i>in 2021. The sequel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><strong>A Mile North of
Good and Evil</strong>,</i> takes place in 2028, seven years into widespread use of the Portals
technology. In this story, the Alaska Highway serves as the hunting ground for
a serial killer whose behavior represents the personification of evil. The
malevolence of his crimes gives rise to penetrating questions about whether his
nature qualifies as an inevitable part of the natural world. In a concurrent
storyline, an impending doomsday scenario offers a group of individuals, as
well as every reader, a unique perspective on morality and mortality.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">This second book took me
twelve years to complete, which means the two works together were on my mind
for a full twenty years. During that time, the only things I can relate to that
haven’t changed dramatically are the Alaska Highway and the beauty of Alaska.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">In September 2015, I made
the drive again, all the way from Dallas. Except for the highway having been
paved, the trip was much like my first one more than forty years earlier. Services
and facilities are still few and far between, giving the pervasive sense that
one is detached from civilization. The wilderness remains a clear summons for
philosophical reflection.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">In both of my novels,
most of the action takes place in interior Alaska near Mount Denali, a landmark
symbol worthy of its own genre of philosophic contemplation. Seeming to
represent permanence, or even eternity, the<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">
</b>majestic mountain elicits thoughts about mortality, morality, and fate,
eternal questions at the heart of the human condition. Considering these ideas
with Alaska wilderness as the backdrop offers a perspective with philosophical echoes
that can last a lifetime.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Drive to Alaska, visit
Mount Denali, and you will see what I mean. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><strong>My Books and Essays on Amazon</strong></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<br /> <span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times","serif"; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><strong>http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes</strong></span></a></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
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<a href="http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx</span></span></b></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
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Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-57182208684307717192015-10-10T08:33:00.002-07:002015-10-10T08:33:53.728-07:00The Tax of Social Media
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">© Charles D. Hayes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The pace of change has
always delineated differences among generations. As often as not, each
generation longs for something they grew up without. For this reason, in my
view, the not too distant future promises a rediscovery of the rewards of
solitude as something that will suddenly seem astoundingly meaningful because
it affords so much time for thought.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>With
thought comes perspective, and with that comes wisdom worth passing on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Most of us know people
whose interest in life seems to grow richer and stronger with age, coming ever
closer to achieving a level of awareness that we commonly think of as wisdom.
We also know people whose lives seem to shrink with time, gradually becoming
less and less of who and what they once were. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Life stage researcher
Erik Erickson characterized the years north of middle age as a tipping point,
with one direction moving toward perspective and the other toward despair. Twenty-first
century technology is ratcheting up the process for many people, pushing us
further and faster in whichever direction we are leaning. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">My observations suggest
that openness to new experience is a key characteristic for those who strive
for perspective as they grow older. Watching friends and family members
withdraw into a shell of growing angst and despair is one of life’s great
disappointments. When this is someone’s chosen path, efforts to get the person
to change course are rarely successful. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">We know the effects of
change in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were astonishing. Generations who
grew up traveling by horse and buggy died witnessing rocket ships and
satellites in space. Now, in this century, we are experiencing even faster change
with communication technologies effectively having nullified geographic
distances, resulting in a retribalized world based more on ideology and political
class than ethnicity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The solitude of daily
life experienced by earlier generations has been replaced by unrelenting communication
and media distractions. Thoughtful correspondence is increasingly overwritten
by tweets. Time spent looking at snippets of text on small screens is
overtaking time spent reading serious books. In-depth reading is giving way to Cliff
Notes and one-page summaries. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Nevertheless, if we don’t
keep current with technology, the world seems to pass us by. We have less and
less in common with younger generations. Our music, tastes in fashion, and preferences
in entertainment are deemed obsolete and out of touch, and as aging friends and
family pass away, we become ever more isolated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Each of us can probably relate
to having family members who never signed on with computers. Now they are likely
alienated from social media. I’ve used computers since they came on the market,
but only just recently did I change from using a flip phone to a smartphone. For
a short time, it was a traumatic experience as I felt a complete loss of
control over my ability to use a telephone. (I’m over it now.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">We can easily lose sight
of the fact that Marshall McLuhan was right when he said, “The medium is the
message.” In other words, our tools shape our behavior. Facebook, for example,
has created an environment where we are subtly and not so subtly encouraged to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">like</i> things. The downside is that doing
so makes us much more aware of what we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dislike,</i>
so much so that Facebook is adding a Dislike feature. This existential experience
tends to motivate people to seek out echo chambers where political viewpoints
narrow and contempt escalates and smolders. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Needless to say, for a
species as tribalistic as we human beings are, manipulative media is something
to be constantly aware of, simply to keep ourselves from being unduly
influenced. Social philosopher Eric Hoffer was correct in declaring that hatred
is one of our greatest unifying forces. And thus, the strength of
communications technology is also its weakness: it brings people together while
it alienates and ostracizes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">others</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Some people take pride in
not watching or even owning a television, not having a cellphone, or not using
computers. On the other hand, some people express pride in not reading books.
But purposeful isolation and alienation of any kind shortchanges perspective. Without
common frames of reference, relating to others becomes more difficult.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Now that I’m accustomed
to my new phone, I view it as something short of magic. It’s the equivalent of
having a personal assistant 24/7. Social media and smartphone apps for seniors
are tremendous aids for keeping in touch with family and assisting with medical
issues. Even so, today’s political environment suggests the world needs much
less chit-chat and much more thoughtfulness and deep reading.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Ralph Waldo Emerson put
our current dilemma in perspective more than a century ago, pointing out that
“every advantage has its tax.” So, if you are feeling alienated by your lack of
technical savvy, Emerson is still good company. His work is all about gaining
and maintaining perspective. Read his essay “Compensation,” and you will be
rewarded with a riveting example of thoughtfulness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">In Emerson’s time,
solitude was a big part of life. If you read the letters and prose of ordinary
citizens during that period and compare them with today’s social media, you may
perceive that we need to rethink and relearn the importance of solitude. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The tax for using the
media available to us is paid in lost opportunity for thoughtful reflection.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>Wisdom these days will likely be found
by discerning and maintaining the right balance between technological wizardry
and enough silent contemplation to keep from being manipulated politically and to
maintain a level of perspective that makes life worth living.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><strong>My Books and Essays on Amazon</strong></span></span></div>
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<br /> <span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times","serif"; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><strong>http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes</strong></span></a></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<a href="http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx</span></span></b></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></div>
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
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Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-7174557301592648582015-09-11T08:05:00.000-07:002015-09-11T08:05:33.482-07:00Education for Civilization’s Sake <div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">© Charles D. Hayes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">“Education is a defense
against culture,” said educator and critic Neil Postman. An education that
doesn’t result in a lifelong desire for knowledge is an education that didn’t
take. If one’s efforts cease, the battle is lost to those who use political
anxiety to manipulate vulnerable people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Consider John, the
accountant, police officer, engineer, attorney, welder, electrician, or any other
occupation that requires learning, skill, and talent. He sailed through school
with ease, taking the hard subjects and shunning electives as a waste of time.
At work, he stands out; most everything he does is judged to be quality work.
John’s political views are fairly black and white. His worldview is heavily
influenced by his occupation and the geographic region where he lives. He has
little patience with people who do not seem to be doing what is expected of
them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">As he ages, John is
increasingly more comfortable in his work and less in his element at home. His
wife has her own career, and over time their interests grow apart, leaving them
fewer and fewer things to talk about. After a hard day’s work, John loses himself
in televised sports and watches just enough biased political reporting to have
developed a slow-burning level of contempt for all the people he believes are
ruining the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Simply put, John is more
of a human doing than a human being. All of his life, he has been told <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how</i> to do things, mostly without asking <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">why</i>. He is like a satellite put into
orbit and set to spinning with such velocity that he can’t stop or spin in a
way that goes counter to his cultural indoctrination. Does this sound like anyone
you know, male or female?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Most of us grow up
constructing a worldview so heavily influenced by our geography and our social
affiliation that we believe our personal outlook constitutes straight-up reality.
Some of us are virtual prisoners of an internalized regional ideology, which
means broadly that we’re certain who the out groups are—namely, the people we
imagine are keeping us from living better lives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The target may be immigrants,
welfare recipients, or the ethnic outgroup of the moment. The list is long, and
the irony is that many citizens allow those in power to rig the system to their
own advantage, often through the process of vicarious identification. They delude
themselves into believing that they have more in common with the very rich than
with those who are struggling to survive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For decades I have been arguing that what citizens
need in today’s politically partisan and fast-changing world is an existential
education. By this I mean a deep level of knowledge that’s based on immersion in
the humanities and behavioral sciences. Such an education enables a person to fully
appreciate the range of differences within our species and to recognize that, as
mortal beings, we are subconsciously aware and upset that we are going to die.
It teaches us to deal with these harsh aspects of the human condition without the
need to find scapegoats to distract us from this mostly unconscious but smoldering
anxiety.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">In other words, an
existential education enables a person to create one’s own meaning in life with
some genuine independence from the conformist demands of one’s culture. It also
fosters sufficient reasoning ability to dissipate the inevitable angst that
comes with being mortal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">A fundamental goal of an
existential education is the ability to burst rigid conformist worldview bubbles
and to prevent new ones from forming. The idea is to increase one’s capacity to
discern a more objective sense of reality, while remaining fully cognizant that
we are locked in an inescapable mode of subjectivity, the only solution being
nonexistence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">An existential education
should enable a person to deconstruct the collective lies and cultural myths we
grow up accepting as absolute truth and to see through the pretense of
manipulative advertising and political ploys designed to have us act against
our own interests. It teaches us to always be alert to the reality that, more
often than not, things are not as they appear and to be autonomously impervious
to the perception that human beings have value only in economic terms. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Curiosity lies at the heart
of a successful existential education by cultivating a continuous thirst for knowledge
and for a better appreciation of our subjective existence. Understanding that
we will never nail reality to the wall, we know that if we quit trying, our
perspective suffers and our anxiety festers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Without the benefit of an
existential education, we, like John, are apt to see the world exclusively in
terms of our respective means of earning a living, and our local economic
concerns will likely trump the interests of anyone we consider outsiders. If
lumber is the primary industry, then those whose income depends on it don’t
want to hear about the need to save trees. If it’s oil, they don’t want to hear
about global warming.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">If people are unfamiliar
with the divergent customs of others the world over, they are less likely to
empathize with those whose interests conflict with their own. They’ll be eager
to believe everything negative that they hear about those they consider to be
the opposition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">History makes it crystal
clear that studying the humanities won’t humanize those whose attitudes and
predispositions don’t allow it, but the inquiry most certainly helps those who
strive to be better human beings. I know this to be true, not from theory, but
from personal experience. Some people can alleviate existential angst through
religious faith, but for others, such conviction has the opposite effect and
leads to tribalism at its worst.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">One thing we know for
certain is that no ethnic group, no country, no nationality, no religious
affiliation has a lock on morality and virtue. Even so, most everyone assumes their
own culture is superior to all others.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Growing up with a narrow
worldview and without the ability to expand one’s understanding is to be a
prisoner of time and place. It sets one up to be easily manipulated by those
with a political agenda, as evidenced by the current state of politics in a
country where inequality is growing fast by lobbied design.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Clinging to a constricted
or parochial worldview is a recipe for engendering the kind of contempt that
offers relief only when it’s redirected as scorn toward others. Uncertainty fosters
bigotry among ignorant people. Through collective contempt, people let <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">their kind</i> off the hook from bearing any
accountability for their illiteracy. To place blame is to effortlessly escape
responsibility. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">When worldviews clash, an
existential education offers alternative points of view for reflection, comparisons,
other possibilities, and the knowledge that even cultures with very different
customs share fundamental values and have similar needs. A deep resource of
accumulated knowledge can diffuse pent-up anxiety by supplying something else to
consider besides the usual arbitrary accusations that come with our tribalistic
predispositions.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">In a nutshell, an
existential education can help human doings become better human beings. Our
penchant for tribalism appears to be innate, and existential contempt remains
the Achilles heel of our species. This needn’t be so if we seek the knowledge and
the will to dissipate our own cultural angst.</span><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><strong>My Books and Essays on Amazon</strong></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<br /> <span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times","serif"; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><strong>http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes</strong></span></a></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<a href="http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx</span></span></b></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></div>
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
</div>
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
</div>
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-12553691647686670422015-08-22T08:03:00.001-07:002015-08-22T08:03:47.113-07:00Depleted Soil Economics
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">©
Charles D. Hayes<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">A strong middle class is like
a vegetable garden, requiring a rich economic environment in the same manner
that a garden needs fertile soil. We do not say to seeds, “It’s all up to you. Don’t
worry about the PH factor or the nitrogen or the potassium in the soil. Just do
your thing, seeds.” But this is precisely the economic policy that many people advocate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Vegetable gardens require
constant care. If their soil is depleted, testing may be necessary to ensure
the right ratio of nutrients. An economy for human beings is infinitely more
complicated than a garden, but vital ingredients like education, living wages,
and hard and soft infrastructure, which are essential for growing and sustaining
a society, are often the first areas that trickle-down proponents suggest for
cost cutting. Rather than testing the soil, they accuse the seeds of lacking
the motivation to grow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Now let’s move metaphorically
from the garden into the garage where the car is parked. If the car battery is
dead, we don’t drain more voltage, we jump-start it with a powerful charge. If the
car idles briefly but runs out of gas, we have to get fuel from another vehicle
before we can drive. To do this, we prime a syphon hose with a rush of liquid
to get the fuel moving from one tank to the other. Merely getting rid of the
fumes does nothing to solve the underlying problem. Far too often in our
political disputes we lose sight of the fundamental purpose of our efforts to
thrive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">By all existential measures
of human decency, an economy is not more important than its reason for
existence. Its engines need adequate fuel, and our metaphorical garden has to
be sustainable. This means that its long-term viability is more important than
any single harvest or any individual or group.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Thus, the constant
political cry to elect business executives to run the country often misses the
point. The economy is far, far more important than business, although running
the government in a businesslike manner is desirable. To reify capitalism, as
if it is more essential than its reason for being or the people it is supposed
to serve, is a recipe for dysfunction at best and oppression at worst. Sadly,
this misguided ethos lies at the core of our inability to achieve political
equilibrium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The whole methodology of
reengineering, rightsizing, downsizing, and creating a workforce of temporary
employees was a legal strategy to avoid paying employee benefits. In our garden
analogy this might appear to be efficient, except the result over time has been
extreme soil depletion. Not enough of the profits excised at harvest are
getting back into the ground.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Our garden is not working
for all of us, and the abundance at harvest time is unjustly distributed. Political
power trumps the labor of those whose efforts made the bounty possible. Claims
that unskilled labor is not worthy of a living wage reflect the smoldering arrogance
and contempt of tribalism: Our garden, not theirs. We are deserving; they
aren’t. We have the power to legislate; they don’t.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The U.S. Tax Code is a
finely tuned political instrument shaped with unrelenting influence by moneyed
interests. Slowly but surely, over a period of decades, the tax burden has
shifted to those less able to pay. Fortunes are made via insider trading.
Supercomputers skim the cream off the stock market.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Financial institutions
bleed 401K retirement plans with nickel-and-dime fees that amount to huge sums
of money by the time the funds are actually used for retirement. The banking
industry applies new rules to customer accounts with whack-a-mole frequency by
dreaming up new service charges and hidden fees. Banks can legally charge
eighty dollars for a five-dollar overdraft.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Government subsidies for
big business increase every year. Big Pharma’s lobbying efforts have succeeded
in making it illegal in some cases for the government to negotiate drug prices.
Student loans are guaranteed profit centers that can’t be discharged through
bankruptcy, but corporations routinely use Chapter 11 as a trustworthy way of
shedding debt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The promise inherent in
the American spirit of self-reliance and faith in hard work obscures the
reality of a system meticulously rigged with carrot-and-stick hype in which the
waving of the stick hides the fact that the carrot is more apparent than real.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Consider the European
experiment with austerity or the state of Kansas, where the governor’s tax
cutting has nearly bankrupted the state. Nothing like the ideology of low, low
taxes and small, small government exists anywhere in the world with a sustained
middle class because it’s analogous to planting a garden in sand.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Our history offers an
indisputable record of how the financial sector has effectively severed the
reward connection between productivity and compensation for work performed. Our
technological future promises a steady increase in the numbers of white-collar
and professional jobs being replaced by software and robotics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Simply put, if an individual’s
duties can be reduced to an algorithm, they can be replaced with an app. Moreover,
there is nothing on the horizon, save the power of organized labor and an
informed and activist public, to keep the middle class from perpetual, if not exponential,
decline.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Following admirable
instincts emphasizing individual responsibility, lots of people believe in
trickle-down economics. They are not entirely wrong. Individual responsibility
is very important. But over-focusing on the virtue of individuals is inadequate
for our garden economy. Most of us have little difficulty in determining that
our own families are more important than the business of business, and yet
there are many who have great difficulty in applying the same standard to others.
This bias serves as a tool for political manipulation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The historical economic
record and current state of the economy are proof that trickle down leads to a
disproportionate rate of trickle up. In today’s world, small government is a
euphemism for big corporations with the power to do as they please.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The garden analogy for
our fiscal policy is a reminder of how our social and ecological interconnectedness
is critical for our long-term sustainability. Our growing rate of inequality
demonstrates that we need to plow deep and rethink our garden economy. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><strong>My Books and Essays on Amazon</strong></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times","serif"; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><strong>http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes</strong></span></a></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<a href="http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://tinyurl.com/qzym7nx</span></span></b></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; line-height: 107%;">My Other Blog</span></strong><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
</span><br />Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-46532711901423878272015-07-14T08:31:00.001-07:002015-07-14T08:31:47.322-07:00The Perils of Preferred Reality
<br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New";"><strong><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">© Charles D. Hayes</span></strong></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The universe is visibly menacing.
Our lives were made possible only because of freakish cosmic catastrophes. Our
lives are short and fraught with danger, which makes reality scary. This is why
we require a significant measure of illusion in order to cope with the ruthless
nature of existence.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">We seldom acknowledge that
escape is a crucial reason for culture, but it’s easy to demonstrate. Many
small children, for example, buffer reality by adopting security blankets
because life is frightening to them. In the same way, culture helps to shelter
us from the stark aspects of reality because we abhor chaos. Park this idea for
the moment.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Now try this: Find a
comfortable place to relax, and think about how, at this very moment, the earth
is spinning on its axis at the rate of 1,040 miles per hour, while
simultaneously speeding around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour. The sun is
traveling at 483,000 miles per hour around the galaxy, and the galaxy itself is
moving at 1.3 million miles per hour.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">So, if you drive two
miles to the grocery store, determining how far you have actually traveled in
the cosmos is complicated. When you consider the facts of our travels in space,
it’s not unusual to feel the need to grab hold of something. In addition, wondering
where all of this wayfaring is taking us could drive you insane, if figuring it
out were to become too important to your sense of curiosity. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">We are blazing through the
heavens at warp speed, going nowhere fast, in a universe demonstrably hostile
to life, favoring chaos and chance over order. The membrane of observable
conditions for organic life in the cosmos is paper thin and rarer than a precious
jewel. Our lives represent flickering sparks in eternal darkness, and yet, so
much of the precious time we are alive, our cultures are at war over arbitrary folk
narratives that are, as often as not, patently absurd.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Now let’s un-park the
notion of culture as a shelter from reality. In 1974, cultural anthropologist Ernest
Becker published <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Denial of Death,</i>
for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. Multiple readings of his book offer a never-ending
supply of insights into how our lives are profoundly affected by the fact that
we are mortal.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Becker observed that
embedded beneath our consciousness is a smoldering neurosis, a deep-seated fear
of death, and that much of our conscious and unconscious lives are spent in
avoidance of, or in reaction to, this condition. Such behavior suggests that unfiltered
reality is a burden too harsh to bear without meaningful diversion. We drive
ourselves intentionally blind, Becker said, “With social games, psychological
tricks and personal preoccupations so far removed from reality that they are
forms of madness.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Further, we tranquilize
ourselves with trivia, become creative as a social license for an escape
through the formation of respectable obsessions, and search desperately for existential
preferences. This explains, in part, why the metaphorical cousins of death,
change, uncertainty, and otherness upset us so easily. Mortality, Becker
maintained, is humanity’s Achilles Heel because our uneasiness renders us tragically
susceptible to folly and manipulation.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Simply put, the human
condition is all about management of our mortality because chronic anxiety is
inevitable for creatures smart enough to know that death is a relentless
stalker, a situation that gets to the heart of the notion of authenticity. To
quote Becker, “It is fateful and ironic how the lie we need in order to live
dooms us to a life that is never really ours.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">This brings me to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Worm at the Core </i>by Sheldon Solomon,
Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski. These psychologists have continued Becker’s
work, having spent decades researching how our lives are influenced by our
mortality and how our not being aware of this reality causes anxiety.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Known as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">terror management theory</i>, their work shows
definitively how we depend on self-esteem, group identity, and the shelter of
consensus to keep thoughts of our inevitable impermanence at bay. It
illustrates how worldviews are fragile, psychosomatic constructions that render
us feeling unprotected simply by the very existence of opposing views.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Through membership, our
respective cultures offer us a pathway to symbolic immortality by nature of
their long-term existence. When our worldviews are threatened, we feel vulnerable,
and thus we come together as a self-protective force against existential
threats. We are emotionally rewarded by illusions of security, even when our
actions lead to conflict.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The authors of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Worm at the Core</i> write, “When
confronted with reminders of death, we react by criticizing and punishing those
who oppose or violate our beliefs, and praising and rewarding those who support
or uphold our beliefs.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The more you study terror
management theory, the more apparent it becomes just how seriously flawed our
species is when it comes to dealing with uncensored reality and otherness,
especially <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">otherness</i>. It’s almost as
if we have been neurologically wired to pay an awful emotional price for being intelligent,
for always being aware on some level that we are going to die.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">How unfortunate it is for
our species that hatred proves to be an acceptable distraction—a readily
available substitute for the kind of reality that genuine thoughtfulness could
provide. What else could we assume of a creature that derives comfort and
solace from a purposeful pursuit of ignorance, since the truth about vitally
important matters means much less than the emotional shelter of collective
illusion?</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">When people perceive that
their worldview represents truth incarnate, then evidence that they are wrong
about anything deemed important carries a mortal threat because it suggests
that they could be wrong about everything. What if their most cherished
political views or the fundamental claims of their religion are untrue? After
all, there are literally thousands of divergent belief systems. They can’t all
be true, and because they can’t, the emotional stakes among true believers are
apt to skyrocket during periods of rapid change, insecurity, and unrest.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">This is why social issues
like same-sex marriage are considered earthshaking events, and it’s why so many
people act as if the legalization of gay marriage is a metaphor for the end of
the world. Indeed, anything contrary to their deep sense of reality feels like a
mortal blow to their sense of existential security.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The right of same-sex
couples to marry is a human rights issue and a recognition that homosexuality
has always been a part of the human condition. In time, most people we will come
to realize that homophobia amounts to a moral outrage, that for centuries
millions of our fellow citizens have been forced to live in the shadows, afraid
to be who they are, unable to honestly express their feelings or make their
true affinities known.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">It’s time for our culture<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>to awaken from its<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>fear-based prejudice, which up to the present has denied that homosexuals
exist or, in some cases, have a right to exist. Belonging to a culture that
disapproves of human biology is like a people vowing to disbelieve the wind
because they don’t like the way it feels on their face. A preferred reality is
no longer an option. Same-sex attraction is not unique to our species. What’s
new is that the curtains on this human biological trait are finally thrown open
and continued bigotry and denial are not going to close them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">I’ve been studying the
psychology of mortality for decades, and I’m convinced that mankind will never
achieve adulthood until it is commonly understood how fragile our human psyche
is with regard to our mortality and how we are predisposed to act aggressively
toward <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">out-groups</i> when our beliefs
are challenged. The political implications for fully understanding this psychological
behavior is existentially explosive and could lead to incredible improvements
in human relations. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Ernest Becker nailed it
when he observed that leaving the knowledge of human behavior to experts leads
to “a general imbecility.” This doesn’t mean that we should ignore the science
of human behavior. It means that we need to study it as if the business of
being a human being matters to us as individuals as much as it does to
scientists.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
A preferred reality may
indeed offer us psychological shelter—and we might be wise to admit that we
require some buffering—but if we remain forever unaware of how our need for agreed-upon
illusions affects our relationships with others, we can never truly experience
freedom and we will never achieve what we like to think of as civilization. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: <em>A Mile North of Good and Evil</em></span></strong></div>
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<a href="http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><strong><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
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Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3263397606915581868.post-48098324724718627262015-06-20T08:20:00.000-07:002015-06-20T08:20:45.128-07:00American Self-Assertiveness vs. Submissiveness
<br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">© Charles D. Hayes</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">When flipping through the
cable TV channels, it’s not unusual to find a pride of African lions getting
ready to feast on Cape buffalo. Sometimes we’ll see several lions take down a
buffalo while the rest of the buffalo in the nearby herd appear to stand around
like idiots. At other times, a second buffalo will come to the rescue of the
downed and chewed up animal, followed by more and more members of the herd,
until finally the lions are sent running for their very lives. Watching this behavior,
we want to say, “What took you so long?” Let this scenario percolate.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Elsewhere on cable, the
History Channel features a fascinating account of Caligula, an emperor of ancient
Rome, who ruled for four years, committing some of the cruelest, deadliest, and
most humiliating acts against members of the Roman senate one can imagine. On
and on he goes, increasing the severity of each punishing deed, with contempt and
utter disdain for the very existence of members of the ruling class in name
only. Caligula put people to death arbitrarily and ravished the wives of senate
members in their presence, even at one point declaring himself a God and
demanding that he be worshiped.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">In similar circumstances,
murderous dictators like Hitler, Stalin, Muammar Gaddafi, Idi Amin, Pol Pot,
and Saddam Hussein, all stayed in power surrounded by people afraid to
challenge them, even when it was clear that it would doubtless cost some of them
their lives.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Throughout history we can
find horrid examples of groups of people being guarded by only a few individuals
with weapons as they approach a place where others ahead in the same group are
being executed in plain sight. Those remaining meekly allow themselves to be
killed without resisting or fighting back, even though, with their numbers, they
could easily overpower their guards. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Now, once you compare
these examples and think it through, what jumps out at you is the reality that,
compared to human beings, buffalo are more decisive and quick to act. There
were attempts on Hitler’s life, and Caligula was eventually assassinated, but
you have to wonder why, in the name of human courage and decency, it took so
long.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">I use these examples to examine
the way we Americans relate to power, resist oppression, and react to threats.
In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and
Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power</i>, Steve Fraser
shows how, over time, we slowly but surely have ceded our willingness to assert
ourselves and resist oppression.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The ethos of American
identity as being fiercely independent and self-reliant came into full bloom in
the nineteenth century with the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Herman Melville, and Henry David Thoreau. It was a time when the lifestyle
expectations of individuals were markedly different from those of today. A
person from that era would have difficulty communicating with someone now without
both being shocked by the divergence of their worldviews.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The psychological and
perceptual distance between then and now can best be understood through Abraham
Lincoln’s opinion that people destined to work for wages without being able to
extract themselves from such restricting circumstances would live in bondage—a
new form of bondage that was similar to slavery but not as severe. Lincoln
deemed labor a sacred virtue, and his idea of freedom included both the right to
strike and the hope that individuals working for wages would eventually be able
to free themselves from such subjugation.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Studying the troubled history
of labor puts today’s economy in a new light. In the mid-nineteenth century,
the vast majority of people lived and worked on farms and in small shops. Even
in the worst of economic times, they were still able to scratch out a living.
Only a very small percentage of the population worked in manufacturing.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Lincoln believed that it
is only through labor that we get most of what we really need and that the very
essence of freedom is derived from working for oneself. Leaving the farm and
working for wages was suspect, fraught with danger, and considered psychologically
traumatic. Lincoln thought labor should always trump capital in value, precisely
the reverse of present-day economics. Industrialization had a devastating
effect on the actual freedom of individuals.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Earning wages enabled
people to buy things in a way they never had before, but in recent times, as
thirty-year home mortgages and myriad credit options became a part of everyday
life, the loss of independence for individuals has become psychologically
threatening. These days, being indentured to debt is accepted as normal, but
with it comes a dramatic loss of independence. House payments and credit card
debt make it very difficult to defy one’s boss, and the deeper in debt one
goes, the more submissive one has to be. Goodbye herd, goodbye resistance, goodbye
unions.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">If working conditions are
dangerous and one is deeply in debt, it is increasingly likely that risks will simply
be accepted as part of the job. Drive by a subdivision of nice homes and
well-manicured yards, and it’s philosophically worth noting that the occupants of
these structures be disciplined but also obedient, often amounting to a blind deference
to authority. The most important lessons from history suggest that equitable
economics require constant negotiation, and if an imbalance of power moves too
far in any direction, freedom for some will be diminished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Today we witness a continuous
public outcry about government overregulation in the workplace, and indeed some
of the criticism is valid. But knowledge of the history of labor is critical
for perspective. In the ninetieth and early twentieth centuries, thousands of
workers died every year when industrialization began to overtake agriculture.
As Fraser points out, between 1890 and 1917, 158,000 railroad employees were
killed on the job. In one year, 20,000 were injured and 2,000 killed. In the
transition to industry, millions of children began working for wages, including
toddlers in some cases.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">In the nineteenth century,
convict labor for private profit was a growth enterprise. Working conditions
were in many cases comparable historically to a Soviet prison gulag. Unions
were created to give working people a voice. During the transition from an agrarian
lifestyle to industrialization, there were numerous public uprisings and
protests that turned violent. By comparison, these examples would make the recent
Occupy Wall Street movement look like a children’s birthday party.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Group solidarity today,
unfortunately, is fractured by diversity. The workforce is too distracted, too scattered,
and membership is splintered into so many small factions that a consensus to
mount an effective protest is often too hard to come by. Too many echo chambers
drown out cries for help.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">More importantly, today’s
workers are unaware of any other ways to live. Working for wages or starting
your own business and being indentured to debt is all they have ever known. The
nineteenth-century lifestyle of a very real sense of independence is long
forgotten.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">We don’t have to go out
on a limb to guess what Lincoln, Emerson, Thoreau, and Melville would have said
about America’s most successful companies legally paying wages so low that their
employees are eligible for food stamps. They would be appalled, just as we
should be. They would likely have deemed it a form of feudalistic slavery. Moreover,
they would have scoffed at the notion that this is an issue about market<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>freedom. It’s legally contrived exploitation
plain and simple.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Today’s labor concerns make
a mockery of Emerson’s notion of self-reliance. When minimum wage jobs are all
that’s available, and demand for goods and services are severely depressed,
self-reliance defaults to a matter of survival in circumstances that make the
notion of self-sufficiency subject to cynicism and sarcasm. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">During America’s labor uprisings,
the majority of citizens shared the same lifestyles, expectations, and
aspirations about work and leisure. Today, we have echelons of economic classes
with nothing, whatsoever, in common.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Making an effort to understand
history is a good way to put our collective behavior in the kind of context
that will garner more cooperation and make us more vigilant and assertive. It’s
time to come together and stand up to those whose economic advantage has been
legislated into existence as a privileged entitlement. It’s time for the herd
to come together and act decisively.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">New Fiction: </span></strong><em><b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; line-height: 107%;">The Call of Mortality</span></b></em><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Charles D. Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496818135931379312noreply@blogger.com2