Posted on by Fred

Imagine Enough:

A World Without Money

Coloring the Sea Around the Pribilof Islands by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC-BY 2.0

Imagine…  Imagine a world where Greed is pointless.  Everyone has all they need.  Why horde food when you already have all you can eat?  What’s the point of having more of anything than someone else when you already have all you need?  Imagine The Unimaginable.  Imagine a world without money.

I know.  The thought is staggering.  Interestingly, while there are 7.7 million other species on this planet, we’re the only ones who ever needed money.  Sharks don’t pay each other for food.  Lions don’t loan each other money at 7.9% interest to partake of this evening’s zebra.  An earthworm never paid for the privilege of slithering through the Earth.  We’re unique.

You can say that the only reason we work is to make money, and in the world in which you and I live, that’s probably true.  But we’ve been on the planet, in one form or another, for as long as 300,000 years, and we’ve used money for only the last 5,000 to 40,000 years, depending on whom you ask.  In any case we went more than a quarter million years without it.  True, we began to advance more quickly when money showed up on the stage, but I have confidence we could have found another way.  Even if that’s not true, it has certainly outlived its usefulness.  We have continued to evolve, and our social systems are lagging behind our technology.

We assume that it is natural — in fact, unavoidable — to be greedy.  We want more than we need today in case we start running low tomorrow.  I understand that.  I just ordered 9 36-packs of Diet Pepsi because Costco had a good deal, and I don’t want to run out… before my next paycheck. 

I wouldn’t do that, though, if I didn’t have to worry about when I would have money again.  Why take up all the space on my counter if I can get more whenever I want it?  I would have enough around for today, probably tomorrow, and, if I had plenty of room, maybe as far as next week, but only because I’m too lazy to push the buttons on my phone to order more every day.  Beyond that, there would be no point.  And I just used the evil word, didn’t I?  Lazy!!!

We’ve been taught to believe the Greatest Virtue is work.  Work earns us money.  Money buys us freedom and progress.  Laziness is a sin.  If everyone were freed from the chase for dollars, we would lie around all day and do nothing.

Except…

I don’t think we would.  “I don’t know about anyone but me,” as Jackson Browne so eloquently put it, but when I have enough, I become truly productive.  I spend my time writing.  I spend it enjoying other people’s Art.  There’s no crime in watching Netflix, or reading a book, or listening to music.  I stare sometimes at the paintings in my house and let them fill me with emotions I can’t quite name.  None of these activities is laziness.  They are all pieces that go into making my life meaningful.  They nourish my soul.

What would you do if all your time belonged to you?  I know several people who would create Arts and Crafts.  I know others who would smoke weed all day and think about someone they love.  The man who saved my life would probably be producing the greatest podcast in the world.  He’s younger and has more energy than I do, and he possesses technical skills that blow mine out of the water.  Sadly, for us, he has to spend most of his time chasing the money he requires to feed his family.  What he does is helpful, to be sure.  I would like that to be, however, something he chooses to do rather than something he is forced to do. 

I have a friend who makes money sitting around playing a video game, and I’m happy for him.  Video games aren’t my gig, but they are absolutely an Art form, and I’m impressed by the creative effort that goes into producing them.    Experiencing Art enhances one’s life.  It gives the artist a little touch of immortality.  Shakespeare is around more than 4 centuries after his death.  (I hope to make it for 4 weeks beyond my demise.)  The paintings on my wall, in their original forms, are more than a hundred years old, and Van Gogh is still with me.  Yes, mine are copies, and I have great respect and gratitude for the people and technology that created them.  Long after I’m gone, my original Agnew painting of Speedy Shine will be staring out at someone who needs a little love.  My uncle’s paintings will still bring a sense of wonder long after he’s gone.  The people who created Gary’s video games will be remembered centuries after anyone is playing their games anymore, if not by name, then by the fruits of their labors.  The person who created Pong opened the door for the most advanced video games you’ll ever play. 

I have no doubt that those artists made some money, but I don’t think that was their primary motivation.  If no one ever had to go to work again, what would we do?  I have no doubt someone would try to create a better video game, not for the money, but for the experience of playing something even cooler.  They do it now.  “Mods” are available for nearly any game, and few people make money creating them.    

We would free scientists of every sort to work on what interests them.  We’ll never know how many Einsteins or Hawkings we lost to Circle K and McDonald’s.  How many times has the next Marie Curie asked customers how they would like their steaks cooked?  And if we freed these folks to work on the questions that fascinate them, no one would need to do those jobs anymore.  We can automate nearly anything now, and we’re getting more efficient at it all the time.  When was the last time a cashier rang you up at Wal Mart?  Instead of hating automation, we should herald it as the first step into a world where money is irrelevant.  It allows humans to be free to turn our attention to our passions.   

“We don’t have the resources for everyone to have whatever they want!”

I’m sorry, but that’s simply not true.  You’ve heard me quote the statistics over and over on this show.  We do have enough food and shelter for everyone on Earth, and, if we made better use of our resources, we could preserve the planet a little longer.  That’s really the biggest problem we all share.  If we continue down this path, it won’t be long before we exhaust those resources.  We’ve done sufficient damage to the environment that within less than a decade we’ll be fighting wars over water.  Forget gold.  Water is the source of life.  We’re only a few years away from The Colorado River being unable to supply us with the water we need in Arizona.  What will we do then?

I’m not smart enough to solve this problem, but other people are.  I don’t want them to spend their lives asking if I would like fries with that.  I want them to figure it out.  So do you.  Whatever it is you love to do, you can’t do it without water. 

When the wars come, millions more will die.  Wars exist because they make money.  People are specially trained to kill so that people can make money.  Children are in cages so that people can make money.  Borders are guarded by people with guns so that people can make money.  Religions are founded and then crumble so that people can make money.  All of this because someone, somewhere, doesn’t have… Enough.

I’ve had Enough of war and destruction and bloodshed.  I’ve had Enough of racism and misogyny.  I’ve had Enough of hatred.  I hope you have, too. 

I have Enough food to eat today.  I have Enough Diet Pepsi.  I have Enough weed.  I have Enough insulin.  I have Enough.  I have no desire for more.  I would certainly take it if someone offered it to me, but I don’t need more.   Not tonight.  I hope you have all you need, too.

People aren’t naturally greedy.  I made my first spareribs in a crock pot tonight because another writer I barely know likes my work, and she gave me both the meat and the appliance.  This is who people are when we give them Enough.

I will need more when what I have runs out.  If I’ve done everything correctly, that won’t be until my next money arrives so I can get more.  It’s not that the planet can’t provide me with Enough… right now.  It’s that we’ve decided I’m not allowed to have it until I have more money.  I suspect you’re in a similar situation.  Millions in my country, and billions on my planet, don’t have Enough to eat tonight.  We have the resources, but they don’t have the money. 

When everyone has Enough, there’s no more reason to fight wars.  There’s no more reason to steal when you already have Enough.  Why would you need to kill? 

Enough allows us to learn, explore, and thrive.  We can pursue our passions.  We can learn to love more completely.  And isn’t everything, finally, about Love?  Whether it’s the love of Art, or the love of romantic partners, or the love I share with Speedy Shine, it’s all still about Love.  Love is what brought most, but not all, of us into existence.  It has nurtured most, but not all, of us.  It needs to be there for everyone.  I promise love is not a finite resource.  It’s love that brings me to my keyboard, thence to my mic, and thence to your eyes and ears.  Love is what brings us together.  And Love doesn’t require money.

Sara Niemietz is telling me to Shine while I write.  And the recording to which I’m listening was made in February of 2020 just before the pandemic hit.  And she dedicated the song to me that night while I sat in the audience.  She is, at this very moment, bringing me back the feelings I had then.  I can see my former roommate sitting next to me catching the glow of me Shining in the light of Sara and Snuffy’s music.  “I’m not crying,” Sara says at the end of the song.  “My makeup’s just running.” Of course she wasn’t.  Of course I wasn’t.  Certainly my former roommate wasn’t.  And Valerie Bertinelli will be texting me to invite me to dinner tonight. 

Art has this power.  To deny the world of artists because they’re chasing rent and groceries is a crime against humanity.  We’re all fortunate that Sara makes enough money from her Art to sustain her.  How many Saras, though, will we never hear because they don’t have enough to do what Sara does?  Why should we lose them when we really do have… Enough? How do we get there?

We begin by recognizing that we are all travelers on this rock tumbling through space.  We’re not Americans and Russians and Mexicans and Jews and Christians and Muslims and White and Black and Brown.  We’re not male or female or something in between.  We’re humans.  Full stop.  Anything else is arbitrary and meaningless.  Start with that idea as deeply rooted in your consciousness as The Puritan Work Ethic is now.  Challenge yourself to imagine something different.  Imagine… Enough.

I’m one.  You make two.  Now we need to get one country to decide that borders are a waste of time and resources.  And then another needs to join that country.  And another and another until the world has become One. 

Then we use our resources to provide everyone with Enough.  We put our best minds to work on the problem of freeing us from the work no one wants to do anymore.  They’re done designing weapons of mass destruction and algorithms that will allow them to corner some market or make money for some hedge fund.  These extraordinary thinkers get to work out how to repair the damage we’ve done to our environment.  They can figure out how we’re going to break the speed of light so we can go explore strange new worlds.  Perhaps some of us could visit the places The James Webb Telescope has recently revealed to us.  We might learn to manipulate Time.  Whom could we meet in Space? 

Humans will learn to cure diabetes, so I won’t have to go to the hospital anymore.  They’ll cure cancer.  They’ll help us to live for centuries… and longer.  They can devote their minds to figuring out how we can get along with others instead of how to kill them.  Competition is left to games we play for entertainment.  Cooperation becomes common.  There are no more patents or copyrights because no one needs them.  We all have Enough. 

Is this world possible?  Of course it is.  We just need a little imagination. It was John Lennon, in music, one of the most powerful and universal forms of Art, who asked us to Imagine:

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Livin’ life in peace
You

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

— John Lennon, Imagine, 1971

John Lennon did his part.  I’ve done my part.  Now you do yours.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2XAIFEg5F3er12rwPrhF5X?si=f4fb72c6cb154857

Posted on by Fred · 1 Comment

Disability Is Not a Definition

I’m Disabled.  How disabled I am is open for debate.  There are those who claim my disabilities are insignificant.  There are those who think I am nothing but my disabilities.  This is probably the case for every disabled person.  People want us to fit into their neat little boxes.  Unfortunately, we can’t do that for you.  If disabled persons have nothing else in common, one thing we all share is that we are more than our diagnoses. 

There can be no doubt that I have physical disabilities.  I need both hands to stand up.  I become more worried about being able to do that every week or so.  My diabetes has all but destroyed my body.  I have to nap, ideally, every six hours.  When I get lost in my writing or my recording for the podcast, I might go as long as 9 hours.  After that, there’s more than a good chance I’m going to pass out at the computer.  If I don’t watch my blood sugar carefully, any day can be my last. 

I’m emotionally disabled.  I have a diagnosis of depression.  I fight it in all the ways I can.  Perhaps, however, I need to learn to accept it, as a friend of mine on Facebook suggested.  This is our conversation on that topic.

As you know Fred, all things come and go.  Including your depression.  Depression often includes certain thoughts that can be very compelling.  These thoughts, however compelling, are even more transient than the feelings of depression.  We are drawn further and further into the vortex the harder we struggle with these feeling and thoughts.  Stopping the struggle, ceasing doing battle with the demons of depression seems like the exact wrong thing to do, but it is also the best way of caring for yourself.  You may have to stop the struggle a thousand times, or ten thousand, but like anything the more you practice the more skilled you become.  This is the way I learned to dance with my depression.  If I feed it with my life energy by struggling with it, it gets stronger and stronger.  If I stop the war, it eventually burns itself out, just like any feeling or thought.

Take the best of care my friend.

Fred Eder

Name Deleted that’s the most difficult part of depression, I think.  I expect myself to be happy, and when I’m not I treat it as a problem to be solved instead of an experience that is a part of who I am.  I feel guilt about being unhappy.  I feel weak.  I feel cowardly.

I need, it seems, to accept it in the same way I accept diabetes or having blue eyes.  It simply exists.  There may be things to learn from the darkness if I would allow myself to live there without feeling the need to escape.

Name Deleted

Fred Eder It is absolutely normal to want to escape experience that is unpleasant – anything from a finger prick when you are testing your blood sugar to the deepest darkest abyss of depression – to push away that which is unpleasant and grasp at and pull in what is pleasant. We begin to learn this probably even before we leave the womb.  It is the hook that leads us to a lifetime of struggle trying to have more and more pleasant experiences.  Each experience ends to be replaced by new experience in the ceaseless flow of experience that is life.  Whether grasping onto pleasant experiences to extend the feelings of pleasure, or struggling, fighting, battling to push away pain (physical or emotional), the effects are the same.  It is an unending struggle to obtain something that is, by the very nature of existence itself, not possible.  All experience is transient – radically transient.  We have no control over any of it.  Influence – yes.  Control, never.  Your expectations (learned thoughts and ideas) for “happiness”, “guilt”, “feelings of weakness and cowardliness” keep you tied to the very thing you want to kill.  Like Ahab bound to the gigantic object of his hatred that is dragging him down into the abyss – Melville’s metaphor is perfect.  If we are trying to get rid of something unpleasant, we have to grapple with it, fight with it. The question is, can we simply relax the fierce desperate grasp we have on the object of our desire (yes, getting rid of the pain of depression is THE desire), and LET GO of it – NOT get rid of it.  Can we stop hating it?  Stop wanting it to go away?  Can we, just as you say, accept it as it is and not trying to make it go away?  And in your case, not punish yourself for having the experience?  Can you accept that depression IS a part of what you are?  Something that comes and goes like the other vast expanse of moments that make up your life.  What if Ahab was able to release his hatred of the white whale?  How would his life and the lives of so many others (including the whale) have been different?  Maybe the white whale would have continued to come into his life at times, but without his hatred, it would have likely journeyed on.

Perhaps some of the things you might learn from the darkness is self-acceptance – how to live there without feeling the need to escape.  These are HUGE lessons in and of themselves.  The kind that liberate us.

I suspect that I am somewhere on the Autism Spectrum, but no doctor has ever confirmed this.  I have many, but not all, of the symptoms.  I undoubtedly think differently than most people do.  I almost certainly don’t process emotions the way you do.  Something will bother me, and I will say nothing about it because I don’t want to burden anyone else.  It will just sit inside me, getting worse and worse, until finally I am forced to confront the feeling in some way.  There is debate over whether Autism is even a disability.  Google tells me it is considered a disability from both a medical and legal standpoint, if you have a doctor’s diagnosis.  One of our producers, Scott Knight, said this on my Facebook page.

Autism in the past was less of a disability and more of a weird neighbor who did strange things and didn’t talk much, but what they did do they did perfectly.  Autism with several comorbidities can be disabling no matter what the structure of society is.  Disability is a condition that leaves you physically, intellectually, emotionally, or in any other way disadvantaged to the point where it makes it difficult to impossible to function within the parameters society expects from you.  Some accommodations allow disabled people to still participate in society, but they rarely create the same ease of access that non-disabled people experience.  Some disabled people cannot participate in society no matter how many accommodations are made.

Accommodations for autistic people rarely help me with any of the things I struggle with.  I am disabled by society because I am autistic.

I believe I may also have Rejection Sensitivity Disorder.  I learned about this only in the last few months, but I exhibit all the symptoms I’ve been able to find associated with this condition on Google.  These are the symptoms I have found most frequently.

  • low self-esteem
  • avoidance of social settings
  • fear of failure
  • high expectations for self
  • frequent emotional outbursts after being hurt or rejected
  • feelings of hopelessness
  • approval-seeking behavior
  • anger and aggression in uncomfortable situations
  • anxiety

https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/rejection-sensitive-dysphoria#symptoms:~:text=conditions%20which%20include%3A-,depression,anxiety,-Although%20symptoms%20of

I do my best to control the most negative aspects of this by avoiding any situation in which I may come in contact with another person who may feel hurt by my behavior.  I rarely, if ever, leave the home in which I live.  I get nervous when I take the trash out across the parking lot.  I went out to lunch with my best friend last month, and I needed several hours to recover from the fear I spent the whole-time masking.  I love her, and I almost never see her, so I was willing to pay this price.  I probably won’t do it again for quite some time. 

Here’s the thing about being disabled.  Many people believe it’s our own fault.  Part of this has to do with what is called “Just World Phenomenon.” 

In psychology, the just-world phenomenon is the tendency to believe that the world is just and that people get what they deserve. Because people want to believe that the world is fair, they will look for ways to explain or rationalize away injustice, often blaming the person in a situation who is actually the victim.

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-just-world-phenomenon-2795304

Instead of recognizing that poverty isn’t a lack of character, or that failure to comply with a police officer shouldn’t be a death sentence, or that disabled people somehow deserve what has happened to us, many people will convince themselves they are immune to oppression, persecution, or any debilitating condition simply because they do all the right things.  Bad things happen only because someone did something wrong. 

The total tonnage of advice I have received about how to “cure” my depression and my diabetes would be enough to stun a team of oxen in their tracks.  If I would only do what they tell me, my problems would be gone.  They want to make me all better so they don’t have to deal with the fact that it could happen to them, too. 

I would have no objection if someone cured Diabetes tomorrow afternoon, but I’m not sure I want to change the rest of who I am.  I don’t really want to be someone else.  I’m sorry if someone is uncomfortable with who I am.

I will be the first to admit to a list of flaws that go on nearly endlessly.  I just named a few of them.  I’m different from you.  I don’t, however, think that makes me worse than you.  I don’t know that I need to be cured of my Autism, and the efforts made to cure me of my depression have been ineffective.  Prozac has the effect of numbing all my emotions.  I fear becoming sufficiently depressed that I finally end my life, but I’m not afraid of being dead.  I’m afraid of hurting others who, for reasons passing understanding, love me.  They’ve done nothing to deserve the pain that my demise will bring.  The price of love is always pain.  I just don’t want to charge you any earlier than necessary.    

Seth MacFarlane, in The Orville makes this point: “People who try to take their own lives are unable to distinguish the future from the present.  There is no problem so immense that it can’t be solved in time.”  The Orville is obviously an offshoot of Star Trek.  I don’t think anyone makes any effort to hide that fact. 

Although one of my friends said, rather smugly, that she doesn’t worship at the Altar of Roddenberry, I have no trouble saying that I do.  Star Trek is an effort to show us that the kind of world of which I dream could be a reality.  And Star Trek does its best to address disabilities intelligently.  Sometimes it does it very well.  Occasionally it misses. 

In the episode, “Loud As a Whisper,” a person who is deaf and mute is brought to The Enterprise to negotiate a peace treaty between two warring factions.  The legendary diplomat, Riva, uses a chorus of psychics who can hear his thoughts to express himself.  When the members of his chorus are killed, it appears all is lost.  As a deaf mute, he has no means of communicating with the aliens.  It is only when he decides to teach both sides sign language that the peace can be made.   His “disability” allows him to solve the problem. 

In the same episode, Riva asks Geordi LaForge if he resents being blind.  Geordi, of course, was born blind, and he uses a piece of technology called a VISOR that allows him to see, albeit in a different way than most people.  Geordi tells Riva he doesn’t resent it at all.  It’s part of who he is, and he likes himself.  There’s nothing to resent. 

In the episode, “The Masterpiece Society,” it’s Geordi’s blindness that allows him to save a planet that is going to be destroyed by a fragment from a disintegrated neutron star that is going to move too close to their planet.  Captain Picard wants to evacuate the human colony there.  The society, however, has been genetically engineered and selectively bred to ensure optimum efficiency and happiness for everyone.  There are no disabilities on Moab IV.  If they leave their planet, their society will fall apart.  Geordi uses the same technology in his VISOR to devise a way to move the fragment and save the planet.  He finds it ironic that his disability allowed him to save a planet on which someone like him never could have been born in the first place. 

A disability doesn’t define who someone is.  It’s merely a part of us. 

We’ve all been brought up in a society that finds disability distasteful.  Sometimes we look at someone with pity when we see them in a wheelchair.  When we do, we are seeing only that one part of them.  We’re missing the rest.  Stephen Hawking did some remarkable things from a wheelchair using an adaptive device to allow him to communicate.  While I don’t envy him his disabilities, I absolutely admire his extraordinary contributions to the world.  The same can be said of Helen Keller.  

It’s easy to miss the fact that I’m disabled.  For a depressed, Autistic, diabetic who suffers from RSD, I seem exceptionally capable.  I write, record, score, and Horace a podcast every week.  I communicate with people on Facebook, and from time to time, on the phone.  I seem fine.  Thank you for that assessment.  I’m grateful that you can overlook my disabilities. 

I don’t believe they detract from what I do.  I believe they make it possible.  First, from a strictly financial point of view, there would be no way I could do this show if I had to work 40 or more hours a week just to pay rent.  My Disability check is tiny, and it keeps me from getting a job, assuming a job for which I could get paid even existed.  If I tried to work a 40-hour week at anything other than what I do, I would certainly be dead within a month.  You’d be surprised how few employers want a worker who needs to nap every six hours. 

They also make it possible from the Artistic point of view.  My depression is the author of “Horace’s Final Five.”  My experiences have made me into the man to whom you are currently listening.  My social disabilities have helped me to learn empathy.  I know what it’s like to be ridiculed for being different.  My insecurities help me to imagine how others may feel when they’re abused in some way for being different from the norm.  One of the reasons I argue so passionately and so frequently for the rights of marginalized groups is because I am a member of so many of them.  That sounds odd coming from a straight white male, but there is more to me, and to you, than conditions we never chose.

I’m also socially awkward, at the very best.  I’m a member of that group.  We’re easy targets, and we have to tolerate the laughter at our expense. 

I’m also a member of the group that can’t deal with rejection.  It’s easy to say we’re melodramatic, and for this reason we are not to be taken seriously.  But just as a lost Teddy Bear would mean almost nothing to most adults, to a 3-year-old it can be as devastating as the loss of a family pet.  The fact that other people don’t experience the world in the same way we do doesn’t mean their experiences are to be discarded.  The suffering is real.

I’m not, however, a member of the most notable marginalized groups.  I’m White.  That eliminates me from a vast number of marginalized groups.  I’m straight, and I have never felt the need to change my gender.  I’m also male.  My disabilities are nothing compared to those who are oppressed in groups of which I have never been a part.

That’s a fair point.  It’s also irrelevant.  It’s Whataboutism.  It implies that because other things are worse than my disabilities, mine don’t count.  I should stop complaining.  I’m actually not complaining about my life, though.  While there are many elements of it that suck, it’s mine to do with as I see fit in the time I have left to me.  Many people’s lives are better.  Many others are worse. 

I like to think I can feel empathy for those who are oppressed because, even though I’ve never experienced the specific abuses they must endure, I have an understanding of what it feels like to be mistreated for things that aren’t your fault.  I do what I can to stand up for them whenever possible.  I would like all people to live lives that are free from unwarranted judgments, and in which all their basic needs are met.  I would like mine to be the bottom of the scale instead of anyone being worse off than I am.   I work for that in all the ways I can. 

What would I like you to do?  I can’t speak for all disabled people.  My experience with disability is mine.  Other people’s experiences are different.  It seems to me, however, that the best thing we can do is to accept people as they are.  Try not to be repelled by variations.  Embrace them.  Celebrate them.  Recognize the richness of experience that comes from us all being so different from each other.  Don’t ridicule those who aren’t as attractive, or as intelligent, or as athletic, or as quick-witted, or who can’t walk, or see, or hear, or feel the same way you do.  Recognize our unique circumstances grant unique perspectives.  The more ways we see the world, the more paths open up for us to find meaning and Truth in the world. 

Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations will create a painting of the world that is more beautiful, more honest, and more complete than anything we can produce while seeing through our single lens.  Before you hate someone, ask yourself what it must be like to be them.  Try your best to feel for those you normally reject.  This is how we will create the world in which everyone is loved, respected, happy, and alive all at the same time.  Isn’t that what we all really want?

And yes, I still love you.

Posted on by Fred

Little Boxes

Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes all the same

There’s a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same­

–Malvina Reynolds

I believe I can express opinions about any subject I choose, regardless of how I was born.

No one is required to pay attention to them.  My opinions may be ill-considered or insufficiently informed.  They may simply be wrong.  I’m still, however, allowed to have them and express them in appropriate places.

I didn’t choose to be born straight, white, male, or with the genes that would lead me to diabetes.  I’m no better than anyone else because of how, when, or where I was born.  I’m also no worse than anyone else because of my birth.  I neither invented nor encouraged the privilege I have.  I neither invented nor encouraged the disadvantages I have.  They appeared long before I did.

I’m better or worse because of my behaviors, my choices, and the way I treat others.

No one is disqualified from having an opinion because of their birth.

I would oppose anyone being told they can’t express opinions, even opinions with which I disagree.  I may choose to ignore opinions that have no value to me.  I welcome everyone to ignore my opinions if they have no value to you.

But I won’t be told I’m not allowed an opinion because of things over which I had no control.

I hope you understand.

Fred’s Facebook Page, May 4, 2022, 7:22 PM

In general, I think of myself as a Liberal.  This surprises no one who has ever spent more than five minutes talking to me, reading my work, or scrolling through my Facebook page.  I’m in favor of workers’ rights, the idea that healthcare is a human right, that poverty is an unwarranted evil, and that people should be whomever they choose regardless of the feelings of the majority.  Those are liberal positions.  I prefer AOC to MTG.  Liberal.  I prefer workers to corporations.  Liberal.  I prefer helping people to forcing them to live lives of misery.  Liberal. 

“We all need some therapy, because someone came along and said ‘liberal’ means soft on crime, soft on drugs, soft on communism, soft on defense and we’re gonna tax you back to the Stone Age, because people shouldn’t have to go to work if they don’t want to.  And instead of saying, “Well, excuse me, you right-wing, reactionary, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-education, anti-choice, pro-gun, Leave It To Beaver trip back to the Fifties…!”, we cowered in the corner, and said, “Please. Don’t.  Hurt.  Me.” No more.  I really don’t care who’s right, who’s wrong.  We’re both right.  We’re both wrong.  Let’s have two parties, huh?  What do you say?”

— Bruno Gianelli, The West Wing, Season 3: Gone Quiet, written by Aaron Sorkin

Yeah.  That’s me.  I’m a liberal.  And I take the heat for that.  I’ve lost friends because of that.  And that’s okay.  That’s the price of having opinions.  You can’t change the world without pissing off somebody, somewhere, sometimes.  I don’t go out of my way to annoy people.  I try to be calmer and more thoughtful in the way I put things than Bruno does, but, in the final analysis, I’m a liberal. 

However…

Liberals are supposed to be about rights.  We’re all about ensuring the underrepresented among us have voices that are heard.  We’re about The Outliers on the Bell Curve.  We favor the rights of gay people to get married.  We favor the right for transgender people to join the military.  We favor the rights of women to choose abortions if that’s the right choice for them in their individual situations. 

But, here’s the thing.  I’m told now that I’m not allowed to have opinions about any of these things, or that if I have them, I should be quiet because as a straight white male it doesn’t apply to me.  It’s the Liberals who are telling me to shut up.  My white male privilege disqualifies me from speaking.  And that pisses me off.

That’s what I was saying in my quiet and polite way on my Facebook page. 

There’s an idea now that you’re a member of a team, whether you signed up or not.  The Liberals are required to believe A, B, C, and D.  If you believe only A, B, and C, you’re a traitor to the cause.  The same can be said of Conservatives.  And, to a great extent, those are the only two games in town.  There are subgroups, of course.  Smaller boxes inside of larger boxes into which you are required to fit.  But everyone must get into their box, and everyone must follow the rules of that box. 

https://freestyleacademy.rocks/artm.php?a=15166s&n=19

I object to that idea.  Remember I’m the guy who spouts, “There is no Them; we are all Us,” about 35 times a week.  But, I’m not female, so I’m not Us.  I’m not Black, or Gay, or Transgender, or Gender Fluid, or a Millennial, or an abused child, or a rape victim, or whatever else you’ve got, so I’m not Us.  I don’t fit into those little boxes, so I’m not allowed an opinion.  That is 47 different hues of horseshit.

I’m a human being.  Everyone else, in whatever categories they fit, in whatever boxes they occupy, is also a human being.  I share that with them.  Yes, they have different experiences than I have.  That’s true.  Some of them have had unimaginably horrible, evil, unthinkable experiences.  Many are oppressed.  I don’t deny that my life has been less horrible than many other lives.  It’s been more horrible than many other lives, too.  So what?  So I don’t get to comment on the human condition?  What crime did I commit that caused that right to be taken from me?

I’m about equal rights for Everyone because I believe I’m a part of Everyone, and Everyone is a part of me.  When you deny a person of their right to speak, you deny me mine.  When you deny a woman the right to bodily autonomy, you deny me mine.  When you deny an unborn child the right to live, you deny me mine.  Human rights that are reserved for a few are not human rights.  They’re privileges we’ve decided to grant to some and deny to others. 

Obviously, there are rights for which one must be qualified.  I have no right to drive a big rig down the highway.  I don’t know how to do it properly, and it’s more than a little likely someone will get hurt.  I have no right to perform an open-heart surgery because I’m not qualified.  Those rights, though, are based on my choices.  I didn’t choose to learn how to drive a truck or perform surgery.  If I had, those rights would be available to me.  But… the right to speak?  To write?  To express an opinion?  Nearly everyone is qualified for those things.  They are basic to being human.

I’m not Black, so I can’t have MLK as a hero?  I’m not Catholic, so I’m not allowed to admire JFK?  I’m not a woman, so I’m unqualified to love the messages of RBG or Maya Angelou?  That’s delusional.  I’m also not a Republican, so by this thinking Lincoln is off limits for me.  I am what all of these people are: Human.

Our Common Cause should be making humanity Free.  That’s the point of The American Experiment.  America, however, didn’t invent it.  We’ve been working on it since at least 507 B.C.E.

In the year 507 B.C., the Athenian leader Cleisthenes introduced a system of political reforms that he called demokratia, or “rule by the people” (from demos, “the people,” and kratos, or “power”).  It was the first known democracy in the world. 

https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-greece/ancient-greece-democracy

We can, we do, and we will continue to disagree about how to make everyone free, but let’s at least recognize that’s what we would all like to do in America.  We’re supposed to be “The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.”  I think most of the world wants Freedom, at the very least, for themselves.  I would like it for everyone because I’m a part of everyone and everyone is a part of me.

Some of that means allowing everyone to speak.  History shows us the good guys are never the ones that are silencing voices.  You can ignore them.  You can debate them.  You can find them stupid or ridiculous.  But you don’t get to silence them. 

A good idea for Liberals would be to recognize their friends and refrain from attacking them for having the audacity to state an opinion for which you’ve decided they’re not qualified.  I grant you that straight, white, male, Christian landowners have a history of oppressing everyone who wasn’t a part of that small group.  We have fought against that oppression, with at least some success, for centuries.   Now that we’ve won some power, we’re going to commit the same immoral acts against which we’ve been fighting for so long?  We’re going to oppress our oppressors?  Sorry, I won’t sign up for that.  We’re fighting for equality for all.  Let’s focus on that instead of becoming our own enemy.  Please never tell me again that I’m not allowed to speak.  Thanks very much. 

Posted on by Fred

American Concentration Camps

U.S. Border Patrol agents conduct intake of illegal border crossers at the Central Processing Center in McAllen, Texas, Sunday, June 17, 2018.

“The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are – they are concentration camps – and if that doesn’t bother you…”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Right off the top, people are disagreeing. Concentration camps are where the Jews were held by the Nazis during World War II. What we’re doing at the Southern Border doesn’t involve gas chambers pretending to be showers. We’re not murdering six million people. The language is inflammatory. It’s divisive. It’s offensive to Jewish people the world over.

Right… why, exactly, is that?

Frankly, I don’t care if you want to call them Concentration Camps, Detention Centers, Holding Facilities, or Holiday Fucking Inns. The fact is that they exist in The United States. Today. Right now. These aren’t the Japanese Internment Facilities of the past, before most of us were alive. These exist in America today. They are morally wrong.

“Well, you liberals want to blame Trump for everything. These were started under Obama, and where was your outrage then? You’re just a Trump Hater.”

Okay. Fair enough. We won’t blame President Trump. You may blame President Obama if you would like. You may blame Hillary Clinton. You may blame Nancy Pelosi. You may blame AOC, Santa Claus, The Tooth Fairy, or me personally. Whose fault it is doesn’t matter in the least. What matters is that it’s happening.

Let’s look at some facts. The following is from the Inspector General’s Report on one of the better facilities located in Newark, New Jersey. These are their recommendations from February, 2019.

Recommendation: We recommend ICE conduct an immediate, full review of the Essex County Correctional Facility and the Essex County Department of Corrections’ management of the facility to ensure compliance with ICE’s 2011 Performance-Based National Detention Standards. As part of this assessment, ICE must review and ensure compliance with those standards addressing: 1. Unreported security incidents; 2. Food safety; and 3. Facility conditions that include ceiling leaks, unsanitary shower stalls, bedding, and outdoor recreation areas.

Those are the conclusions of the Department of Homeland Security, not the conclusions of liberals, democrats, or socialists.

Facilities in Texas are worse. “Many of them are sleeping on concrete floors, including infants, toddlers, preschoolers. They are being given nothing but instant meals, Kool-Aid and cookies — many of them are sick. We are hearing that many of them are not sleeping. Almost all of them are incredibly sad and being traumatized. Many of them have not been given a shower for weeks. Many of them are not being allowed to brush their teeth except for maybe once every 10 days. They have no access to soap. It’s incredibly unsanitary conditions, and we’re very worried about the children’s health.” –

A law professor who recently visited the facility, Warren Binford of Willamette University

These are children. They are no different from your son or daughter, or your niece or nephew, or you and your siblings. They cannot possibly be guilty of any crime.

If their parents didn’t want them in this situation, they should have stayed in their own countries. It’s the parents’ fault, not ours!

Again, I couldn’t care less about whose fault it is. It does nothing to excuse the atrocities of the way we are treating human beings. We’re kidnapping children from their parents’ arms. They can’t be traced later, so reunification is exceptionally difficult. The children are housed in areas intended for adults, and the overcrowding is such that children are sleeping on top of one another on cold cement floors.

“Gialluca and a slew of other lawyers have been meeting with children and young mothers at facilities across the state this month as pro bono attorneys. At the McAllen center, Gialluca said, everyone she spoke with said they sought out Border Patrol agents after crossing the Rio Grande so they could request asylum.
Gialluca said the migrants, all from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, told her they aren’t receiving proper medical care and children don’t have enough clean clothes. Unable to clean themselves, young mothers reported wiping their children’s runny noses or vomit with their own clothing, Gialluca said. There aren’t sufficient cups or baby bottles, so many are reused or shared.”


https://www.texastribune.org/2019/06/23/immigrant-detention-center-mcalllen-overcrowded-filthy-conditions/

These are not conditions under which any human being ought to be living. We are experiencing this crisis in this country at this moment. It needs to end. It needs to end now.

Okay, Mr. Bleeding Heart Liberal, how would YOU end it? We have borders for a reason, or do you think we should throw open the door and let everyone in? Is that what you do at your house, or do you lock the door every night?

First, in my Ideal World, we would be done with Us and Them. We would recognize that every single one of us is a human being. We would recognize that all human beings should be allowed to live some form of decent life, and that one’s country of origin does nothing to tell me if one is a good person or a bad person. Neither does one’s race, gender, religion, appearance, economic security, or political ideas. To determine if one is a good person, I need to observe that person’s behavior.

Well, their behavior was to break the laws of the United States. That makes them criminals, and they deserve NOTHING from us!

I’m afraid adherence to laws does nothing to tell me about a person’s value. Harriet Tubman, for more than a decade, was breaking the law by guiding people along the Underground Railroad. She was breaking the law. She was also doing the right thing.

If an immigrant does something to hurt someone – if an immigrant assaults someone, kills or rapes someone, or steals from someone – that’s a reason to remove him or her. But stepping across a line does nothing to hurt me. It does nothing to hurt you, either.

The arguments against immigrants are generally an effort to dehumanize them. How could you do this to a child? Well… if they’re not really children… if they’re not my children… then it’s okay to treat them badly because they, you know, deserve it somehow.

But I think, deep down, we all know that’s not true. We have to find a way to make this normal so we don’t have to feel appalled. And when this becomes normal, Death Camps aren’t far behind. And, it won’t be just immigrants. They’re first, but others will join them in coming days.

We’ve been doing this for centuries. We did it with black people. They were obviously different. Their skin was a darker color. They were Them. Good people, white people, were Us. We have to subjugate those who are not Us.

We did it with women. We did it with those whose sexual orientations were different from the majority. We did it with those whose religious beliefs were different from the majority.

Why?

Who is better off for deciding that one group of people needs to be treated better or worse based on their membership in that group?

I’m a straight, white male. That makes me better than absolutely no one. Your membership in whatever groups have been assigned to you makes you no better than anyone else, either.

You’re better or worse than other people based upon your behaviors.

The behaviors of these immigrant children don’t earn them the hell we are giving them.

I’m not a politician. There are many very good reasons for that. I don’t have solutions to America’s problems. But I can certainly recognize a problem when it’s staring me in the face. We are moving down a road we should all be able to recognize by now. Let’s stop where we are and turn around and go back.

Can we afford to give these people the help they need? I submit, if we want to call ourselves human, we can’t afford not to.

In my Ideal World, there are no borders. No, we don’t let strangers in our houses, but my house is not the same as my country. My home contains my private property, and a stranger inside it may represent a danger to me.

The country, however, is made up of nothing but strangers and immigrants. I’m perfectly content for them to find the best life they can here. In my world, everyone has shelter, food, medicine, and sanitary conditions in which to live. We all have a fair chance to make our lives better. We’re all willing to give each other a helping hand. We all get a good education, and we find joy in our lives.

Why is that world impossible? Because you’ve been taught it is.

Let’s learn something new. Let’s learn Love for All Humans. Let’s learn what a friend taught me when I was 16 years old: “One planet, one people… please?”

Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

Hard Work

The life of man in this world is, for the most part, a life of work. Every man worth calling a man should be willing and able to work. How can one be idle when others are busy? How maintain social respect, honor and responsibility? Work is the best of all educators, for it forces men into contact with others, and with things as they really are. If we consult biography, it will be found that the worthiest men have been the most industrious in their callings. Labor is the price set upon everything valuable. Nothing can be accomplished without it.


Samuel Smiles, Life And Labor (1887)

“…and Brutus is an honorable man…” — Marc Antony

In The United States, in 2019, there is a prevalent attitude that everyone should be required to work. Simply enjoying life is inexcusable. The idea is that if I had to work hard to survive, everyone should have to. Laziness is also sinful. I know because in about 600 A.D. Pope Gregory the First said Sloth was in the Top 7 Deadly Sins.

Another argument in favor of Hard Work is that society will break down without people working. If everyone just sits around watching TV, or more likely, Netflix or something of that sort, how will we ever do anything? SOMEONE has to work.

Finally, I’m told no one owes anyone anything. There is a blank piece of paper shown on Facebook frequently that depicts what the person posting it evidently believes anyone owes you. It’s terribly clever, albeit not terribly persuasive.

I’m going to address each of these arguments, and then I’m going to recommend that we pay a Living Wage to anyone who works full time. You’re welcome to disagree with me, but at least read my arguments before you do.

Is Sloth a Sin?

There may have been good reason for Pope Gregory to suggest that Sloth is sinful, from his interpretation of the Scriptures, and certainly, in the culture in which he was living, it was essential that everyone work hard. One’s survival was often dependent on one’s ability to grow food and create the homes in which they lived. There was no time to dawdle. The Roman Empire had fallen, and Trade was all but destroyed because roads were no longer safe. Lying around reading or watching a sunset were recipes for disaster. Sloth was, from that point of view, sinful. In Poor Richard’s Almanck, Ben Franklin told us, “Sin is not hurtful because it is forbidden, but it is forbidden because it is hurtful.” Sloth was hurtful in 600 AD. It fit Franklin’s definition. Is that still true?

Most of us now have at least SOME leisure time. It’s why I can write this. It’s what enables you to read it. Is it sinful that we’re not “working” right now? I don’t have a field to cultivate. I can go to the grocery store to get my food. So can you. We don’t need to grow our own food to survive. That’s a significant advancement.

We produce more than enough food to feed the world now. That can be shown over and over in a brief Google Search. Here are facts gathered from my search. I picked worldhunger.org because they had plenty of data. You’re welcome to check yourself. The link is included below.

“The world produces enough food to feed everyone. For the world as a whole, per capita caloric availability and food diversity (the variety of food groups in a diet) have increased between the 1960s and 2011 (FAO, 2017). This growth in food availability, along with improved access to food, helped reduce the percentage of chronically undernourished people in lower-middle-income countries from about 30 percent in the 1990-92 to about 13 percent two decades later (FAO, 2017). A principal problem is that many people in the world still do not have sufficient income to purchase (or land to grow) enough food or access nutritious food.” https://www.worldhunger.org/world-hunger-and-poverty-facts-and-statistics/

2018 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics

It’s not that we don’t have the resources; it’s that people don’t have the money. And that’s because they don’t work hard enough, right? I think you already know that’s not true. If it were, the little girl pictured at the beginning of this essay would be among the wealthiest people on the planet.

We all know plenty of folks who work 40 or more hours per week, but still can’t feed themselves or their families. And we also know people who hardly work at all, but have obscene amounts of wealth. Congressmen and women, for example, who have great power over all of our lives, work 138 days a year. They have 227 days off every year. They make a low average of $175,000 a year. That’s well more than $1000 a day. I don’t know anyone who makes that kind of money. But, of course, it’s because the people I know didn’t work hard enough to better themselves. They should go get a degree so they can get better jobs. You know, they could be teachers or something.

I did that. I have many many friends who did that. None of us ever made $1000 a day. There were times my monthly pay was little more than that. Today, it rarely gets above that figure.

But, hang on… isn’t the argument that we need to be working harder? That doesn’t seem to follow, does it? Those who work less, make more, in many cases.

So, can we dispense with the argument, please, that failing to work hard enough means a person doesn’t deserve a decent living? If you really believed that, you would have to accept the conclusion that follows from it: A person working 40 hours a week deserves a decent living. It’s about hard work, right? So… they’re working hard. They should be able to afford the basics. If you don’t buy into that, it’s not because you believe in hard work, it’s because you believe in Capitalism. A person’s work is worth what the Market will bear. That’s a different argument.

Will Society really fail to function if no one ever works?

Yes, I suppose it would. We need someone to grow our food. We need someone to ship it to us. We need someone to sell it to us. This is true of all commodities. We need people to work. But we’ve already established we don’t need everyone to work themselves to death. We are now capable of doing what they call “working smarter, not harder.” Hard work guarantees nothing in a Capitalistic Society.

But, let’s remember the words of George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” He’s explaining why Bedford Falls needs a Savings and Loan. The evil Mr. Potter wants to get rid of his bank’s last competition, Bailey’s Father’s Savings and Loan, because otherwise we’ll have a discontented, lazy rabble instead of a thrifty working class. “This rabble you’re talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath?”

This is the function of a Minimum Wage. Since our world no longer requires all of us to work so hard that we can’t enjoy the Moments of our lives, it seems to me we would be remiss if we didn’t avail ourselves of the opportunities. When you spend a dollar, you can go to work and make another one. When you spend a minute, there is nothing you can ever do to get it back, even if you’re Jeff Bezos or Richard Cory. You get each one exactly one time. You may have millions of them left, or you may have only one more. But they’re irreplaceable. You sacrifice some minutes in exchange for improving other minutes. Make those leisure moments worth the lousy ones.

I’m told that the Minimum Wage isn’t intended for people to make a living. It’s meant for teenagers who still live at home so they can have some spending money. In other words, we don’t need to pay people a living wage just because they work full time. They need to do more to deserve that.

First, that argument is factually incorrect. FDR, in his Statement on The National Industrial Recovery Act, which became the basis of the minimum wage, told us, “No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.” And just to be sure there was no misunderstanding, he defined his terms. “By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level – I mean the wages of decent living.”

If you want to use Capitalism to defend the fact that there are those struggling even to survive, while at the same time, others have more than they could spend in 50 lifetimes, then let’s see what Capitalism really is. The basic dictionary definition is “an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.” That doesn’t shed a whole lot of useful light on the issue. I would want to go farther, and say that it is based on what markets will bear. If someone produces goods or provide services that are highly valued, at the best price, and at a higher quality than one’s competitors, someone will profit. The rest is good business sense.

The most conservative estimates put small business failures in the first year at 20%. 30% fail in the second year. Half are closed within 5 years.

Click to access Business-Survival.pdf

Capitalism offers no guarantees for business owners. It’s the competition within Capitalism that is often touted as its greatest asset. If a business fails, it’s because someone else is doing the same thing, better and/or more cheaply, or simply because the goods or services they provide are not in demand. If a person can’t make a living, it’s for the same reasons.

Why is it unreasonable to require business owners to pay a living wage to their employees? If a business can’t afford to do that, the business is not yet successful enough to afford employees. They have to do it themselves a while longer. They’ll have to work hard and be patient.

If “work hard and be patient” seems unreasonable when directed at a business owner, why isn’t it unreasonable when it’s directed at an employee? The employee is not yet successful enough to deserve… what?…a living wage? So, for a certain amount of time, they are expected to work for less than they need to earn to have their basic needs met. Why? And for how long?

Small businesses are job creators. If they fold, it causes unemployment. Unemployment is worse than not having enough money. It means having no money at all. Small business owners can’t afford to pay a living wage. Neither, as far as that goes, can giant Corporations. This is the argument against paying a living wage? I don’t buy it.

All right, but do you really think, Fred, that a guy who works at Circle K deserves to make as much as a paramedic? A paramedic earns, on average, $36,700 a year. That’s three times the federal poverty level. They can live on that.

Can they? Maybe it depends on where.

“…the average cost of a two-bedroom in New York is around $3,789. This means that New Yorkers would need to earn a minimum of $162,386 in order to spend no more than 28 percent of their annual income on rent. If you head to Brooklyn or Queens, the average rent prices of two-bedrooms are slightly less at $3,200 and $2,660, respectively, however you would still need a substantial income to be able to afford a two-bedroom in these boroughs.”

https://ny.curbed.com/2018/7/30/17630428/nyc-rent-prices-two-bedroom-apartments-annual-income-needed

A person who works at Circle K earns about $23,000 a year. That’s twice the federal poverty level. They should quit whining. But did you notice? Neither the paramedic nor the Circle K employee is making enough to afford a place alone. They’re working 40 hours a week. They’re working hard. And they can’t support themselves effectively.

It’s not that the Circle K employee is paid too much; it’s that the paramedic is paid too little. Both should be paid at least a living wage. If you want to make the case that the paramedic deserves more, I won’t argue with you. The paramedic deserves more than a living wage. This worker should be able to have a nicer car, a nicer house, eat better food, or enjoy life a bit more. But why shouldn’t the Circle K employee make a living wage? The answer is that businesses can’t afford to pay that much.

In deciding between the need for sub par businesses or human beings to thrive, I’m going with human beings.

And, how many jobs do you think those poor people create? We need businesses for that.

Oh, no, I’m so sorry. You’re mistaken. Jobs are created by a thriving economy. When people, particularly those just barely making it, have money, they spend it. When they spend money, they create jobs for those businesses they patronize. When the Wealthy have more money, they put it somewhere else. They don’t inject it back into the economy because they don’t need to. Poor people do. The more money people have to spend, the more jobs will need to be created to help them spend it.

But, no one owes anyone anything. Remember?

If people can’t make it on their own, that’s their own fault. I worked my ass off all my life to have what I have, and I’m not paying for someone else to sit on her ass and watch talk shows all day!

First off, oh, of course you are! Your Congressmen and women have more than 200 days a year to do that. You’re also paying for the President to play golf. We’ve spent in excess of $100 million on that. That’s one HELL of a lot more than you’re paying for welfare for those that can’t afford to eat even though they live above the poverty line.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-golf-102-million-taxpayers_n_5ce46727e4b09b23e65a01bb

The idea that because you had a horrible experience, everyone else should also be required to have it, is just childish and mean. I have friends who were raped, and I promise you, not one of them wants anyone else to have to go through that.

Did it suck to have to work and sweat and strain? I feel certain it did. I’m sure it was even harder for generations preceding ours. It certainly sucked for me. Why do others have to face that horror? If we can do better, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?

I would really like it if everyone had a few minutes to enjoy being alive. I would like them to be able to watch a movie, or read a book, or listen to a symphony, or do whatever it is that makes them happy. I would prefer they not need to spend the few hours they’re not working, sleeping, so they have enough energy to go to work tomorrow.

But what about the business owners?

A Modest Proposal

If we really want to help business owners, we could eliminate the need for them to pay a wage at all. Slave labor is much less expensive. We can always find a way to get slaves. We can invade a country, or we can lock up more of our citizens than any other country on Earth, and we can use the convicts we make as slaves, or we can just decide one group isn’t as good as the rest of us, turn on them, and make them all slaves. My suggestion would be Straight White Christian Males. Others may have different ideas.

Or, in the alternative, we could move toward automation, if you’re opposed to slavery. Then they don’t have to pay anyone, except the manufacturers of the machines they use. This is already happening in many places. We’re becoming our own cashiers, we use ATMs so commonly we forget they took the jobs of many many bank tellers, and talking to a human being on the phone at a business is becoming nearly impossible. There will be more automation, not less, and I don’t think it’s an unmitigated evil. Machines are eliminating jobs, but they’re working smarter, not harder. They are removing some of the burdens from human beings. This gives us time to do other things. Technology has always done this.

My mother used to have wash my diapers. She had to hang them on a clothesline. This took a lot more of her time than Pampers do. Pampers are probably more sanitary, too, although they’re arguably worse for the environment. We have dishwashers. We have cell phones. There was a time when sending a message across the world would take weeks or months, if it were possible at all. Now it takes seconds. Automation makes human lives easier.

The Need for A Living Wage as the Minimum Wage

But… as long as you’re going to employ human beings, I submit you need to pay them a living wage, as a moral imperative. If you can’t do that, you have no right to the employees.

It’s wrong to make people take jobs that pay subsistence wages. We can, and we should, have a minimum wage that accomplishes FDR’s original purpose. Let’s pay workers enough for them to have the basic necessities of life. Let’s let them have a life that’s worth living. We can afford it.

If we can agree on nothing else, I think we should be able to agree that life is agonizingly brief. Few of us get a single century. None of us gets two. Why can’t we have a little while to enjoy ourselves? If we’re working full time, we shouldn’t need to hope we can put enough gas in the car to get to work tomorrow. We shouldn’t need to worry about eating this week.

It took us roughly 200,000 years to get to the place that we can take care of everyone. We can support the entire population, now, and not just the few. Any advanced civilization would take care of its population. Aliens will think us childish if they ever get around to visiting. Let’s try not to embarrass ourselves.

Posted on by Fred

Human Rights

I’m not concerned with Women’s Rights. I’m equally unconcerned with the rights of People of Color, or with the rights of members of the LGBTQ community. I have no interest in the rights of this religion or that one. I have even less interest in the rights of white heterosexual males. Why? Because those are all just subgroups of the rights that interest me. I’m interested in Human Rights.

Women’s Rights are Human Rights. All rights are Human Rights. No person deserves special rights for being a member of a particular group. Too many groups, however, are denied rights by those to whom we have given the power to define the rights we have. And that is simply wrong. I’m concerned, at the moment, about laws that ban abortions from the moment a heartbeat can be detected. The claim is that this occurs at approximately six weeks, but, that turns out not to be be true in any meaningful way.


Rather, at  six weeks of pregnancy, an ultrasound can detect “a little flutter in the area that will become the future heart of the baby,” said Dr. Saima Aftab, medical director of the Fetal Care Center at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami. This flutter happens because the group of cells that will become the future “pacemaker” of the heart gain the capacity to fire electrical signals, she said.
But the heart is far from fully formed at this stage, and the “beat” isn’t audible; if doctors put a stethoscope up to a woman’s belly this early on in her pregnancy, they would not hear a heartbeat, Aftab told Live Science. (What’s more, it isn’t until the eighth week of pregnancy that the baby is called a fetus; prior to that, it’s still considered an embryo, according to the Cleveland Clinic.)
It’s been only in the last few decades that doctors have even been able to detect this flutter at six weeks, thanks to the use of more-sophisticated ultrasound technologies, Aftab said. Previously, the technology wasn’t advanced enough to detect the flutter that early on in pregnancy.

https://www.livescience.com/65501-fetal-heartbeat-at-6-weeks-explained.html

Some laws seek to prevent abortion even earlier.

There are also laws that outlaw birth control, or that won’t allow insurance companies to provide it for their customers. Birth control is only for the wealthy. There is plenty of information about this topic available here.

jhhttps://www.guttmacher.org/united-states/contraception

Why do we feel the need to deny slightly over half of the population of the Earth the basic right of bodily autonomy?

If I don’t wish to give blood, even to save the life of my relative, I can’t be forced to do that. Understand, an actual human being, whose heart has been beating for quite some time is going to die because of my choice. And yet, no one would deny my right to make that choice. Why? Because it’s my blood. It’s my body. I get to choose what will happen with it.

Why should women be denied the same bodily autonomy that I have?

If a person dies, and his organs could be harvested to save another person, the organs are off limits unless the dead person has signed a paper saying they may be used. And yet, no one would deny the right of the Dead to choose.

Why should living women, with hearts that beat independently, be denied the same bodily autonomy that a dead body has?

Well, the argument goes, she is carrying another life. Her body is no longer entirely her own. She’s sharing it with another human being.

I have a couple of problems with that argument. First, it is STILL her body. Regardless of who or what may be inside of her, the body contains her consciousness. It is her body that is going to experience whatever happens to it.

Yes, Fred, but it also contains another life. That life also has a consciousness. That life counts as much as the life of the woman.

I would argue that, first, I’m not entirely sure when what she is carrying inside her is a life. Neither are you. Certainly it’s not yet a life when the man ejaculates inside the woman. The sperm hasn’t even fertilized the egg yet. On the other hand, it is absolutely a life, worthy of all the rights, care, love, and help necessary for survival the moment it is born. Somewhere between ejaculation and birth, it probably is a human life. I’m just not sure where to draw that line.

There is no doubt, however, that it lacks a consciousness for quite some time. The brain doesn’t begin to form for six weeks. Consciousness, in any meaningful form, doesn’t begin for six months, and even then, it’s open to debate. For more on this topic, see the link below.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfarrell/2018/04/19/tracing-consciousness-in-the-brains-of-infants/#12e94619722f

There is scientific evidence that tells me that human life begins at the moment of conception. Cells fuse, and this is the first step in becoming a human being.

The conclusion that human life begins at sperm-egg fusion is uncontested, objective, based on the universally accepted scientific method of distinguishing different cell types from each other and on ample scientific evidence (thousands of independent, peer-reviewed publications). Moreover, it is entirely independent of any specific ethical, moral, political, or religious view of human life or of human embryos. Indeed, this definition does not directly address the central ethical question surrounding the embryo: What value ought society place on human life at the earliest stages of development?  A neutral examination of the evidence merely establishes the onset of a new human life at a scientifically well-defined “moment of conception,” a conclusion that unequivocally indicates that human embryos from the one-cell stage forward are indeed living individuals of the human species; i.e., human beings.




https://lozierinstitute.org/a-scientific-view-of-when-life-begins/

Well, then, Fred, that’s it! Life begins at the moment of conception. The woman’s body is no longer exclusively her own. She owes those cells the opportunity to become a fully developed human being.

That sounds like a reasonable argument, at least at first blush. But, let’s follow it through to its conclusion. If the life of barely developed cells is as valuable, as worthy of rights, as the life of a fully developed human being, then we must also say that all human lives are of equal value. And, I agree with that idea. All human lives are, in fact, of equal value.

My life is as valuable as yours, and yours is as valuable as mine. The life of the homeless guy at Circle K asking for a dollar is as valuable as that of the wealthiest billionaire. And, if all lives are of equal value, then it follows all lives deserve equal rights. Women, those of different religions, those of different sexual orientations, those of different races, those of different nationalities, those from other countries all deserve the same rights that you do. If you don’t accept this, then I question whether you really believe that the value of a fertilized egg is the same as the value of the woman whose egg got fertilized. Too often those who oppose abortion also oppose helping other humans because they were not born in America. If you’re among those people, I would like you to reconsider your beliefs. How is a fertilized egg entitled to more rights than a fully formed, conscious human being with a heart that beats on its own?

Let’s explore the value of human life a bit more deeply. We have frequently heard that life – at least human life – is sacred. I don’t know why that’s necessarily true, since, finally, it’s brief. Perhaps it’s because it’s so short that it’s sacred. None of us is likely to be here for 150 years. The record, as far as I know, is 122 years. But, if we believe that all human life is sacred, then what does that tell us?

We should care for all human life. This doesn’t mean just me and the people who are most like me. We just said all human life is sacred. That means the life of a refugee from another country is sacred. It means the life of Osama bin Laden was sacred. If it’s sacred, we should preserve and care for it. But, do we?

If a mother has a child, it is, very often, her problem, and hers alone. We will give her minimal, if any, help feeding, clothing, and caring for her child. She has to pay for child care, food, diapers, clothes, doctors, dentists, and anything else the baby needs.

Well, if she didn’t want to do that, she shouldn’t have had a baby!

Yes, well, perhaps she didn’t want to have a baby, but it happened anyway. She was raped. A condom broke. Or, perhaps she didn’t have access to the information she needed. Or, maybe she just made a decision with which I might disagree. Why do I get to decide how, when, with whom, and under what circumstances a woman can have sex? Why do you? Who appointed us The Morality Police? What makes sex moral or immoral? Who am I to decide that for someone else? Morality is an incredibly fraught subject. It’s almost never clear that this is an absolute Good and that is an absolute Evil. And the times when it is clear usually involve a body count.

Forcing a woman to give birth against her will without giving her the support she needs to raise the child is simply wrong. A woman is more than an incubator for a man’s seed. She is a complete human being, with the right to choose for herself what happens to her body. She has all the rights a fetus does, and then some.

So, all human beings deserve the same rights. That includes women.

And that brings us back to my original point. Why do I have the right to decide what will happen to my body, but a woman doesn’t have the right to decide what will happen to hers? If it’s because she’s carrying a potential life inside of her, then you’ve denied her of a right that I have. I will never have a potential life growing inside of me. I can, however, get one started in a woman. And when I do, I should be required to take responsibility for the consequences of my action. The fact is that most men are not required by law to do anything more than pay child support. To believe that paying any amount of money is sharing an equal burden with the woman who is giving birth is absurd.

She will, at the very least, undergo a painful experience. Even the easiest births are no cakewalk. The worst of them actually kill women. If she gives the baby up for adoption, she will have an emotionally traumatic experience. If she raises the child, she will have a good portion of her life changed dramatically and forever.

If the pregnancy came from an experience she didn’t choose, such as a rape, the man might be able to attempt to get custody of the child the victim bore. We’ve probably all seen this meme:

It’s not entirely true that in 31 states a rapist can sue for custody, but there is no law specifically banning it. The issue is a bit murky, but Snopes did a fairly good job of sorting through it. The upshot of their research is this:

What’s True

Some states do not have laws to prevent the perpetrators of rape from seeking custody and visitation of children conceived during that act.

What’s False

No laws restrict rape victims from seeking child support from their rapists.

The complete article can be found here, for those seeking additional clarification. It’s worth your time to read it.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/rapists-and-child-support/

Rape victims often want to keep as far from their attackers as possible. How can one blame them? It is, therefore, not likely they’re going to sue for child support.

The laws being enacted now are, in my view, less about the value of human life than they are an effort to deny women of rights that I have. Alabama, Ohio, Georgia, and several other states have passed laws that effectively ban abortion, in direct violation of the Roe V Wade decision. Why are they doing this? I suspect it’s because with a very Conservative Supreme Court, they hope to be able to reverse Roe V Wade. Why do they want to do that? I won’t accept the idea that it’s because they value all lives equally. I’ve covered that above. The Alabama law, for example, doesn’t apply to fetuses in fertility clinics.

When Alabama Senator Bobby Singleton, a Democrat, pointed out that Alabama’s new law could punish those who dispose of fertilized eggs at an IVF clinic, Chambliss responded, “The egg in the lab doesn’t apply. It’s not in a woman. She’s not pregnant.”




https://medium.com/s/jessica-valenti/anti-abortion-lawmakers-have-no-idea-how-womens-bodies-work-3ebea9fd6015

If the law were, in fact, about the value of the fetus, it would apply to laboratories as well as women. That fetus is precisely as human as one carried in a mother’s womb. But a fetus in an IVF facility is not protected. What do they do with excess fetuses then? I thought this would be a simple Google search. It turns out, it’s not a simple question at all. There has been one widely accepted study done on the issue, and it found the following:

Nearly all (97 percent) were willing to create and cryopreserve extra embryos. Fewer, but still a majority (59 percent), were explicitly willing to avoid creating extras. When embryos did remain in excess, clinics offered various options: continual cryopreservation for a charge (96 percent) or for no charge (4 percent), donation for reproductive use by other couples (76 percent), disposal prior to (60 percent) or following (54 percent) cryopreservation, and donation for research (60 percent) or embryologist training (19 percent). Qualifications varied widely among those personnel responsible for securing couples’ consent for disposal and for conducting disposal itself. Some clinics performed a religious or quasi-religious disposal ceremony. Some clinics required a couple’s participation in disposal; some allowed but did not require it; some others discouraged or disallowed it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16859369

There is no law requiring labs to divulge to the public what they do with extra fetuses. Cryopreservation is the process of freezing and preserving unborn fetuses. This is expensive and can continue for years. There have been fetuses cryopreserved for in excess of a decade. Preservation is often expensive. It is not an option for the poor.

But, please notice 60% of the labs are willing to dispose of the excess fetuses. There may or may not be a ceremony involved, but they are not required to keep it alive. The Alabama law isn’t, in any meaningful way, protecting the life of the unborn fetus. It’s restricting the choices of women.

We have lived, nearly forever, with the idea that women are secondary to men. Their function is to provide us orgasms and give us sons and daughters, and then to raise those children while we go do something else. And this idea is being challenged, frequently and compellingly, in our society. And it should be.

There is nothing that makes women less than men. There is no reason to pass laws restricting their choices while the same laws don’t apply to men. The time of the patriarchy is gone. It’s now time to recognize that women are complete human beings with all the same rights, all the same needs, and all the same value as men. They are no less important, no less deserving of making choices, and no less human than I am.

Finally, let’s be clear about something. Banning abortions is never going to stop people from having them. It’s simply going to stop them from having safe and legal abortions. It’s the same as banning guns. Criminals will still have them. If prostitution and drugs are illegal, people will still hire prostitutes and use drugs. We can just lock them up for those things. And the people passing these laws know that. What they really want is to return to the time when only white male landowners had any rights at all. There is an ancient, deeply embedded idea in the minds of many men (and some women) that males are, by virtue of being male, superior to females. And changing that idea is not going to be an easy task.

Now, what are my feelings about abortion? I wish no one would ever have one. It’s sad to keep a life from coming into the world. I do, in fact, feel empathy for the unborn child. Then, why don’t I want them to be illegal?

I don’t know of anyone who ever wanted an abortion. I want a pastrami sandwich. I want to go to dinner with Valerie Bertinelli. I want to make a living as a writer. Those are things I want.

I don’t know of any woman who feels about abortion the way I feel about pastrami sandwiches. I do know, however, women who may need an abortion. Not just because she was raped, or was the victim of incest, or for any other single reason, but because for any of 3.9 billion reasons, she may not be in a place where having a child is a good choice. The decision whether or not to have an abortion must certainly be an agonizingly difficult one. I’m relieved I will never be faced with that decision. People I love, however, have had to make the choice. Why on Earth should we make that decision any more difficult by threatening to imprison her and her doctor? Who is better off for doing that? If your argument is the unborn child is better off, I can’t agree with you. You’re condemning a child to a life in which he or she is unwanted.

No, I’m not! Do you know how many couples want to adopt children? The child will be loved in deeper ways than other babies!

I understand that feeling intimately. When I was married the first time, my wife and I were unable to conceive. We went to doctors. We went to fertility clinics. We did all we could. It simply wasn’t going to happen. So, we wanted to adopt. A relative of mine got pregnant while my wife and I were hoping to adopt, and we wanted to adopt her child. She had an abortion. I was furious with her. But, I got over it. Do you know why? Because, finally, that was her choice to make. It was her body. She gets to decide what is right for it. My wife and I don’t. My wife and I never did adopt. It turns out to be a very difficult process.

If you would like to adopt, I’m completely in favor of it. There are many children waiting for you to give them all of your love. According to The Adoption Network, “There are 107,918 foster children eligible for and waiting to be adopted. In 2014, 50,644 foster kids were adopted — a number that has stayed roughly consistent for the past five years. The average age of a waiting child is 7.7 years old and 29% of them will spend at least three years in foster care.” https://adoptionnetwork.com/adoption-statistics

There is no shortage of children. There is a shortage of eligible parents. Why? This is because the definition of eligible is narrowing. In many states, gay couples are ineligible. My first wife and I were unsuccessful in adopting because I’m an atheist, and no one wanted their child raised without a church. I would love for you to adopt if that’s your desire. It is a beautiful thing to do. It can, however, be a long, hard road.

I hope you never need an abortion. I hope you find love, you get married, you have children, and you have a family that loves you for the rest of your life, if those are things you want. But, if you do need an abortion, I hope you can find love, support, correct medical information to help you decide, and a safe and legal means of obtaining it. It’s your body, first and foremost. If you choose to share it with someone and become a mother, I applaud your decision. You’ve made what I believe to be a beautiful and deeply meaningful choice. But if you choose differently, I will support your decision, even if I disagree with it. My opinion doesn’t matter. Yours is the only one that’s relevant.

You are a human being. You have a human right to choose what is best for you.