Posted on by Fred

The Problem of Immigration

I wrote the following on November 26, 2018.  The United States had just tear gassed refugees and immigrants crossing our border.

I honestly can’t stomach this anymore.

We kidnapped children from families coming to us for help.  And, while there was some outrage, there were those who said it was the families’ fault.  It wasn’t.  They came for help.  They were met with the most horrible thing you can do to any parent.

Now we’re tear gassing people.  This was outlawed in 1993, because it’s an inhumane weapon that doesn’t discriminate between intended targets and bystanders… or children.

I have seen people laughing about this. I had to drop a thread altogether because there were people blaming the parents who were fleeing for their lives, and they honestly thought my outrage was funny.  It isn’t.

The argument is that they can come, but they must do it legally.  The legal argument is an effort to give cover to the fact that what we are doing is patently immoral.  It was illegal to help a slave escape in 1850.  But it was the right thing to do.  Slavery was legal, but it was wrong.  It was illegal to hide Anne Frank in your attic in 1939.  But it was the right thing to do.  Nazism was legal, but it was wrong.  It is, in some states, illegal to feed homeless people.  But it’s the right thing to do.  Preventing people from helping others is legal, but it’s wrong.

There are many laws that are good laws because they protect us.  It’s illegal to kill me, or to steal my car, or to rape someone.  I’m in favor of those laws.  They protect us.

I don’t need to be protected from a family crossing a line.  They pose no threat to me.  If they come in and hurt someone, by all means, stop them. But crossing that line hurts no one.  And to greet people who come for help with tear gas instead of with open arms is the height of immorality.

I don’t want to hear that we don’t have the resources to help them. Of course we do. To believe otherwise is to buy into the oligarchy’s plan to make us fight with each other over the scraps of food they drop on the floor, while they pile up cash in offshore accounts and laugh at us.  The refugees, the poor, those who need help are not a threat to you.  They are not the ones keeping you from a good life.  That would be the ones with the power.  And so long as we keep supporting them, they will keep suffocating us.

What we are doing at our border is wrong.  To believe otherwise is to delude yourself.

What will I do?  I’m doing it.  I’m speaking out as loudly as I can.  “But, if you’re so worried about them, why don’t you let them come and live with you?” If your house is on fire, I can’t put it out.  I pay taxes, though, so someone can.  If you need to get to work, I can’t build you a road.  I pay taxes, though, so someone can.  If you are being attacked, I can’t help you.  But I pay taxes so someone can.

If people need help, and I am in a position to give it to them, I will. I just offered someone our extra room if she needs it because it’s all I can do.  I don’t have a single dollar to my name today.  But what I have is a voice. What I have is a talent for writing.  Those are what I have to offer.  The Little Drummer Boy could play.  I can write.  We give what we have to help those who need it. We don’t attack those in trouble.

I hope you understand.

If you need a reminder of what happened, there are two links in the transcript that will take you through the details.  One if from the BBC.  The other is from NPR.  These are traditionally two of the most objective media outlets.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46355258

https://www.npr.org/2018/11/25/670687806/u-s-agents-spray-tear-gas-at-migrants-briefly-close-tijuana-border-entry

Last week I talked a little about Legalism, or the idea that adherence to a strict set of laws or religious beliefs is the way to define moral behavior.  I find it to be an excuse for doing what we know is wrong.  The argument that they can come, but they must do so legally, is a textbook example of the moral cowardice of Legalism. 

We need to stop seeing laws and start seeing people.  These are human beings coming for help.  They are often hungry and homeless.  They have been threatened by drug cartels.  They have been victims of violence.  And our response is that they have to wait until they have filled out the proper paperwork and had it stamped by the appropriate authorities?  That’s simply wrong.  They could be your parents.  They could be your children.  They share most of their attributes.  And we should care about them as we care about our own families… because they are part of our family. 

I spent last night reading comments from a supposed economist who was extolling the genius of Thomas Sowell and Adam Smith to explain why our Capitalist economy is the best of all possible worlds.  It’s just an unfortunate side effect that this economy is filled with people trying their best to make ends meet.  They work 2 or 3 jobs just to pay rent, but, by all means, let the markets regulate themselves.  There are hundreds of thousands of homeless people sleeping on the streets and shivering in the cold, but that’s just sort of too bad, because if we tried anything else, it would certainly be worse. 

I won’t accept such arguments.  I will be the first to admit that I am nothing resembling an economist.  I know next to nothing about how economies work.  I don’t know the science.  All I can see are the results.  And the results of our economic system are appalling.

We need to stop seeing numbers and start seeing people.  When children don’t have a warm bed, the economy isn’t working.  When children are put into cages, the immigration system isn’t working. 

In simplest terms, people matter more than money.  People matter more than arbitrary laws that keep them from the help they need.

Part of the problem, I think, is that we have global markets, but we lack any global government to regulate them.  This allows corporations to wield enormous power without anything to stop them.  If one country taxes them, they simply move their money to another.  If one country forces them to pay a living wage, they move their jobs to another.  And the exploitation goes on.

We have borders to protect us from others coming to our country and taking advantage of us.  But… what if we had no borders, anywhere, at all?  What if we recognized that there is no Them; we are all Us?  What would this mean?

It would mean an effective one-world government that benefits everyone.  If we had a global democracy, we could distribute global resources to where they are most needed without dealing with borders that keep help from getting where it is most needed.

Democracy comes from the Greek terms “Demos,” meaning “people,” and “Kratia,” or power.  It is the idea that people have the power to rule themselves.  We’ve been trying to get Democracy right for more than 2,500 years, and we still haven’t managed it.  I believe this is because governments are subject to the will of other governments, and they must compete with one another for supremacy.  Authoritarian dictatorships frequently create stronger militaries, and Democracy can’t fight them effectively.

Instead of fighting each other for control of what Carl Sagan aptly described as a “fraction of a dot,” we should work toward having a global democracy that works for all of us instead of giving all the advantages to the wealthy. 

This is not what The United Nations does now.  That’s a collection of governments, and participation is entirely voluntary.  The UN has no power to enforce its policies.  It has little voice in governments who exploit or oppress their own citizens.  Its function is mostly symbolic.

I don’t have details for you about how to accomplish this.  I’m sorry.  I’m not nearly intelligent enough to design such a government.  But I can give you some ideas that would help to shape it. 

Its purpose must be to help all people.  Its representatives should be elected by popular vote.  Everyone needs to be allowed to vote without interference or coercion.   It should ensure that all people get the healthcare they need.  It should ensure that education is freely available.  It should see to it that everyone has a warm bed and decent food to eat.  A government of any kind that does less is a failure to the extent that it falls short of these goals. 

I leave it to better minds than mine to work out the details.  And better minds than mine will become increasingly common as education becomes more readily available. 

So, how do we solve The Problem of Immigration?  We remove all the borders that separate one country from another, and we become one planet composed of one people.  We recognize that we are all travelers on this rock tumbling through space.  We work together to better ourselves and the rest of humanity instead of trying to create stacks of bits of green linen and cotton that, themselves, are becoming less and less common.  We use currency less frequently all the time, and now we are transferring most of our money electronically.  There are more and more places that decline to accept cash.  I had thought this was illegal, but the federal reserve tells us it’s not.

There is no federal statute mandating that a private business, a person, or an organization must accept currency or coins as payment for goods or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether to accept cash unless there is a state law that says otherwise.

Section 31 U.S.C. 5103, entitled “Legal tender,” states: “United States coins and currency [including Federal Reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal Reserve Banks and national banks] are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues.” This statute means that all U.S. money as identified above is a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm

This means it’s more difficult for people who don’t have bank accounts to get any help.  If I give a homeless person a ten-dollar-bill, they can’t necessarily take it to a coffee shop to get something to eat anymore.  Currency is losing its value.  The world is becoming much more for those who have, and much less for those who have not.

We need to stop making decisions about people based on their place of birth, their gender, their race, the color of their skin, or their sexuality, and instead we see that there is much more that unites us than divides us.  We must recognize that everyone is someone’s son or daughter, just as you and I are, and that hurting them means making miserable not only them but the people who love them.  We see every child as we would see our own children, and we grant them the love they have earned simply by showing up on Earth. 

Hatred has reigned long enough on Earth.  Why not try Love for a while?  Let’s see how that works out.

Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

Saying I Love You

“…you shouldn’t blow the chance
When you’ve got the chance to say
I love you…”


Olivia Newton John

There are 2 people to whom I say I Love You daily. There are 2 others to whom I say it almost daily. There are 3 cats and a dog who hear it from me several times a day. There are 7.68 billion people to whom I never say it at all.

I don’t recall the last time I said it in a romantic sense. It’s almost certainly been a decade. It’s been at least that long since I’ve heard anyone say it to me in that way. I wouldn’t be surprised if I never say it or hear it that way again. Nor would I be unhappy about that. It’s gone badly for me in almost all cases. I can be done with that now.

Why do I say it and hear it so rarely?

Let’s begin with what I believe I Love You means. For me, to love someone means that their happiness is at least as important to you as your own. It means you will, whenever possible, act in ways designed to increase that person’s happiness.

Now, it’s absurd to think I could feel that way about 7.68 billion people. I will never see, let alone meet, well over 99% of them. How can their happiness really be at least as important to me as mine? In any meaningful way, it can’t.

But what can I feel about the rest of the humans who share this planet with me? I would prefer none of them suffered. I would prefer that they all practice and receive Kindness. To a greater or lesser extent, I can empathize with them. Whether it’s an impoverished mother from a tiny tribe in Africa, or the richest woman in a high rise in Manhattan, no mother wants her baby taken away without her consent. I can imagine how that must feel. It’s basic to being human. Their experiences are different from mine, but there are certain aspects of life that we all share. Our hearts all, I suspect, feel joy and pain about many of the same experiences. We are more alike than we are different.

But do I love them?

I don’t think I do in the deepest sense of that word. But I recognize that their happiness is, if not necessarily to me, as important as mine, as yours, as anyone’s, at least to them. I hope others love them too. There’s no reason you, or the person next to you, or someone who has never seen a cell phone deserves less from life than I do. So, while I might not love them, individually, I love their existence.

I find I enjoy being able to say I Love You. It makes me feel good. Perhaps that’s because I can empathize with the person to whom I’m saying it. I like to believe hearing or reading it makes that person happy. It may make me feel good because I can feel the reflection of their happiness. Or, maybe it’s just that I enjoy it in the same way I enjoy pastrami. I don’t get enough of that, either, anymore.

I loved my Father deeply. But, I think I can count on one hand the times, after my childhood, that we said it to each other. We didn’t need to say it; it was always clear to us both. He is gone now; our love continues unabated.

It isn’t necessarily clear, however, to the rest of the planet that I love their existence. Either you or I may be gone tomorrow, too. That makes today the ideal time.

I probably don’t know you. I’ll almost certainly never meet you. And if I do know you, we’re probably not in the habit of saying it to one another. (There are, as you know, only about 4 people out of the 7.68 billion running around, with whom I regularly exchange that phrase.) So, let me say what I can.

I love your existence. It’s at least as important to me as my own. I do my best to act in ways designed to increase your happiness. And, if you are nothing more than your existence, as some would posit, then I suppose it would be fair for me to say, in a very general way:

I Love You.

Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

Empathy and Art

Empathy and Art

My earliest memory of feeling empathy is Christmas 1969. I was 7 years old, sitting under a tree with an obscene number of gifts I had just opened, and feeling truly ecstatic, when I noticed my Mother had no Christmas presents. Not one. I burst into tears of guilt. My father took me to a drug store, and we found Mom a candle, and it was my first present to her. Neither Dad nor I had any ability to wrap a candle, so we gave it to Mom to wrap. And when she opened it an hour or so later, she loved that candle as she loved her children. She got candles from me for decades after that, and for nearly every occasion. It took several additional hours for me to recognize that Dad hadn’t gotten any presents, either, and Mom took me to the drug store to buy Dad a pipe. I gave him most of the pipes he used to smoke. These Traditions were the product of Empathy.

I have, and I would guess most of you have, wept for Tom Robinson. I have cheered for Sherlock Holmes. I have spoken with Hamlet repeatedly about the value and meaning (or lack thereof) of life. I have felt joy for Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars. I learned Friendship from Sam and Frodo, and Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. I learned courage from Santiago and his marlin, and morality from Atticus Finch. I have faced George’s agonizing moral dilemma concerning his best friend, Lenny, when George tells him to think about the rabbits. These are all other examples of Empathy.

I believe Empathy is essential to being human. Too much Empathy is dangerous, of course. You can’t possibly grieve for every tragedy in the world. No one has that vast an emotional landscape. But, the inability to feel for others is, in my mind, the root of evil. You don’t kill people not because it’s against the law, but because you can feel for someone besides yourself. You won’t commit most acts of violence or cruelty for the same reasons. You can imagine how you would feel if it happened to you. You can’t do something you believe to be evil because you can experience the emotions of Others.

I believe an exposure to The Arts is essential for increasing a person’s Empathy. It’s in books, movies, music, paintings, poetry, dance, and other forms of Art that we find our own feelings. And it’s where we learn to feel the joys and pains that our fellow travelers on this little ball in space are likely to feel, themselves. It’s in catharsis that we learn the most about ourselves and each other.

When we can understand each other, we can dispense with the idea of Us vs. Them. We can move forward together, as a species, and this is a product of Empathy. I care about you because I recognize some of myself in you. I hope you can see some of yourself in me, too.